Groups are a common way of managing users in any information system. A group represents a collection of users, usually based on their positions and responsibilities within the organization. In JIRA, groups provide an effective way to apply configuration settings to users, such as permissions and notifications.

Groups are global in JIRA, which is something that should not be confused with project roles (discussed later). This means if you belong to the jira-administrators group, then you will always be in that group regardless of which project you are accessing. You will see in later sections how this is different from project roles and their significance.