Trying to figure out how to use Jira for Business not Software

[Jill St_ Clair]

I'm trying to find out how to set up a Jira project board for a Business area and was going to use Jira Work Management but don't see any documentation on that. 

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Jill St_ Clair 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

What are your specific questions about setting up a Jira Work Management project vs. a Jira Software project? The management of the core configuration elements is the same. The primary difference is the presentation of the work items on a board and how you interact with that board.

A Work Management project comes with a built in board that is kanban-ish.

Among the ways that it is different from a Software project board are:

- If the issue types in your project use different workflows, the Work Management board shows the issue related to only one workflow at a time.

- In a Work Management project Subtasks are shown nested under their parent card in the column that represents the status of the parent, rather than being shown independently in the column that represents the status of the subtask

- In Work Management project you can toggle between a few different column configurations; i.e. Status vs. Assignee

- In Work Management you can't configure horizontal Swimlanes

Those are not all the differences, just a handful.

[Trudy Claspill]

If you are already familiar with the boards that are used with Software projects then you can create such a board for a Work Management project. To do so you would create and save a filter that selects the issues in your Work Management project and then create a board based on the saved filter.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-articles/Multiple-boards-in-Business-and-Team-Managed-Projects-You-bet/ba-p/1719761

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Agile-articles/Creating-a-Second-Agile-Board-for-Team-Managed-or-JIra-Work/ba-p/2115018

[Jill St_ Clair]

Interesting. We use sub-tasks to independently track status of the issues so not sure why a sub-task would be nested but maybe I just need to play around and it'll be clearer.  

[Trudy Claspill]

I am trying to figure out if it makes sense to track development requested work and business requests separately as currently, we I have a single Project Board which I link to Jira stories on development team's boards.  I'm not clear on what limitations exist if I tried having both.  I guess I'm going to give it a go and see what happens.  

Are you facing challenges with your current set up that are prompting you to consider a change? If so, what sorts of challenges?

Do the same people work on both types of items?

Is there a concern about limiting visibility of the items?

Do the items need different types of workflows?

The "limitations" that may exist depend a lot on the requirements of your business and development processes.

With more information we can offer you more targeted advice.

[Trudy Claspill]

Subtasks are nested because they are generally considered part of a larger task where all the subtasks must be completed to deliver the larger task. The item of true importance is the larger task. 

You can see the status of the subtasks:

[Joe Pitt · Accepted solution]

Basically, Jira is a tool to track issues through a workflow. Every business process is issues (tasks) going through a workflow.  You need to create issue types for your process and workflows for those issues. A board just tracks issues though a workflow. What kind of documentation you're looking for besides the documentation for creating issues, workflows, screens, etc.  

[Jill St_ Clair]

I am trying to figure out if it makes sense to track development requested work and business requests separately as currently, we I have a single Project Board which I link to Jira stories on development team's boards.  I'm not clear on what limitations exist if I tried having both.  I guess I'm going to give it a go and see what happens.