Introduction to Jira Software | ACA-900 Study Session
Our study sessions for ACA-900 Jira Software Essentials are underway! This certification is intended for folks who use Jira Software on a daily basis. This includes folks like software developers, project managers, scrum masters, analysts and more. It also explicitly excludes anything an admin needs to worry about and focuses just on what regular users need.
Why study for the ACA-900 Jira Software Essentials?
There’s a few reasons you may want to study for this exam (but there can be others!).
Rounding your skills - Personally this is why I study for certifications. Typically i know how to use a tool, but only in ways that I happen to need to use it. This means I miss out on a lot of knowledge about how the tool works, what it can help me do and use cases. Studying for certifications helps me round out my skills and better understand what my tool can do.
Prove your skills - Earning a certification is one way to prove your skills to others. You may want to do this to get a new job, or signal to your current employer that you know something specific (like how to use Jira). Holding a certification means you’ve passed a bar in that area, and can be an important stepping stone in your career.
Curiosity - Sometimes folks are just curious! They want to learn how something works, not to earn a piece of paper, but just because they want to learn.
Our study sessions will prepare you to earn the ACA-900 exam, but if you choose not to take it that’s ok too! You’ll still learn a lot (and hopefully have some fun at the same time).
Roles
A major use case for JIra software is to support agile project teams as they develop a product. Agile teams have a few main roles that we need to understand so we can best use the tool. An important thing to remember is that these roles may be used differently by various organizations. For the purposes of the certification we’ll use these roles and examples, but be aware it can differ in real life!
Also note that these roles may or may not exist in Jira - however - they are important to understand as they help define what people will be doing in Jira (including things like permissions and tools they need).
Product owner - This individual is responsible for the backlog, and for ensuring the development team is aware of priorities. They don’t do the work, but instead tee up what’s next.
Developers - These are the folks who do the work (e.g. write the code). Typically this is a team of 5-7 folks, and they are responsible for things like estimating relative complexity, accomplishing their work and sharing it with customers.
Customers - These are the people who will use the end product. Outside of sitting in on regular demos they don’t take a very active role as they are mainly represented by the product owner.
Scrum master - This is an individual who is trained in agile methodology and acts as a coach for the team. They won’t (or shouldn’t!) be involved in daily work, but instead help the team understand how to apply agile tools and techniques to accomplish their goal.
What is Jira?
Before we get into how to use Jira we need to understand what it is. Jira is a work management tool made by Atlassian. It can do a lot more than support agile teams, but for the ACA-900 this is our main focus. It is available in two main types - Data Center (DC) and Cloud. Here, we’ll be talking about Cloud, but the lessons we learn are applicable to both types.
Cloud is further broken into different tiers - Free, Standard, Premium and Enterprise. Essentially the higher the tier, the higher the cost - but you get more features. The biggest differences between them is the availability of AI tools at Premium and less restrictions on things like automations.
The biggest unit of Jira is the instance - basically a copy (check out this video to get a free one to play in!). Every instance is different from every other instance, and requires a license to access.
Within an instance will be some number of projects. Projects are essentially containers that let you more easily organize work. They might be created for specific teams, or projects, or any other grouping.
Work Items are put within projects and represent things you need to do (note these used to be called “Issues”). Work items can represent almost anything, from scheduling a vacation flight to writing complex code to grocery shopping.
What is the ACA-900 exam?
The exam is up to 30 questions about Jira Software, and requires 72% or higher to pass (21 or more questions correct). You get 60 minutes to take the exam, which gives you two minutes per question. Some questions will take longer, others shorter, but two minutes is a good amount of time to answer them (and a great reminder to pace yourself!).
The certification is also valid for 24 months (although there are ways to renew it!). Check out more about the ACA-900 certification here
So what’s next?
Now that we understand some underlying and basic concepts and ideas it’s time to get hands on! Next up is Navigation (16% of the exam) where we’ll cover topics like how the Jira interface is laid out, where various menus are and keyboard shortcuts.
Also check out the ACA-900 Study page where I’ll be centralizing all the info I can find on the ACA-900 (including things like flash cards to help you study).
