new here - next-gen vs classic

[max_chung]

Hello,

what is the direction concerning next-gen? is it going to replace Classic eventually? I am starting new here, and would like to make sure I don't waste the time I am investing in Jira.  don't want to pick something that is going to die eventually.  Please advise.  Thank you. 

[Krister Broman _Advania_ · Accepted solution]

Next Gen projects are new, so not as many users yet on them. I do not think that anyone knows what the future will bring, its highly unlikely that they will fully replace the classic projects during the coming 3-5 years though. 

My main issue with them is that the projects are solitary items that gives the project admin full authority over their own projects which causes issues with standardization (in companies i work with, i'm sure others work differently) and its very basic in terms of adapting to specific requirements. 

I have yet to find a reason to use next gen projects but if you just need to get going and have it ready today without much knowledge, then they are great. You will learn a lot more about Jira if you use classic projects though ;-)

You can find a list in the official documentation on differences:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/working-with-next-gen-software-projects-945104895.html?_ga=2.179923812.1549119492.1566214069-291029761.1562597271

[max_chung]

Thanks Krister for your reply. I already went through the official Next-gen compare with the Classic, and their roadmap but it was still not clear to me as to what their plan is for the future when it comes to the 2 products, hence my reaching out here, hoping one of the Atlassian team members would be able to provide some clarifications.  

[Krister Broman _Advania_]

As I said, the next gen is quite limited today, so if you have anything other than a basic requirement then you want to go classic, you dont have any other option. 

For future changes you can move issues between a nextgen and classic project, so whatever you decide, you can quite easily move all issues at a later stage. 

I would still recommend going classic though, as you will learn a lot more. 

[Leah]

@max_chung I am in the same position today you were in last year. What did you end up going with? Are you happy with your decision? 

any insight would be very much appreciated, thanks!

~Leah

[max_chung]

@Leah  Sure, I went with Next Gen. I was looking for something light so that our team spends the least time possible on it,  and maximize time on their work.  Not sure what your Use Case is.  Mine was to use Jira to track the work activities that my team works on.  We are a shared services team, so we have a lot of items that we work on from different LOBs. I use Kanban board.. 

To keep it simple, I also use only one Jira Next Gen project to track all the  initiatives, with each initiative represented by an Epic. I do it this way so that I can have a whole view of all the items that my team works on, on one board.  that's the simplest way I have found to get all initiatives in one view.  Creating a Jira Next Gen project for each initiative, did not allow me to show all in one view,  without going through unnecessary hoops.  the only problem is that when you report, the Jira reporting is not able to display correctly the Epic. you may see some other posts I have raised concerning the Epic problem. in the end I just gave up on waiting for them to fix it.  I  did a manual work around that I am still currently using.   

Not sure if the decision is already made to go with Jira on your side. If you haven't, I'd also recommend you to take a look at FreedCamp. I still like it better than Jira.  Freedcamp has a better way of organizing the initiatives and showing them on a dashboard and is much more efficient, including "archiving" to a different project group by changing one field only . There is also a real archive process as well.  I was using the free version of Freedcamp for my team, until I was told to move to Jira.  

Hope this helps.  

[max_chung]

Thanks Krister. I am experimenting with Both Classic and Next-Gen, to have a feel of both.