11 Ways to Meet Your Project Deadlines in Jira

Jira is a great tool for planning, tracking, and managing a project. When it comes to staying on top of your tasks, deadlines can be especially challenging. When you have a plethora of different deadlines looming over your project, it can be easy to forget about them all or feel overwhelmed by the task of keeping track of them all. In order to get the most out of your software development project, you need to learn how to manage deadlines. Keeping on top of your project tasks and deadlines is essential to staying productive and achieving your overall goal.

Time is of the essence in software development. The sooner you can get your project tasks done, the sooner you can start working on your next project. Fortunately, it doesn’t need to be that difficult. In this blog post, we’ll share with you some of the most effective ways to maintain productivity with the ActivityTimeline resource planning plugin and stay on top of your project deadlines. If you’re not sure how to maintain productivity, check out these 12 productivity tips.

1. Set SMART Goals for Jira Projects

SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. With project deadlines looming over your head, it can be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. That’s why it’s critical to set your goals with the right level of specificity. Being specific doesn’t mean setting a goal that’s too broad or vague. Setting goals that are too broad aren’t effective, so setting a goal that’s too specific isn’t effective either. Find a happy medium that’s specific enough to get your project done, but not so specific that it becomes an impossible task. If you’re not sure how to be more specific with your goals, take a look at these tips from Atlassian.

2. Plan your Projects Beforehand

From time to time, everyone can have a hard time dealing with tasks. Planning your projects beforehand means figuring out the details of each task, like who will do what, and when they’ll do it. By including these details upfront, you can avoid having to change your plans along the way because of unknown factors. Investing time up front to plan your projects and tasks will save you time in the long run. Not only will it save you time and energy, but it will also help you stay organized. With an organized workspace, you’ll be able to save yourself from all the stress that comes from being overworked and overwhelmed.

For more effective work ActivityTimeline plugin for Jira will be very useful for creating a Project Team.

3. Estimate your Tasks

How much do you expect each task will take? By estimating yor tasks, you’ll avoid having to change your plans along the way because of unknown factors or unforeseen circumstances. Estimating your tasks will help you stay on track, avoid delays, and avoid overspending. It will also help you avoid the feeling of being overwhelmed, and it will help you to get everything done on time. If you’re not sure how to estimate your tasks, check out these tips.

4. Split up Tasks

With so many deadlines and so much work to do, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and lose sight of the big picture. When you split up your projects into smaller tasks, you’ll be able to stay organized, focused, and on track. Splitting up your tasks will help you stay organized and avoid feeling overwhelmed. It will also help you avoid the feeling of being overworked and it will also help you to get everything done on time. Jira doesn’t have such a feature at the time but using ActivityTimeline will help you with it.

You can create sub-tasks directly in the backlog panel if there is Epic in it or the ticket had sub-tasks already. And on a timeline dashboard, you can split task into two or more pieces and assign them on different dates or on a different user.

5. Track the Progress of Your Project

Keeping track of your projects may seem like a huge hassle, but it can actually save you time and money in the long run. By using a project tracker, you can stay organized, focused, and on track. You can also avoid the feeling of being overwhelmed and it will also help you to get everything done on time. You can track overdue tickets and project deadlines. A great way to track a project’s progress in Jira is Timesheets of ActivityTimeline. You can see estimated hours and logged hours, progress in percent, and approved hours by selecting the required team and project.

To know if all your tasks in a project are on track you can check it out with ActivityTimeline in two ways. Track an overdue ticket:

• on Milestones panel:

• on Overdue tickets pop-up:

On the overdue tickets pop-up, you can track the number of overdue tickets, and the number of overdue days, and drag’n’drop the ticket for a new schedule.

To fix the overdue tickets follow the steps:

1. Go to Filters tab> Schedule and select Overdue Tickets
   Or select a ticket on the Dashboard or overdue ticker pop-up.
2. Drag and drop the tickets to the proper period of time.
   → The tickets are rescheduled and are no longer appearing in red color.

6. Set More Specific Deadlines

Setting more specific deadlines can be challenging, especially when you’re dealing with multiple deadlines. With deadlines that are too loose, you’re more likely to skimp on the work or let it slide. If a project deadline is too loose, it’s likely that you’ll change your plans or push the work off until the deadline is a little closer. If a deadline is set too far in the future, it’s going to be difficult to maintain focus on your work. A deadline that’s too far in the future is likely to become unrealistic and cause you stress. How can you reduce the stress of completing a project in time? A resource planning tool is a great option here. You can see the whole process in one place and be aware of all processes and changes in it.

7. Use a Software to Stay Organized

Organizing your projects and tasks helps to keep you organized and on track. With a tool like Jira and ActivityTimeline, you can stay organized and focused. Here is one particular field you need for overdue tickets – the due date.

The overdue or expired ticket is a task that has not been completed by the needed moment.

One trick that helps do not miss a deadline in daily work with ActivityTimeline. The fear of missing out something important makes you schedule several notifications on your cell phone, to stick stickers out on your laptop or ask a colleague to remind you about your task. Anyway, you can turn off your notification, didn’t notice your sticker and your colleague can forget about your task as well.

One trick that helps do not miss a deadline in a daily work with ActivityTimeline:

1. Choose a task: Click on a task -> Schedule;
   2. Set a due date as a deadline: Due -> Change.

Title of tickets with due dates became bold.

Overdue ticket:

• An overdue ticket shows up as a number next to each person’s name
• The task title changes color to red

There are three main categories on the tickets that are considered overdue:

1. Tickets that have Due Date missed
2. Tickets that are open and not resolved yet, but that were scheduled in the past (last week/month/year etc.)
3. Tickets that were scheduled after the due date

8. Find out What’s Keeping You from Completing Your Goals

While it can be helpful to set deadlines and projects with the end goal of shipping software, it’s also important to remember that every project has a beginning and an end. That means you’ll need to keep an eye on your goals from the beginning until they’re fulfilled. If one goal is keeping you from completing others, you’ll need to find out what’s keeping you from completing your other goals. When you’re not sure why one goal is taking longer than expected, you can use Goal Management to find out what’s holding you back and what you can do to improve. Goal Management can help you find out what’s holding you back from completing your projects, as well as what you can do to improve. With Goal Management, you can track your goals, set more specific deadlines, and find out what’s keeping you from completing your projects on time.

9. Prioritize Your Tasks Based on Their Importance

Projects can feel overwhelming when there are so many deadlines and tasks. To avoid feeling overwhelmed, you can use the Eisenhower Matrix to organize your projects based on their importance. The Eisenhower matrix is a method for sorting projects based on their importance. It’s a way to prioritize your projects and make sure that you’re not overloading yourself with work.

10. Don’t Check Your Email before Dinner

While it’s important to stay on top of your project deadlines, it’s also important to stay away from checking your email before dinner. When you check your email before dinner, you’re only setting yourself up for failure. You’re going to check your email because you didn’t check your tasks and deadlines before they were due. By checking your email before dinner, you’re only going to be disappointed. With your evenings full of family time, you’re not going to be able to do your projects right. Instead of checking your email before dinner, use your evenings to complete your tasks and check your deadlines.

A great way to see all emails in one compact digest – it’s the Email Notification Digest plugin.

11. Celebrate Milestones

Maintaining productivity and staying on top of your projects can be challenging. That’s why it’s so important to celebrate when things go well, as well as when you meet your project deadlines. Celebrating your milestones as soon as they happen can motivate you to keep up the good work. It can also help you stay on track, avoid feeling overwhelmed and avoid being negatively affected by setbacks. If you’re not sure how to set milestones in Jira, consider this article – Three ways to track your Milestones in Jira.

Conclusion

Projects are rarely easy, but they don’t need to be overwhelming. By using the tips provided in this post, you can stay on top of your deadlines and projects and feel more confident in your work with such a big system as Jira. With the help of ActivityTimeline, you’ll be able to stay productive and on track.

To know more about ActivityTimeline useful features a Demo or try a trial version.