Jira Image of the Day: Workflow Drawing Standards

[#1]

Concept Relates To

Application Type	Jira (Jira Work Management and Jira Software), Jira Service Management, Jira Core
Deployment Type	Jira Cloud, Jira Server, Jira Data Center

What is shown?

A standard method for presenting forward, backward, and alternate workflow transitions.

Visit: Admin > Work items > Workflow

What can we learn?

After you’re done adding all the needed statuses and transitions to your Jira workflow, look at the workflow in diagram mode. You’ll likely need to make some visual improvements. For example, you might need to reorder statuses, align statuses, and improve transition start and end points.

In diagram mode, click the “show transition labels” checkbox”. If the labels are hard to see, or covered up by other elements, you can move them.

You can draw workflow diagrams any way you’d like. But regardless of how you do it, it’s smart to develop a standard and stick to it. It makes diagrams easier for you and your users to decipher.

Here’s how I display and organize transition lines.

In a vertical diagram like the example, I like to draw all forward transitions down the middle of the statuses. These are highlighted in orange in the screenshot.

Then I place all backward transitions to the left of the diagram.

For alternate transitions like skips, I place those to the right.

Having a repeatable standard helps me as a Jira admin and I encourage you to develop your own that works for you and your users.

See Related

• Jira Image of the Day: Workflow Diagram Perfectionism

• Jira Image of the Day: Workflow Diagram Details

• Jira Image of the Day: Drawing Workflows Outside of Jira

---

Back to intro and image list

[James Rickards _SN_]

Nice, these are the same as the conventions that I've followed across the last 20 years I've been using the product.

I would also suggest avoiding "past tense" status such as "Approved" and generic "In Progress" statuses. Instead, use a name that indicates what action is required to get your work item closer to "done".  e.g. "Needs Quality Gate Approval", "Ready for Deployment".

I've also found that consistently prefixing the words "next step - xxx", "previous step - xxx", in the "happy case" transitions helps users to quickly identify which transition they need to select on the Status Change dropdown, especially if they are faced with a few choices to "skip ahead" or "skip back".

After adopting these two practices I've seen a reduction in the amount of training needed when onboarding new team members.

[Matt Doar _Adaptavist_]

Line up the statuses nicely and avoid crossing transition arrows are good reminders for myself