HomeAuthor InterviewsInterview with Patrick Li

Interview with Patrick Li

Patrick Li is the author of Jira 8 Essentials – 6th Edition; we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.

Q: What are your specialist tech areas?
Patrick: Cloud, Java, Atlassian

Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?
Patrick: I was an active member on the Atlassian user forums, helping people with the questions and challenges. I was doing that in my free time, out of passion and wishing to help the community. Packt reached out me one day and asked if I would be interested to write a book (the first book) about Jira. I think Packt found me via the forum as I was at the top of the leaderboard for Jira. I was very surprised and excited as writing a book was never something I thought I would do, so I immediately agreed. After that, the rest is history.

Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?
Patrick: For the initial book, I researched on what people (readers) would be interested in and looking for in the book, contents that will be useful. My time spent on the forum helped a lot with this, as from answering people’s questions, it provided me with valuable insight into what challenges people were facing using Jira. Also talking with other colleagues and people in the community, getting their thoughts and ideas were very helpful.

Overall, I would say I spent about a month doing research.

Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?
Patrick: Getting enough time has often been the biggest challenge during the writing process for me. A lot of times, unexpected things will happen, such as travels and work. I found that the best solution to this is to communicate and work with the team supporting me as much as possible. The Packt team has been excellent in the regard.

Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?
Patrick: In this latest book, we have an emphasis on the data center capabilities of Jira, which is the main focus of Atlassian Jira’s on-prem offering. Jira data center focuses more on scalability and performance, as well as other features enterprise customers will want. As for the future, I see the Cloud will be adopted more and more, as customers migrating off on-prem to the cloud.

Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?
Patrick: There are several Jira related books on the market. This latest book covers Jira Data Center (might be the only one at the moment), which is different from the others that are based on the now discontinued Jira Server product.

Q: What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?
Patrick: Data center is the solution for on-prem Jira deployments going forward, so you will need to migrate to that if you have not done so already. Most of the knowledge from Jira Server is transferable, but do pay attention to some of the changes.

Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?
Patrick: If we are talking about tech in general, I guess it will be to always try new things and see what interests you, as you will learn much faster if the tech is of interest to you. Also try to get involved in the community, as you get to learn many useful things from other people’s real-world experiences. Lastly, try to be hands on if possible, you will get a much better understanding learning the tech than just reading vendor documentations.

Q. Can you share any blogs, websites and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?
Patrick: I do not have a blog at the moment.

Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?
Patrick:
The Atlassian Jira Blog (https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software), and the community (https://community.atlassian.com) would be good places for information.

Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Patrick:
My experience with Packt so far has been very positive. I have written several books, and the experiences have been very enjoyable. There were definitely challenging times here and there, but I was able to work things out with the team, and the Packt team has been very supportive throughout the many writing processes. I would definitely recommend Packt to aspiring authors.

Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?
Patrick: Mostly user groups and communities.

Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?
Patrick: I do not have any particular favorite tech journals. I usually get my information in tech from many different sources, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, online communities, speaking with customers.

Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?
Patrick: Generally speaking, I leave my evenings and weekends to write books, and try to plan how much to write daily and/or weekly. While this does not always work out, but I have been able to get the time I need.

Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?
Patrick:
I find that having real world experiences from using the tech you are writing about is just as important as your knowledge about the tech, sometimes more important.

You can find Patrick‘s book on Amazon by following this link : Please click here

Jira 8 Essentials 6th Edition – Available on Amazon