Looking for best practice for a Change Board type setup, to gain Exec sign off on large changes

[ezra bibby]

Our business has a really clunky excel based "change board" that is used to get exec approval on large pieces of work, new tools etc

Im looking to move into Jira and/or Confluence, and looking for ideas on best ways to setup

Approved work will flow into the Product team's normal Jira projects, but the "change board" approval meetings are with generally not Jira savvy execs, so it needs to be able to be presented in a way that they can consume it

Hi everyone! Our organization currently uses an old-school, clunky Excel spreadsheet to manage what we call our “change board.” This is where we track major business initiatives, new tool requests, and other large-scale projects that need executive sign-off before moving forward. While it has worked to some extent, it’s cumbersome, error-prone, and not very transparent.

I’m looking to modernize this process by leveraging Jira and/or Confluence—but I’m not entirely sure of the best way to structure it. Here’s our situation:

• Current State: An Excel spreadsheet that gets emailed around and referenced in executive-level meetings for approval.
• Desired Future State: A clear, streamlined, and user-friendly system in Jira or Confluence that:
  1. Offers a straightforward approval workflow for non-Jira-savvy execs.
  2. Easily transitions “approved” items into our Product team’s existing Jira project(s) for execution.
  3. Provides a quick, visually compelling dashboard or board view for oversight and reporting.

What We Need

1. Executive-Focused Interface:

   • Many of our execs are not power users of Jira, so they need a quick, readable way to review pending requests.
   • Ideally, we’d like something that can be displayed at a meeting or emailed out for asynchronous review—whether that’s a Confluence page with embedded Jira macros, a Jira Service Management portal, or a simplified Jira board.

2. Seamless Handoff to Product Teams:

   • Once work is approved, it needs to flow into the Product team’s normal Jira projects.
   • Minimizing manual copying/pasting or re-creating issues is key.

3. Single Source of Truth:

   • We want all updates, approvals, attachments, and status changes to live in one place, avoiding scattered communications or separate spreadsheets.
   • A structured workflow in Jira could make it easy to see the “paper trail” of approvals and reasons behind them.

Initial Thoughts on Approaches

• Dedicated Jira “Change Request” Project

  • Configure a simple approval workflow.
  • Non-technical stakeholders could still view a Kanban board or read-only list of issues.
  • Link or clone approved requests into the existing product backlog.
  • Pros: All in Jira, trackable, good for more detailed workflows.
  • Cons: Some execs might find it too “busy” if they’re not used to Jira.

• Confluence Dashboard with Jira Integration

  • Maintain a Confluence page with an embedded Jira filter that shows all “change board” items, sorted by status or priority.
  • Confluence can be less intimidating for executive stakeholders.
  • Still harnesses Jira for the actual workflow and approval transitions, but surfaces the data in a friendlier format.
  • Pros: Easy to present in meetings. Confluence pages can be styled for clarity, with embedded charts.
  • Cons: Approvals themselves still need to happen in Jira unless we set up something like Confluence-based forms (e.g., using third-party add-ons) or an automation to pass approvals back to Jira.

• Jira Service Management (JSM) Portal

  • Create a “Change Request” submission form in JSM, which triggers an approval workflow built into Jira Service Management.
  • Execs can approve or decline directly via email or a simple portal.
  • Completed approvals can automatically generate tasks in the Product team’s project.
  • Pros: Very user-friendly for non-Jira folks, built-in approvals, and email-based signoff.
  • Cons: Requires a JSM license and some configuration overhead.

What I’m Hoping to Learn from You

• Your Setup: How have you structured a change-approval process in Jira or Confluence? Did you create a dedicated project, use issue types in an existing project, or rely on custom fields and workflows?
• Managing Executive Approval: Any tips for making the approval process ultra-simple for execs who are not in Jira daily?
• Dashboards and Reporting: Have you found a particular dashboard layout or Confluence macro setup that resonates well with leadership teams?
• Automation: Are there any clever automations you’ve implemented—like auto-creating an epic in the Product backlog once an item is approved?
• Pitfalls or Lessons Learned: What would you do differently if you had to set it up again from scratch?

Why We’re Moving Away from Excel

• Real-Time Visibility: We spend too much time emailing spreadsheets back and forth. We want near-instant updates for all stakeholders.
• Auditability: A single repository where we can see who approved what, when, and why is vital for large budget items or high-risk changes.
• Scalability: As the company grows, the number of change requests is rising, and Excel simply can’t keep up in a manageable way.

[Benjamin Linser _yasoon_]

Hi Ezra,

thanks for raising this very interesting Use case and clearly stating what you want to achieve.

My name is Benjamin and I’m working at yasoon, a third-party-vendor within the Atlassian Marketplace. We are developing app integrations combining the Microsoft suite and the Jira/Confluence products.

When it comes down to use Jira and/or Confluence I would recommend to use Jira Boards for that flow. If you like to use JSM or Software it’s up to you. If you in general won’t need a service desk then maybe to save the license you could go with Jira Software. However, using JSM is really a game changer because you have so much you can configure and setup individually. In your Use case the approval step in JSM (which maybe after approval can clone/copy/create a new issue within the Software project) seems to me vital. Of course you could rebuild something similar within Software, too.

Especially when it comes down to user experience and helping non-tech-savvy users to understand the boards I think a board in Jira is ideal. Using a Business project e.g. will offer you a lot of customizability and its looking a bit different then other projects making it easier to understand how it works. But you can also have JSM boards actually.

Anyway, I’m not an expert in Jira myself and I really think there will be a lot of other good recommendations from the Atlassian community here, too 😊

What I also wanted to share is that you could also embed these boards within Microsoft Teams and also send approval request via a Teams chat message. This can be done by Microsoft 365 for Jira our flagship app at the Atlassian Marketplace.

In case you are also interested in seeing this product in action let us know anytime : ) You can book a demo here: Meet Microsoft 365 for Jira!

Best regards,

Benjamin

P.S.: We don't offer an Excel integration though ^^