Jira Quick Start Guide: Manage your projects efficiently using the all-new Jira

I enjoyed the book. It was concise but covered the critical information. I recommend it for anyone working with Jira. I normally use AzureDevOps but I am working with Jira on my current project. This book was clutch…

The book is too general and does not provide enough information. You’re better off buying another book on Jira that provides details on Reports, JQL, and Planning.

If you don’t notice bad writing, this book covers everything you need for configuring and using Jira.For me, the absurdly bad writing is distracting. I simply cannot read this book. It’s written in an amateurish style, not colloquial or informal, just plain bad. The only thing that’s right is the punctuation.Here are some examples:“As discussed previously, the adoption of the tool shouldn't be difficult and hence some effort is required to train the people involved in the usage of the tool.”A simple rewrite of this mangled sentence could be:“As noted previously, easy adoption and usability is the trademark of a good application. The training time for Jira is minimal.”Another example:“The tools used in organizations provide lots of value and have obvious benefits; however, a tool should justify its cost and maintenance. A tool may be flexible, provides lots of customization, and is easy to use by everyone but if it's too expensive to implement and set up, then it will be difficult for an organization to justify the benefit. There are plenty of tools and application that are flexible but are either too difficult to customize or require lot of effort.”All of the above rambling, typos and mismatched verbs and nouns can be stated as:“Jira stands out from its competitors because it is easy and flexible to configure and maintain, easy to use and reasonably priced. Its benefits justify its cost.”Consider this verbosity:“If you're wondering whether you should be using Jira or not, these benefits will help you decide. It's very important that we highlight them. The various benefits of using Jira are as follows:“All of the above can be stated as:“The cost justification and benefits of Jira are:”And instead of:“When you install Jira for the very first time, you'll find out that it's extremely easy to get started with the tool.”The writer could say: “Installing and using Jira for the first time is easy.”Redundancy is another distracting factor in this book. Notice that the quotes I pulled above are essentially saying the same thing repeatedly, an amateurish habit that renders the writing insufferable.One more example of the book’s inexcusable verbosity:“Jira is proprietary software developed by Atlassian and you need to purchase the license to use it. The licensing is based on the number of users you have in the team who will be using the system, and it's very straightforward.“A simple way to reduce that paragraph by 20 or so words would be:“Atlassian’s straightforward licensing process bases Jira’s price on the number of team members using it.”Beyond that, the writer does not know basic technical writing rules, like, when documenting software, just like if you’re reviewing a book or a movie, you refer to software behaviors in the present tense. This is a bit more abstract than basic and terrible redundancy, but, still, if you’re selling a technical book, it’s something you should know. Here’s an example.“When you open this link, you'll be presented with a screen as shown in the following screenshot where you can choose the deployment type—Cloud or Self-hosted—and then, based on the number of users, the license cost will be displayed to you:“Notice as well — and this too is at a bit more of a technical level — along with mixing present and future verb tense, the writer mixes active and passive voice, which is not something that the average reader cares about but again if you’re publishing a technical book and charging for it, you should.Another way to look at it is like this: If you watch movies from the 1950s, the soundtracks are distracting. You don’t have to be a composer to realize it. You just realize it sounds silly. Nowadays the best soundtracks are subtle; you don’t even notice them. They create ambience without distraction. That’s the way good writing should be. It doesn’t have to be great or perfectly formal, but it shouldn’t distract the reader. I’m sure a professional editor could go through what I’ve written here and find a dozen mistakes but hopefully the mistakes are not atrocious. This book is simply terrible and unreadable.That said, given that this book has many stellar reviews, I’m in the minority. As for me, I’m going to buy a different book, hopefully one written by a professional writer.

I did not find this book useful at all. Maybe it was written for an earlier version of JIRA.