Agile software development has been gaining momentum over the years as more and more people start to see problems with the traditional model, and the benefits that agile methodologies bring. In agile methods, development happens in iterative cycles and improvements are made with each iteration. Feedback is gathered as early as possible, improving customer engagement and team collaboration. All these actions make development teams better at anticipating and managing changes.

Atlassian, the maker of the popular issue-tracking software Jira, recognizes the values that agile methods can bring, and has come out with a solution that is specially designed for managing projects using agile with Jira, called Jira Software. In this chapter, we will introduce the basics of Jira Software.

By the end of the chapter, you will have learned about:

• Jira Software and what it offers
• How to install and configure a new instance of Jira Software
• The key concepts and terminologies of Jira Software
• How to create new agile projects with project templates