Best practices: Many workflows vs one complex workflow

[Alexis Torchinsky]

JIRA Software in the Cloud

I'm working on some workflows, and there are very similar.

For example, We use Tasks which are created in "Open" status and Stories which are created in "Backlog". In the case of Stories, after Backlog, they are going to Open, and the flow is the same for the tasks.

Now I have two workflows, and the issuetype is the criteria that selects the workflow

The question is, is better if I have only "full" workflow, starting in Backlog, and add a postfunction(JMWE) to "jump" to Open if the issuetype is a Task? Of course, is more maintainable, but it good about performance?

[Thomas Schlegel]

Hi Alexis,

I think performance is not the problem. We use Jira now for eleven years and unfortunately we have such a lot of workflows that it is difficult to keep track of all these workflows.

Generally, you should avoid creating new workflows, when there are just small differences between them. Often, you can avoid a new workflow just by talking to the requester, if this is really necessary. 

Why don't you use the backlog state for tasks also? I assume, task is a issue subtype? So, is it ok to have a Story in state "backlog" and the subtask in state "open"?