There’s always this fear when I post in the forums that if I don’t preface “JIRA” with a long winded explanation, I’ll confuse people. I swear it’s nothing personal I think you’re all really smart! I just worry WGM has turned “JIRA” into one of the most versatile words in the English language by using it in every manner of speech possible.

• noun: “Send this over to JIRA.”
• verb: “That’s a strange bug, go ahead and JIRA it.”
• metaphor: “JIRA’s a giant to-do list for the developers.”
• present participle: “Be right back I’m JIRA‘ing a bug from the forums.”
• preterite: “I just saw your post half hour ago, I JIRA‘d it already.”

So what is JIRA really? JIRA is the software we use for tracking Cerb4’s development. We also use it as kind of a “roadmap” to let the community know where the product is headed. Each issue submitted gets assigned a unique ID and URL, where users can leave feedback and developers can schedule a fix. So when we reply in the forums with an issue’s wgmdev.com web page, what you are actually seeing is the JIRA software in action. It might not be obvious with the WebGroup Media branding all over it, but you see that little footnote way at the bottom — it’s Powered by Atlassian JIRA.

With my paranoia over JIRA’s ambiguity I can’t simply say, “I JIRA’d this request for you.” It’s a sickness really… Instead I’ll write an overdone speech on what that actually means, with every detail spelled out to the letter.

This bug/improvement has been filed in our tracking portal, JIRA, as CHD-99999. The developers will evaluate it and if any progress is made you can track it here <insert URL>. Please vote and provide your feedback, as we take that into consideration when scheduling our next release. You can also sign up for e-mail notifications to see when the status changes.              

What if I went ahead and really did shorten that essay of an explanation down to that one simple statement. Can I assume you’ll know exactly what’s going on? Some of my WGM compadres are more than comfortable typing with that assumption.

I’d love to be too.

-joegeck@wgm