Next-Gen & Classic - Request Guidance for New Admin

[Wendy McCurdy]

I have been charged with setting up a project for a project for a fairly simple team migrating from Rally to Jira.  

I have administered Rally for 8 years, never used Jira, and want to understand real life pros/cons of using a Next-Gen or Classic Project.  Here's what I see as the important details. 

1. This is a TechOps team that have a that supports multiple products/project teams that are currently using Rally.  In Rally, this team project is separate from the other project teams. 

2. This team will also be using Jira Service Desk to manage support tickets (currently using a home grown ticketing application).  

3. The rest of the organization's project teams will slowly migrate from Rally to Jira.

I want to make the smart decision up front and am looking to feedback and understanding of the differences and how I might be able to make the best decision so not to create re-work.  

Help please!

[Petter Gonçalves]

Hello @Wendy McCurdy

Welcome to the Atlassian community!

Jira Classic and Next-gen are basically the same core application, however, with different complexities and customization options.

Basically, Jira Classic provides you with all the features and customizations available in the application, while next-gen provide you with a simpler a straight forward solution, similar to Trello application.

That being said, I believe that both application templates can achieve the three scenarios you mentioned, with the only exception that Jira Next-gen still has some limitations with the migration functionality (That you mentioned in point three), where Epics and custom fields can not be imported using CSV files.

That being said, I suggest you to:

1 - Take a look at the documentation below to check on more details and differences between Classic and Next-gen:

Everything you want to know about next-gen projects in Jira Cloud 

2 - Start your environment using a Next-gen project, since it is a fast-learning and simpler solution.

If you find out that Jira Next-gen will not fulfill your team needs, you can easily migrate your Next-gen data to Classic by following the documentation below:

Migrate between next-gen and classic projects 

P.S: Please take a look at the migration limitations described in the documentation above to avoid any future misunderstanding in case you decide to use the Classic template. 

Let us know if you have any questions.