Technical Updates - teknospire

How Cloud Computing is helping FinTech Firms in being #GloballyCompliant

Samiksha Seth / 31/05/2017

Compliance and Technology One of my colleague who is a dire fan of #cashless and #Digitization, while packing his bags asked me – Will I be able to pay with Amazon Pay during my onsite visit to Germany? You should be, they have their operations in Germany. But your account is in INR so maybe that needs to be changed to EURO? Then his next question was – The fintech firms in a country how do they manage cross country compliance? Even I wasn’t sure and assuring him to provide him with an answer before his landing, I started exploring, and the result is this blog post – Are the #Compliance Standards same for all firms dealing with Money ? Not really! All entities dealing with payments and money matters, need to follow standards from PCI [Payment Card Industry] or ISO [International Organization for Standardization]. While PCI is a mandatory for plastic cards issuer’s ISO is voluntary. Here are some of the key differences worth noting –. Parameter ISO PSI Compliance Voluntary Mandated Scope Firm Level Process Level Flexibility Offered High low Depth of Compliance Voluntarily Standards Must meet all the standards What are the Specific Standards Followed by Financial institutions ? PCI and ISO both have a set of regulations to be followed by firms concerning information security management. Specifically, for money matters PCI DSS, ISO 27001 and ISO 20022 are adopted and followed. Although the goal is the same, the method differs in the way to protect and control customer data. Both need audits and regular checks to show compliance readiness with these standards. A big similarity that exists is one could use PCI DSS as a part of becoming ISO 27001 compliant. Let’s take a closer look at the specific compliances standards – PCI DSS Any merchant or service provider that handles, processes, stores or transmits credit card data. ISO 27001 ISO 27001 has been developed to “provide a model for establishing, implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, maintaining and improving an information security management system.” Many organizations have implemented the standard(s) without going for the certification – one obvious example is banks and other financial institutions. Regulations in most countries are such that they had to implement very strict information security and business continuity procedures and safeguards, and most did that that using ISO 27001. ISO 20022 Most financial institutions that want to streamline their communication infrastructure and associated costs by opting for a single, common “language” for all financial communications, whatever the business domain, the communication network and the counterparty (other financial institutions, clients, suppliers and market infrastructures). ISO 20022 – Universal financial industry message scheme (which used to be also called “UNIFI”) is the international standard that defines the ISO platform for the development of financial message standards. Now we know the standards followed by different entities depending on whether they store the customer data or just use it for processing using a third-party API or need to use it for online transactions. But how these compliances are followed in different countries? Or Traditional Banks had a set of regulation and compliance to be followed, with fintech firms evolving signing customers at the global level, even compliance methods need to meet the current requirement. Let’s take an example of Digital Payments, in India Cashless Payments increased by 22% in 2016 but has the compliance seen that growth? Compliance standards need to be automated with the help of technology to meet the needs of modern customers. One of the technology keen on helping Fintech firm is Cloud Computing! Thanks to cloud computing that Payment Banks, Financial Institutions and NBFC’s are expanding their horizons and going global! How FinTech Firms are utilizing RegTech with Cloud Computing ? Image Credit – Thomson Reuters RegTech [or an amalgamation of Regulation +Technology] is the new buzzword to address the regulatory requirements and comes with exciting feature like – Speed Automated Seamless Integration with technologies like Analytics, Big Data, etc. Many of the RegTech firms like London-based FundApps or Vizor in their design feature have considered Cloud based solutions. Using cloud computing loads these solutions with advantages like remote maintenance, cost effective, flexible in data sharing, secured and scalable. A cloud architecture is comprising of virtual routers and firewalls, multi-redundant environments could help in creating an enhanced setup for disaster recovery scenarios. Cloud computing could assist in automating the audits and check process thereby allowing Fintech engineers to work on product enhancement. Cloud set up helps in offering solutions at a global level providing access to data 24*7*365. Cloud computing allows you to keep up the performance even during those peak hours or end of month queues, by giving access to high-performance servers and data storage. Cloud helps in making the production cycle continuously thereby reducing time-to-market of a product/solution. Most of the Cloud based solution are now one-click solutions that could also be accessed via a smartphone. Financial Institutions and regulations had been two faces of the same coin, with banking that has moved out to other entities even regulation need to venture out. Thanks to technologies that compliance is still maintained and customer data are secured and protected. References: PCI vs. ISO Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard – Wikipidea Who Needs to be PCI Compliant? 12 Reasons why you should be considering ISO27001 ISO 27001/ISO 22301 Knowledge base ISO 20022 Universal financial industry message scheme

Agency Banking and Bitcoin

wordpress-user / 24/05/2017

#An Agency banking stand Pic courtesy:Teknospire Emerging markets are witnessing the rise of two banking forms that cater to its unbanked segment: Agency Banking and Bitcoins. For persons not belonging to the banking and the tech fraternity, these words are nothing but Greek and Latin. Questions like What do they mean? Are they the same? pop up in their minds whenever they come across these terms. To help this fraternity understand these terms better here are the answers to some FAQs. What do Agency Banking and Bitcoin mean ? Agency Banking can be explained as retail or postal outlet contracted by the financial institution or a mobile network operator to process client transactions. While Bitcoin is a Cryptocurrency and electronic payment system. In other words, it is a decentralized digital currency. #Bitcoin Image Pic courtesy: Google Is Agency banking and Bitcoin different from each other ? Though both cater to the unbanked segment in the emerging markets yet they are different from other. How are they different ? The below points differentiate them from each. Basis Agency Banking Bitcoin Ownership Agency is owned by a particular person contracted from a financial institution. It is an electronic value transfer network owned by no one. Transaction happening Agent Transactions takes place on centralized ledger on a central server. Bitcoin transaction takes place on decentralized ledger on a distributed network. Identity Sharing A Customer and the agents need to share their identity Identity sharing not required for bitcoin users Transaction Viewing Third party cannot view customer’s transaction Third party can view customer transactions on the Bitcoin public ledger System downtime System downtime is not uncommon System downtime is rare. Bitcoins are transferred by scanning a QR code. Technology basis It is the backbone of mobile banking. Agents make use of cellular networks combining SMS and USSD functions. Distributed network layer on top of the internet is the basis for Bitcoin. Geographical limitation Agents are available in geographical locations where the financial institution is present. Bitcoins work globally Currency exchange model Uses physical exchange model Uses online exchange models such as online centralized and decentralized exchanges, P2P exchanges Regulated by The central authority. Agents need to meet certain requirements before they are given the agency No one. Bitcoin being a digital currency no requirements need to be met for holding them. Currency Valuation Agents deal in local currency which is inflationary by nature. Bitcoin is a global currency and is deflationary. Security Customers and agents are vulnerable to thefts and frauds. Users are more secured. Agent commission Agents get a certain %of the transaction value as commission Users need not pay any commission Transaction limit Agents have per day per transaction limit.For large amounts, customer needs to visit banks Large amounts can be transferred. Transactions history More than 6 months statement is physically provided and is chargeable. More than 6 months statement can be viewed online. Does Agency Banking and Bitcoin enrich the Banking Experience ? The bank has come to the unbanked in the form of agency banking and bitcoin. They can walk up to the agent or do the transaction from home using bitcoins and not go all the way to the bank. Both enrich the banking experience as they complement each other. Their best benefits are derived when used together. Bitcoins fill the void where agency banking falls short. Such as online transactions and cross- border transactions. Will Agency banking converge into mainstream banking ? At present, the services provided by both are enough to meet the needs of the unbanked. However newer customer requirements such as : loan requirements Instant loan transfers More than 6 months transaction statement Higher transaction limit Would require banks to empower agent bankers with more facilities. Empowering the agent bankers with solutions that would cater to above customers needs can help agency banking converging into mainstream banking later. Teknospire’s Finx- Agency &Payment Banking suite is a solution that agent bankers can be empowered with. With this blog answering the FAQS our next blog would throw light on “How Teknospire can help agency banking converge into mainstream banking ? References: 10 differences between Mpesa and Bitcoin Bitcoin vs. Electronic Money: Digital But Different Banking agent – Wikipidea

FinTech Products Market Survey, Technical Updates

Data and Analytics are Ruling the Fintech World

Samiksha Seth / 17/05/2017

Data is no longer measured in terabytes (a thousand gigabytes) but in zettabytes (a billion terabytes). Data is lifeless unless you have a tool to analyze and visualize it! In simple terms, an Analytical tool could prove to be a drop of water to barren unstructured, raw amorphous data. Visualize a rural village equipped with #AgentBanking, as the #Fintech #Agent visits his customer with a smartphone and shows a bar chart about his spending’s, the interest he earned on his savings and the liabilities he owns. He then moves to next graph that lets him visualize how much each month he needs to save to afford his child’s higher education and new farming equipment. Or how about an #HealthTech tool that conveys the #Rural customer from where he can buy low price medicines and how much he can save! Welcome to the world of Analytics! How much #Fintech firms are spending on analytical tools ? IDC predicts that the Analytics and Big Data market is expected to continue at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.7% through 2020. Another study by Accenture indicates that globally 71 percent of firms are exploring Big Data and predictive analytics. Over half (54 percent) of firms in the industry have appointed a chief data officer How is #Analytics Helping #Fintech Firms and Banks ? Structuring the raw data and putting it in fancy graphs or pictures could be more appealing than going through an excel for a customer. That’s one of driving factors for Banks or Fintech firms to adopt to analytical tool. Some of the other reasons being – Acquiring New Customer – With Traditional methods like #AgentBanking connected with the #Digital world, banking-as-a-service [BaaS] is offered to many remote places, allowing banks to get new clients. Know Your Score – Interconnection of liabilities, assets, and earnings depicts a clear picture of an individual’s credit score, thereby helping banks in making an informed decision. Loyalty Programs – Every time you pay the bill via particular card, it adds some points to your rewards that could either be used to get a gift or could also be converted to cash, making customers loyal to you. Streamlines Investment Options – With options like Robo-advisors individuals could work out on their financial planning without external help, analytics help people to realign their financial goals and manage risk for the financial portfolio. How @Teknospire We are Using #Analytics to Help Our Customers Our Analytics and Business Intelligence solutions would empower Agents, Fintech firms, and Banks in making an informed decision and strike out inefficiencies. Our solution @Teknospire comes with the benefits of collecting the data, visualizing, collaborating and ability to share with the different stakeholders. Let’s take a sneak peek – Discover In need of some critical data points, let the Discover tab help you. Just type in the search criteria and hit the button, all the data points for that range would be on your screen within seconds. Just for example when we queried for Agents, their commission and other fields here is what we received . The visualization could be extended to know :- How many Agents are deployed in a area To create a gender base equality – know what is the ratio of male:female agents in a particular area What are the statistics for an area in terms of revenue earned Visualize Create the visualization pattern that you wish for- select from wide range of charts, feed the data set pick the order and color codes, and you are all set for a vibrant visualization. Dashboard As the user logins into the Analytics tool, he would land by default on Dashboard Page, the dashboard page displays the different data set combination pre-defined by a user. Just for example, if the firm is keen to know the Transactions Status over a period, he could set a filter in Visualize tab with the kind of chart, parameters for X and Y axis and the order of display and save it. And what you see on Dashboard is a colorful bar chart displaying the transaction status. Dev Tools and Management Tab Dev tools are for individuals who would like to customize their visualization. A user could use the Console to query for relevant data and produce the results in a lively format. Management tab provides the user with tweaking in the advanced options or indexing the pattern; you could also save or delete your objects. Based on various roles like Admin, Agent, Customer or Firm access rights of the dashboard could be controlled. A user can be restricted or full access be granted for a dashboard. Data, the backbone of any firm, is playing a crucial role in aligning the business goals to profit margins. Many have already made the transition and reaping benefits out of it. Have you? References: Analytics, ML and Data Science Help FinTech Offer Better Services Cutting through the noise around financial technology Banks lead big data analytics spend through 2020 After Accenture Next Generation Financial.pdf Data Analytics Critical to Success in Banking

Technical Updates

Is Enterprise System on Cloud Secure ?

wordpress-user / 05/04/2017

What is Cloud Computing? In Cloud Computing, the word cloud is used to refer to the internet, so the phrase cloud computing means a type of internet based computing where different service such as servers, storage, applications are delivered to an organisation through an internet.Cloud computing allows an organisation to create, configure and customise the business applications through an internet. There are many things that can be done using cloud computing. Below is the list to name a few:- Create new applications and services Store, backup and recovery data. Hosting blogs and websites. Deliver software on demand. Cloud computing services mainly fall into three categories : Infrastructure-as-a-service(IaaS):- IaaS offers the computing infrastructure such as servers, virtual machines, operating systems, storage on a rental basis. From security viewpoint mostly on physical security, aspects are offered from cloud service provider. Platform-as-a-service(PaaS): PaaS provides a platform that has an operating system, programming language execution environment, web server and database. The infrastructure is provided for a quick development and deployment of the application. From the security point of view physical and connectivity aspects are offered from cloud service provider as options. Software-as-a-service(SaaS):- In SaaS, the software application is hosted and managed by the cloud provider and the maintenance and security aspects are handled by the cloud provider. There is no rule on which of these categories are best suitable for an organisation to refer during decision making. This is because there are multiple parameters of technology, expertise, resource, cost, ROI, availability option, growth plan, roadmap which will also influence in decision making. What is Cloud security? Cloud security or cloud computing security is a set of technologies and policies designed to protect the data and application and the infrastructure related to cloud computing use.Cloud security provides measures to protect the critical information from theft, data leakage and deletion. Security measures taken on cloud To make a cloud secure, various security controls are used by the cloud provider to safeguard any weakness in the system and revert any attack. The various security measures taken to secure the cloud, in general, are as below:- Identity Management :- In order to control the access of information and resources, the cloud provider either integrates the enterprise identity management system or it provides with one of its own. AWS, for instance, provides its users with IAM(Identity And Access Management) through which different users can be granted different access to different resources. Physical Security :- Securing the hardware, network, servers against any unauthorised access that could cause serious loss to an enterprise. The physical security also includes protection from, flood, fire, burglary and theft. Data Security :- Maintaining control over the data paramount to cloud success. With virtualization and cloud, the data physically resides in the infrastructure owned by the cloud provider. Some of the measures that are required to secure the data are. Data Confidentiality:- Confidential data is considered to be sensitive where the objective is to limit the data access to those who are authorised to view it. The data owners expect to utilise all the data services such as data search, computation and modification without any leakage. Data Access Controllability:- Access Control means the data owner has the complete control over the data placed on cloud and the data owner can restrict or grant selective permissions to the data users. The data owner is able to enforce fine-grained access control over the data users. Data Integrity:- The data in the cloud should be stored correctly and no one is able to change, modify or delete the data illegally without having the authorization access. There should be no corruption or loss of data and if there is any, the data owner should be able to retrieve it. Data encryption is the technique used to protect specification of data, in spite of access to data and towards integrity protection. There are several encryption techniques that are being used by the cloud providers in order to secure the data such as- Homomorphic Encryption:- Homomorphic encryption is the kind of encryption that ensures computations and algebraic operation on the encrypted data without decrypting it, hence providing the data confidentiality. Searchable Encryption:- The searchable encryption scheme is a technique that allows the search of specific information in an encrypted content. Searchable encryption generally builds keyword indexes to securely perform the user search queries. Attribute-based Encryption(ABE):- ABE is a public-key encryption in which the secret key of a user depends on certain attributes such as Country of the user. In this type of encryption, the decryption of cypher text is only possible if the user matches the attributes of the cypher text. These are few samples of encryption technique. There are many more encryption mechanisms which are new and evolved over the years. At Teknospire, For security we use various security measures provided by the cloud provider, below are a few:- Security groups:- It act as a firewall to the cloud instance and control the traffic that is outbound and inbound at the instance level. Network ACLs(Access Control Lists):- It act as a firewall and control the inbound and outbound traffice at the subnet level. User Access Control:- To control the access of any user, the Identity and Access Management(IAM) is used to allow the user the access to resources and services. A user can be granted limited or full access to the use of resources. Enterprise Deployment on Cloud The deployment on a cloud can be done in Four different models.The deployment model to be chosen depending on the requirements of an organization. The Four Deployment models are discussed below:- Private Cloud Deployment:- The private cloud also called as the internal cloud; is provisioned for the exclusive use by a single organisation. Private cloud is often chosen by the organisation that already owns a data centre and developed IT infrastructure and has particular needs around security and performance. Public Cloud Deployment:- The public cloud deployment represents the true cloud hosting. In this model, cloud services and infrastructure is provided to various

Technical Updates

Open Source Tools for Automation Testing @Teknospire

Samiksha Seth / 15/03/2017

Worldwide Software Testing Practices Report for 2015–2016 has predicted that QA would grow by 40 percent in 2017. The same report also highlighted that Test automation has become widespread in the market, with 72% adoption. Although with technology like Cloud, IoTs, and Mobile Apps, there had been new challenges, intelligence-led QA, and testing had been and would be the demanding trend in 2016 and 2017. @Teknospire we aim to use the latest technology to be adaptive to the trends so that we provide our customers with world-class services and apps. With the same motive our QA team @ Teknospire has been working with Open Source Automation Tools like Eclipse, Selenium WebDriver, TestNG, Maven and Jenkins and this post will talk about them and how they are making a difference in delivering a Quality Product to the customer. Eclipse What is Eclipse Tool? A tool to develop Java applications and maintain the Java development environment. However, with the use of other plugins its use could also be extended to generate ABAP, C, C++, COBOL, NATURAL, PHP, etc. Who uses Eclipse Tool? Used by JAVA Developers When To Use Eclipse Tool? If you Are building a Java software/application Need a tool that could be integrated easily with other interfaces Need an optimum “time-to-market” parameter coupled with the latest technology Need efficiency and agility in coding techniques Are looking for testing at any phase of development Need tools for simplified refactoring Then Eclipse is for YOU! Eclipse @Teknospire We are using the tool to develop our different product offerings in FinTech and HealthTech sectors. It has helped us – As a brilliant Debugging tool With its excellent navigation capability, helped us in saving time and exploring the right definition/method. As it is an open source and independent of operating platform, have helped us in developing products that could be used on any OS or mobile applications Selenium WebDriver What is Selenium Webdriver? It is a tool for automating web application testing, and to verify that they work as expected. It aims to provide a friendly API that’s easy to explore and understand and help to make your tests easier to read and maintain. Who uses Selenium Webdriver? Used by Testers and QA Team When To Use Selenium Webdriver? If you are – Looking for seamless interaction with different browsers Need support for various programming languages like Ruby, Python, C#, Java In Need of Keyword driven framework Then Selenium Webdriver is a tool for you! Selenium Webdriver @Teknospire With our different product offerings in FinTech and HealthTech sector, it is crucial for us to check the quality of the offerings on various browsers and Selenium Webdriver helps us in achieving it. The key features that assist us in our test execution is – It direct calls the web browser and executes the test, making a possibility of a standalone client. With its Object oriented framework, it just depends on the browser and OS compatibility and does not seek the support of any other entity and also offers speedy executions. It supports very less CPU and RAM consumption for script execution. It can be integrated with MAVEN kind of framework for source code compilation. It can be integrated with TestNG testing framework for testing our applications and generating reports. It can be integrated with Jenkins for continuous integration and other open source tools for supporting other feathers. TestNG What is TestNG? TestNG is a testing framework designed to simplify a broad range of testing needs, from unit testing (testing a class in isolation of the others) to integration testing (entire testing systems made of several classes, several packages and even several external frameworks, such as application servers) Who uses TestNG? Used by Testers and QA Team When To Use TestNG? If you are looking for – Using a Tool along with Webdriver Parallel test executions Grouping of test cases Data Parametrizations Log and report generations Then TestNG is for you! TestNG @Teknospire With a demand to lessen the “Time-to-market” parameter and providing quick releases it is important to group the test cases or ability to do parallel execution and TestNG has helped us to achieve it. The HTML report created serves handily to be later used by developers for debugging in case of failure. Annotations helps to set program or function priority easy. MAVEN What is MAVEN? Maven is a build automation tool used primarily for Java projects. Maven addresses two aspects of building software: first, it describes how software is developed, and second, it describes its dependencies. Who uses MAVEN? Primarily used by Testers, QA Team and Build Team When To Use MAVEN? If you need – Standard Directory Structure To sort out package dependencies Good plugins support for documentation, code generation or project management Smooth Execution of test cycles and Integration Testing To build artifacts with no prerequisites MAVEN @Teknospire MAVEN has enhanced our productivity with its robust build that comes along with dependencies. With MAVEN serving as a Debugging and collaboration tool with its easy access to source code and Javadoc. It also helps us in getting rid of duplicates with its Project Object Model [POM] hierarchy. JENKINS What is JENKINS? Jenkins is a cross-platform, continuous integration and continuous delivery application that could increase your productivity. With continuous it means every time someone pushes a new code, a new build is ready to be deployed and tested. Who uses JENKINS? Used by developers, testers, QA team and build team When To Use JENKINS? If you are looking for – Tracking issues and bugs at an early stage of development Need to win on the “time-to-market” parameter An open source tool with user-friendly GUI A tool that has support for different plugins Is compatible with various environments Proper documentations and community help to sort out any technical issues Then JENKINS is for you! JENKINS @Teknospire We are using JENKINS to support our continuous quality improvement check, with every new code pumped in, we get a daily build, and it is deployed in

Technical Updates

How Selenium Automation Testing is assuring the Solutions @Teknospire are Quality Checked

Samiksha Seth / 01/03/2017

Time and again it has been proven – An issue caught in the later stages of an SDLC costs a firm a lot! Whenever it comes to cost cutting and as a response to tight timelines testing is one thing that gets eliminated from many SDLC. However, @Teknospire we believe in delivering only quality to our clients! That’s one of the reasons that testing is an integral part of our SDLC. We have a robust testing framework that helps in automating our test suites and thereby reducing the time to market. Need to know how? Let’s dive in – Why @Teknospire we Chose Selenium Choosing “What’s Best” could be tough, but when you decide a product based on what are your requirements you could choose the best tool! That’s exactly how the team @Teknospire landed with Selenium. The team was looking for – An Open Source tool that has a support of multi-browser and offers community support for any technical glitches. A tool that does not depend on the Operating system and could support various software languages like C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, and others. A tool that allows seamless integration with build systems, development tools, and testing applications. A tool that helps in creating browser-based tests and lets users reuse the scripts and extend the automation framework to other test cases. A tool that enables rapid test development and could be extensively used for UI, Acceptance, and Regression test cases. A tool that could trigger the test execution to a remotely held device. A tool that permits to test a large set of steps in less time i.e. testing in volume. A tool that could also be used for Mobile web application automation on Android, iPhone, and Blackberry A tool that comes with multiple add-on features. A Day in testers life @Teknospire With Selenium As a tester/QA, we might have worked on login page [ user id/password fields submit button] test cases, so picking the same sample – First, the developer develops the code in Eclipse as the solutions offered @Teknospire are JAVA based, once the developer has checked in the code the code is plugged into MAVEN and JENKINS where MAVEN explores the code to find the dependencies, JENKINS provides the automated build that could be used by the testers. Then the build is fed to TestNG and Selenium tool where TestNG helps in unit testing,parallel testing and report generation; Selenium Webdriver is used for Functional Testing, and Regression Testing. Considering A login page would have around 15 test cases [including data validation ones] once the test cases are scripted it would be a matter of just half an hour that the 15 test cases could be executed and results are shared with the team. Plans @Teknospire For Quality Assurance To Our Clients Moving a step closer to deliver quality to our clients we would soon be upgrading to Selenium 3. Selenium 3 is stable, now comes With support for Firefox is via Mozilla’s Gecko driver With fixes for Maven Packaging Extends its support for Safari on MacOS via Apple’s Safari driver Has updated HTMLUnit Support for Edge provided by MS We might need to tweak in some of the projects, but upgrading to Selenium 3 would make our technology stronger. Selenium is a useful tool to enhance the quality of your web-testing, the tool allows the tester to extend the framework and modify the available code. It is an operative tool that could save a lot of time and could give you excellent ROI. We @Teknospire already using it for our benefits. How about you? References: Selenium – Part III: Advanced Features of Selenium Software Quality Assurance & Testing Stack Exchange Selenium2/Selenium Webdriver and its Features Introduction to Selenium Selenium (software)

Technical Updates

JIRA – How a simple tool could empower a techie’s life @Teknospire

Samiksha Seth / 15/11/2016

Early in 2006, it was already few years of JIRA launched when I got a chance to use JIRA, I was not very impressed by its interface and interactions, as there were already established tracking tools both commercial and open source variants. However, later when I revisited in 2012 that was a complete overhaul and new experience of matured system ! Since then I have been a great fan of JIRA tool, a must by every team to track their progress and issues. Don’t believe me? Then this post is just for you – What is JIRA?JIRA is a management tool that helps is tracking a project in its various stages like issues, requirements or bugs. For any type of project be it information technology or other domain. It’s crucial to plan, track, and release great product and JIRA helps in achieving that goal. JIRA is highly customizable and can be tailored to fit any workflow we need. JIRA is one of the prime solution from well known engineering support system from Atlassian. Adopted since 2002 by industry from Tier-1 giants to smallest start-ups across the globe.. Features of JIRA So, what JIRA capable of? Track Projects, engineering milestones, tasks, bugs or anything! Easily fitted for any team size ranging from 2 to 100s. Agile teams can stay focused on delivering iterative and incremental value, as fast as possible, with customizable scrum boards. Flexible kanban boards give your team full visibility into what’s next so you can continuously deliver maximum output in minimal cycle time Easy Integrations with various other applications means more power to JIRA and more efficient is team. 1000+ add ons, Install plug-and-play add-ons from The Atlassian Marketplace to extend JIRA Software to fit multiple use cases as readily extendible Connect JIRA Software to Bitbucket or GitHub and provide your team with end-to-end traceabiliy, from backlog to deployment Create custom workflows of any size that match the exact way your teams build, test, and release software. This allows you to track multiple, unrelated projects all within a single JIRA instance. Integrate JIRA Software with all of the tools that your team is already using by leveraging its robust set of APIs Teams have access to more than a dozen out-of-the-box reports with real-time, actionable insights into how their teams are performing sprint over sprint. Use JIRA Query Language (JQL) to create quick filters that allow you to see exactly what you need in a single click. Fully loaded with Disaster recovery, helps you in reaching out to data in case of emergencies. Evaluate your evelopment stage, unless you know where you are, you won’t be able to hit the deadline. Accessible through dedicated deployed module or cloud hosted as well for managing capex/Opex costs. Flexible incremental licensing model along with growth. Atlassian professional support with highest quality and participation to solve / support JIRA usage. Who Should Use JIRA? Ideally, it could be used by any of the firms of any team size. However, JIRA is considered to be the best management tool for teams following Agile methodology. However, if you are interested to know how many users currently use JIRA, here’s a snippet – Why JIRA ? Answer to these questions as YES/NO Are you looking for a modern yet simple to use tool? Are you looking for a tool that understands Agile and its terms? Are you looking for a tool that is compatible across various browsers? Are you looking for a tool that supports cloud deployment, on premises and Data Centre? Are you looking for a tool that supports seamless integrations to third party applications? Are you looking for a tool that supports out of box reporting? If you have answered a YES to all the questions above, JIRA is the answer! JIRA @TeknospireAt Teknospire JIRA is used as an Issue and Task Tracking Tool so it covers – issue tracking, reports, and task tracking. It helps us to see the progress of each task with an estimate on how much is yet to be achieved. Teknospire is a blogSmall bunch of enthusiast who are aiming to deliver quality software products to make it a delightful experience for the user. JIRA has in a way helped us a lot in delivering what we have promised. Within our team, once the task is created it is monitored on a daily basis, and if there are any issues/bugs with respect to the task, they are linked to the task and raised as bugs. It helps us in getting a clear picture of what is blocking our execution and how to get it moving. JIRA helps us in getting monthly reports on issue status. Having feature of voters and watchers list will help us in adding/removing people in a particular issue. It allows us to add screenshot or bug report which help us to understand where actually issue exist . JIRA is undoubtedly the market leader when it comes to Project Management tool. So are you ready to explore? References: JIRA Software is the #1 software development tool used by agile teams Build the new shape of IT Atlassian Documentation