How do you use Jira?
Jira is a project management tool for any team in your organization—from product to marketing and beyond—that needs to plan, organize, and track their work. Jira’s seamless AI and flexible workflows can be customized for your team’s unique needs.
This enables teams of all kinds to increase productivity and visibility as they deliver their best work.
To get started in Jira, create a space, pick a template that matches your team's workflow, setup your board columns, and add your first work item. From there, you invite your team and start moving work through your workflow.
You can also bring AI into the setup, using Jira's AI to break work into tasks, build workflows, and take on jobs you assign to it. The steps below walk through a first-time setup end-to-end.
Step 1: Create a space
A space holds all the work for a team or a project, along with its board, backlog, and settings. To create one, log in to your Jira site, select the plus icon to create a space in the sidebar, and browse the template library by category or by app.
Step 2: Pick a template
A template sets up your space with predefined work types, a workflow, and a board, so your team can start quickly. There are dozens of Jira templates, each of which is designed to get your team started quickly and successfully.
Choose the one that aligns most closely with how your team works, like:
Scrum suits Agile teams that work from a backlog, plan and estimate in sprints, and deliver on a regular cadence.
Kanban is deal for any team that manages a continuous flow of work with a focus on in-progress work, rather than working in sprints.
Bug tracking works for teams that prefer to manage development tasks and perform bug tracking in a list view rather than on a board.
Choose a space type
For the scrum and kanban templates, you also choose a space type. The difference is how the space is administered, either at the team level or at a company level.
Team-managed spaces: Suited for independent teams who want to control their own working processed and practices in a self-contained space.
Company-managed spaces: Set up and maintained by Jira admins. This space space type is designed for teams who want to standardize a way of working across many teams, such as sharing a workflow.
Step 3: Set up your columns
Your board displays work items in columns, and each column represents a stage in your team's workflow as work moves toward completion. When you are getting started, it helps to set up your columns to reflect the way your team already works.
You can configure many things on a board later, but columns are the place to start. How you set up columns depends on your space type:
Team-managed spaces: when each column maps to a single status, you can add, rename, reorder, or delete columns directly on the board. For more control, select the more actions menu next to the board, then choose Configure columns.
Company-managed spaces: select the more actions menu next to the board, choose Board settings, expand the Layout section, then select Columns to add, rename, reorder, or delete columns.
If you would rather describe your process in plain language, Jira's workflow builder can create statuses, transitions, and rules for you, which you then review and adjust.
Step 4: Create a work item
Work items are the building blocks of your space. A work item can represent a story, an epic, a bug, a feature, or any other task your team needs to track.
To create one, select + Create in the global navigation bar, or press C. Your new work item appears in your backlog, or directly on the board if your space does not use a separate backlog.
Jira's AI can help here, too. It can draft a work item description and break a larger piece of work into smaller tasks: it suggests how to divide the work, and once you approve the suggestions, the child work items are created and organized for you.
Step 5: Connect your tools
Your team can spend less time managing work and more time doing it by connecting the tools you already use. Thousands of apps and integrations in the Atlassian Marketplace let you tailor Jira to almost any use case.
To find and add them:
Select the settings icon in the top navigation, then choose Apps.
Select Explore more apps.
Search by app name or browse by category.
Follow the prompts to install, buy, or start a free trial.
Many popular tools, such as GitHub, Slack, Figma, and Confluence, connect to Jira via Marketplace apps, so work and updates from those tools appear alongside your Jira work items.
Connecting your tools also gives Jira's AI, Rovo, more context to work with, since it can draw on information from the places your team already works, such as Confluence and Slack.
Step 6: Invite your team
Once you have enough work represented on your board, it is time to bring in the rest of your team. Invite your team members so they can see the work, pick up tasks, and collaborate in the same space.
Step 7: Move work forward
With your team in place, you are ready to track work together. If you are using the scrum template, create and start a sprint to begin tracking work.
If you are using the kanban template, you can start tracking work on the board right away. To move a work item forward, drag it from one column to the next as it progresses through your workflow.
You can also bring AI agents into this stage. Assign a work item to an agent from the assignee field the same way you would assign it to a teammate.
Additionally, you can mention an agent in a comment to get a quick summary or draft or add an agent to a workflow transition so it runs automatically as work moves to a given status. Because agents work inside Jira's existing structures, they respect your permissions, configurations, and audit trail.
Pro Tip
Stay connected and move work forward from anywhere with the Jira mobile app for iOS or Android.
Frequently asked questions
What is a space in Jira?
A space is where a team or project keeps all its work, along with the board, backlog, and settings that support it. You create a space from a template, then tailor it to how your team works.
What is the difference between a team-managed and a company-managed space?
Team-managed spaces are set up and maintained by the team itself, which makes them simpler and more self-contained. Company-managed spaces are set up by Jira admins and can share configurations.
This includes things like workflows, across many spaces, which suits larger teams that need a standard way of working.
Do I need to know scrum or kanban to get started?
No. The scrum and kanban templates come pre-configured, so you can start with the one that best matches how your team works and adjust as you go. Scrum suits teams that work in sprints, while kanban suits teams that manage a continuous flow of work.
Can AI help me set up and run my Jira space?
Yes. Once an admin enables Rovo and Jira AI, you can use AI to break work into tasks, build workflows in plain language, and assign work items to AI agents that you then review. AI is included on paid Cloud plans.
Can I change my template or settings later?
Yes. Your board columns, workflow, and most other settings can be adjusted after setup, so you can start simple and refine your space as your team's process evolves.