Advise needed for Jira ServiceDesk

[Wolff]

I have a question as im trying Jira ServiceDesk to see if we could use it for multiple usage.

Knowledge Before the question

* We are a company with different customers and different agreements (SLA / Budget).

* We have Support Tickets, Business Projects (Small and Big) 

* We have Budget and Hour registration + invoicing ( Fixed, Retainers, non-fixed) 

* Our Product Dev team is already using Jira Software 

Question

If we as Project Managers are going to start using Jira and Jira Service Desk who do we use it: 

1) Jira Service Desk for all our customers or separate Jira Service Desk per client? 
(To create tickets and projects) 

2) Per new project do we create a new project in Jira or is it better to create a Issue Type called Project? 
(To create tickets and projects separate)

[Hernan Halabi - Elite IT Consulting Group]

hello @Wolff welcome to the community.

Most likely you can use a single service desk project for all your customers since they don't see each other.  I suppose there they submit their support tickets and ask for new projects that you will identify them as big or small.

The projects might end being a new Jira project or maybe epics within a project or just a simple ticket with project as issue type (don't like the name of it because it will cause confusion).

What does it depends on? The level of traceability of all the tasks that each project imply and the visibility of the project internally as a start.

Can't go any more specific without further information about how the team works and your expectations with the tool.

[Wolff]

Thanks for the quick reply,

1) So 1 ServiceDesk for all our clients should be fine. - ok cool. 
That could work! 

2) Yes they submit tickets and new project requests; 

Our definition of Projects
Work of multiple tasks > 8hrs of work or though multiple departments 

Now we work like this; If Client does new project request that is < then 8 hours we create a Ticket ? 

You suggest:  Projects > 8 hours with multiple tasks and departments will be a Epic within Jira Servicedesk? 

[Hernan Halabi - Elite IT Consulting Group]

I would setup the following. One software project per customer, an epic where I would add projects with less than 8 hours of work and one epic per project with more than 8 hours of work.

Then with some automation in the backend, keep the status of the service desk ticket in sync with the status of the main ticket created on the software project.

This could work assuming that the teams can see everything and it will be based on who has the ticket assigned. There are ways to make this more complex to cover more scenarios but I suggest you try to keep it simple. There is always time to make it complex afterwards.

BTW, I would suggest you use classic projects rather than next gen. It will give you more flexibility in the future

[Wolff]

Thanks again.

So a Software Project per customer that could work for us.
But why you not suggest Jira Core Business projects? 

And if we will use Software Projects  one Epic with more sub stories (other projects)? 
not create One Epic per project? 

We need to measure who many hours that are booked on each project.
That incl subtasks. (regarding invoicing) 

[Hernan Halabi - Elite IT Consulting Group]

Software projects board are more flexible than core ones and will be useful to see and plan within the epics.

In my mind the epic for big projects has several stories/tasks related to it all within it. For the small projects epic, I would expect one single story per project.

For time tracking you could check tempo timesheets and tempo planning for resources allocation.