What is the difference between an issue type and an issue type scheme use?

[Alan C]

I'm working through Jira Admin Foundations 2, and in one of the sections it mentions how Issue type Schemes are used to define what Issue Types are available in a project. 

Later in the section ,there is a question about configuring issue types for a Business project, and whether the Bug issue type that comes with Software project tempates can be used in the Business project. 

The answer is given as as yes, and states that any of the issue types configured on your Jira instance can be used for any project. 

My question is then, why use issue type schemes, if any issue types can be used with any project? 

[Milan Chheda [INFOSYSTA]]

Hello @Alan C ,

About Issue Type Scheme: 

An issue type scheme lets you:

• Set the available issue types for a project

• Set the default issue type and order of issue types when creating an issue

• Share the same group of issue types across multiple projects

As an example, you can set up an issue type scheme for your team of developers working in a software project. You can then add the bug and feature issue types to this scheme and apply it to any other projects that contain similar pieces of work.

Basically, an Issue Type scheme determines which Issue Types will be available to a project or set of projects.

And Issue Types are your types of issues that you are define based on the nature of work. It can be Task, Assignment, Epic, Story, Activity, Bug, etc. And you can club some them into an Issue Type Scheme and use it for certain type of projects. For example, a software project might require following issue types:

• Task
• Test
• Bug
• Feature

While a Business project might require:

• Objective
• Milestone
• Activity

So, different software projects can use the same above defined issue type scheme instead of every time selecting individual issue types.

Hope this helps and sorts out the confusion between Issue Types & Issue Type Schemes.

Thanks,
Milan