Best way to work in Jira Software projects for teams and cross-functional teams

[Justine]

Hello,

I work in a smaller non-profit healthcare organization IT department and the way we currently use Jira is this:

• Projects based on teams and/or applications (mostly scrum projects as we work in two week sprints)
• Boards based on teams, and/or projects but also have a main sprint board that pulls everything in as many of our resources work cross-functionally and need one view to manage their work
• Epics are equal to a project and these are created within the Jira Software project that makes the most sense, usually based on what team the project lead belongs to

We will be migrating to the Cloud in just a few months and are assessing our current processes to see if there is anywhere we can streamline things and/or simply.

One of my co-workers mentioned that best practice for Jira Software is to create a new project every time there is a new project started and then archive it when the project is completed. So, with that theory, we'd create a new Jira Software project which may house only one or several Epics (projects) and then it'd be archived when the project or initiative is complete. My issue with this or question I guess is, how would you then have one board or view that pulls in everything for the active sprint? Right now our board is pulling based on a filter that identifies our Jira Software projects, but if we are constantly creating new Jira Software projects and archiving them, wouldn't we have to constantly be updating that filter also? How are other organizations using Jira to manage work? Is there a best practice? 

Any thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated. 

[Logi Helgu]

Personally I would consider thinking of your JIRA projects as the theme/category and then the Releases of that project as something you close off.

But I am guessing that the projects are related or in a similar "theme" and the previous work is "connected"...if not, then a new projects might be the way to go :)

But there are many ways of getting things done ;)

[Judd Garratt - Path of Trees]

Hi Justine,

Moving to Cloud is a great moment to smooth out the way Jira is being used (both high level, like how projects are organised, and also low level, like cleaning up custom fields). Kudos to you for taking a moment to focus on this!

I've seen Jira used at both small and large scale and my strong suggestion is to organise around long-lived Jira projects. Working out of long-lived projects is good from a work tracking perspective (as you mention), a report generation perspective and a Jira site performance perspective (cutting down on extraneous fields/workflows/schemes that slow Jira down).

If you use things in the Cloud like automation, Advanced Roadmaps or code/deployments integration, long-lived Jira projects also make this exponentially easier to setup and manage.

Happy to share more if helpful :)

[Justine]

That's awesome to hear Judd - thank you so much for your response. We are definitely taking time to streamline out our workflows, clean up unused fields and things as much as possible. It sounds like the way we are using Jira Software projects is the way to go then long-term for an easier to manage instance and things like Plans. I didn't even think of the site performance issue with additional schemes and things if we went the other way so thank you for that important perspective also. 

[Rimantas Andrulevičius]

Hey, I think this answer will help you: 

"I always recommend thinking about the team experience first and working outward because those outside the team care about their efficiency first and foremost so adding overhead is counterintuitive. 

This is my go to configuration:

• Each team has its own project to be able to tactically work without interruption
  • Every instance where I've seen multiple teams sharing the same project with multiple boards has led to agony in some way (backlog blackholes, inconsistency in how you represent cross-team activity in AR, etc.)
• Departmental objectives are captured in a centralized project and configured as an issue type above the Epic in the hierarchy
  • This is done so that you can add easier control who has the ability to manage these issues"

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/JIRA-Project-Vs-Teams-Best-Practices/qaq-p/2280461

Other similar discussions here:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Jira-Project-As-a-Program-Only-Initiatives-gt-Epics/qaq-p/1922426

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Advanced-planning-questions/Create-a-separate-Project-for-Initiatives-or-Not-What-are-the/qaq-p/1217925