Depending on how you are using JIRA, an issue can represent different things and can even look very different in the user interface. For example, in JIRA Core, an issue will represent a task and will look like this:
While in JIRA Software, if you are using the agile board, an issue can represent a story, or epic, and will resemble a card:
Despite all the differences in what an issue can represent and how it might look, there are a number of key aspects that are common for all issues in JIRA, as follows:
An issue must belong to a project.
It must have a type, otherwise known as an issue type, which indicates what the issue is representing.
It must have a summary. The summary acts like a one-line description of what the issue is about.
It must have a status. A status indicates where along the workflow the issue is at a given time. We will discuss workflows in Chapter 7, Workflows and Business Processes.
So in summary, an issue in JIRA represents a unit of work that can be...