How to manage our clients as separate "projects" and link to ongoing work

Question

We are a small startup team selling our SaaS product to various organizations and need to be able to track the work happening with each client.

General project organization and adding our current tasks using a Kanban will work well, but where I am having trouble is when I try to consider the best way to link that work to each client "account" (for lack of a better term).  Basically, the work we do for clients is ongoing as they are subscription-based, so we need to be able to access what's already been done (along with relevant updates, service requests, etc) or what needs to be done (ie: customization requests) for any one client at any given time.

Through demos and articles, my initial thought is to create a label or tag that would represent each client so that a search would allow us to view history, but I'm wondering if there are other factors I should consider.  A board per client was another thought, but I thought that might get to be an org nightmare as we grow.

We are just branching out to a more robust system (previously used Asana, which is no longer working with our expansion) but definitely want to put in the upfront work to ensure we are setting things up in a way that makes sense.

Any input would be very appreciated!

Thanks, team.

John Funk · Answer

Yes, in your case, I would use Components.

Kyla Kearns · Answer

Hi John!

Thanks for the welcome and the quick response.  Creating a separate project could work, but we do have more than 100 clients, which is what was causing the issue with our previous software.  We weren't able to easily access/link our active and high priority work so would need to click through the various clients to really see what was happening in each account.  Perhaps there is a solution for this disconnect within Jira though?

Long story short - it is most important to see what everyone is currently working on, but also have that work link back to each client (if applicable) to keep the client history up to date.  It is also important to be able to look at a specific client to see that history and if there is current work happening with them.

We do have the same team working across clients, so perhaps I will give the Component suggestion a test run to see how it works!

John Funk · Answer

Hi Kyla - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Since they are different clients and you have separate "accounts" for each, I would even consider creating a separate Project in Jira for each client.

However, if you have the same team working across all clients, simply creating a Component for each client should work well. I would NOT use Labels as they are subject to typos and errors. Components must be selected from a pick list so it is more likely to be correct.