Startup decisions and lock in

[Mike Pearson]

As a newbie admin user, I am seeing this pattern a lot on JIRA, and it leads to an extremely bad user experience.  Please tell me I'm doing it all wrong, and explain to me what I should be doing!

Here's one example:

On Project creation, I'm asked whether I want a classic project or a next gen project. I'm new to this so I ask around. 'Next gen' seems to get the vote, but it doesn't look like a simple decision. But surely I can change my mind later...but I must get on, so Next Gen it is.

Down the road I have to choose Kanban or Scrum. Kanban seems to fit my case better, but again, not a simple choice.

I load up a project. Now I discover a whole host of restrictions imposed by those choices. Let's take one. Only one Sprint at a time. Maybe Scrum would have been better. But there's no way to change to Scrum now.

Search the mailing lists. Well, there's a Lab solution for parallel sprints, but not in Next Gen. OK, how do I switch to a classic project? Answer, I can't do that either. 

These are not the only examples. How can I reorganise and make an existing task a sub-task? Answer: Recreate it. Really? Are you serious?

I thought we had eliminated 'modal' user interfaces like this back in the 80s.

[Dario B · Accepted solution]

Hello @Mike Pearson ,

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Let me start by saying that Next-Gen projects are a new kind of project introduced not so long ago that are still under heavy development. So you might encounter some bugs or missing functionalities.

In order to know the functionalities that are going to be released in the next days you can check the public roadmap using below link:

• https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/whats-new/next-gen#intheworks

Also, Next-Gen projects are designed to be a simplified version of the Classic Jira Software projects and are intended to be used by people that need to be able to start working without having to configure too many things. 

On the other hand, since you do not have much to configure Next-Gen project offer way less customization possibilities. 

For the rest, please check below links. I believe in there you will find the answers to all your questions:

• Everything you want to know about next-gen projects in Jira Cloud
• Working with next-gen software projects (specifically, review the section named "Classic vs next-gen Jira Software - What's the difference?")
• Migrate between next-gen and classic projects
• Kanban vs. Scrum (you may also want to click on the Scrum and Kanban links in the left hand navigation menu)

Please review above links and let me know if they help.

Cheers,
Dario

[Mike Pearson]

Yes. I had read those before posting.

[Dario B]

Thanks for letting me know @Mike Pearson .

Other than the links that you already knew, was the answer useful in any way or you still have doubts/concerns? 

Please let me know.

Cheers,
Dario

[Mike Pearson]

The point of the post was to let you know what a new user to JIRA is up against in the hope that you can improve things. 

Since it is cumbersome and time consuming to change these decisions later, the relevant docs should to be up front and obvious. Searching for them is a nightmare because of the various JIRA contexts that are out there.

It does get better with time and familiarity, but the initial experience is pretty gross.

Just saying

[Dario B]

Thanks for your feedback on this @Mike Pearson , I have forwarded it to the appropriate resources and hopefully we will get more clarity in the documentation.

Cheers,
Dario

[Emma Wolstencroft]

You could move the issues from NG to a Classic project?

The same goes for deciding you need a Scrum rather than a Kanban project. You could just move the issues into a new Scrum project. 

There's some great training resources at Atlassian University which might smooth your transition to Jira, if that might help :) 

[Subhendu Chattopadhyay]

"How can I reorganise and make an existing task a sub-task? Answer: Recreate it." 

I believe this is possible. Simply create filter for the task that you want to move as a sub-task. Then use bulk change all issues and choose operation move issues. It should move the task under other task as a sub-task.

[Arthur Mack]

As people have said the Next Gen projects are a work in progress. Also from an ADMIN view it is much easier to manage the classic projects as you can group projects and have some common configs which cuts your work down a lot. Its a steeper learning curve to setup classic projects but worth it in the end.

[Subhendu Chattopadhyay]

I always prefer to create scrum board and then disable sprint feature if my users want to follow Kanban. That give flexibility to toggle between scrum and Kanban.

I know classic project allow running parallel sprint. However, I  always discourage my team to run parallel sprint in a single project. Multiple team can use single sprint. This allow to implement cadence and help a lot on planning. If parallel sprint is absolutely necessary then create different project. You can always create a filter combining issues from different project and then create a board to display issues from different projects.