Closing a Jira project

[Francene Flint]

Is there a way that you can actually close down a Jira project once ithas come to an end. Or do these just stay open permanently?

thanks

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

They stay open unless you choose to do something with them.

There's no such thing as "close" for a project, as it tends to mean different things to different people. You'll need to define what you mean by a closed project.

I tend to have a permissions scheme that is "read only, except admins can do a couple of things in the workflow to close issues and move issues to other projects". That prevents the users from putting anything else in the project, while retaining the information in it. A common variation is to make it readable only by the system admins, so it disappears entirely. But it's up to you to decide what behaviour you want from a "closed" project.

(Oops, I should add, I usually just change the permissions scheme on projects I want to "close" and leave everything else in place. Some people change the notifications and other stuff, but I don't see the point if I've locked it down so nothing can really happen there)

[Francene Flint]

Thanks Nic - the project was a proof of concept that has now been put to bed and will evolve into something else completely separately from the PoC development. I was simply trying to tie up loose ends on the admin side, so perhaps changing the permissions is the right answer.
Cheers.

[Jenny Crowley]

This is exactly what I would like to do as well. I'm still new to JIRA. How do I change the permissions scheme? I feel like I've been reading a lot of documentation and clicking around wildly just getting myself lost in the process.

[Pedro Souza]

See the document below for more information:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Archiving+a+Project

Cheers.

[Danilo Conrad]

You may find more information about how to archive a JIRA project in the link below (including changing its permission scheme):

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Archiving+a+Project

Cheers,

Danilo

[Mike Mills]

I don't agree that there's no such thing as closing a project. Yes it means different things in different organisations but a project by definition has a start and an end and it should be possible to flag it as closed as a native feature of a toolset designed to manage projects. It shouldn't be necessary to archive it or manually update permission schemes on a project by project basis, there should be a closed state at a project level with an updated permissions scheme that goes with it.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

There's no such thing as closing a project *because* it means different things in different organisations. You're thinking too narrowly about what a "project" is for you and what a "jira project" represents - they are not always the same thing. A business project can easily span many jira projects, and if that happens, any implementation of "closing a project" in JIRA becomes utterly useless. Hence, there's no such thing in JIRA. You have to do it manually as described above, because there are different ways it might be needed. One size does not fit all.

[Mike Mills]

I'm NOT thinking too narrowly about what a project is. Of course project closure means different things in different organisations and in different toolset implementations. A project also means different things in different organisations, as does an issue, as does 'resolved'. That doesn't mean the JIRA implementation of resolving an issue in a project "becomes totally useless". In any organisation projects get called (flagged) closed, and what can be done to them (permissions) is reduced. I don't have a big problem with manually changing the permission scheme assigned to a 'closed projects' but I should be able to filter and report based on whether a project is open or closed. I'm not asking for a complex project level workflow that suits all organisations - just a simple project level flag for a universal concept (albeit with different interpretations) of a 'closed project'.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

But that's the problem, there is no universal concept of a closed project. You already said it yourself - it's different for different organisations. As for searching, I tend to move projects into categories. Then you can use the field "category" in issue searches.

[Hossein Jalali]

Then again sometimes close means exactly that --> "close". Meaning this project for any reason (lack of budget, no-success etc.) wants to shut down completely and therefore not today and not ever do we want to see the project just laying around like a dinosaur in our list. 

There should be a better way to "close" or at least "archive" a project so that we don't have to see it unless we chose to go to the "archive" / "close" tab.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

See the discussions above, really.  The reasons are all there, along with the various ways to implement a "close"

[Ernest Koe]

i can't believe this is still an issue after all this time!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It isn't an issue at all.  See the conversation above.