Is better to have fewer, more complicated workflows, or a larger number of simpler workflows?

JasonF

I know workflows have a large impact to your JIRA system performance, I just haven't seen anything that details if that's just volume based?  Or complexity?  Bit of both?  Just curious if anyone has any experience with this.  

Let's look at the following scenario:

• 5 groups of 5 related projects
• Each project wants their own custom workflow

You could implement this a number of ways, but let's just say you are choosing between:

25 unique workflows, 1 for each project, but all relatively simple.  No complicated post functions/conditions/etc...

5 workflows, 1 for each group, but more complicated with conditions and validators, as well has post functions etc... based on Project/Issue Type/etc...

I realize of course being an Admin on 25 unique workflows would be a pain, but the focus of my question is around performance.  5 Complicated Workflows?  or 25 Simple ones?

Thanks!

Joe Pitt

I prefer to have one workflow for each issue type regardless of project, although some issue types may share a workflow. So if you have 10 issue types you'd have at most 10 different workflows. I've often found there aren't any really valid reasons for say project A to handle Tasks differently than project B. If there is, they probably aren't really the same work and should have a different workflow and issue type name. The simpler you make the workflow the easier it will be to figure out why something isn't working and to make changes, which will eventually be needed. I doubt there is any meaningful difference in performance since the logic for any given step won't differ too much from a computing resource viewpoint.