Best practices for a consultant with multiple clients?

Question

Hi! I'm new to Jira. I'm an independent contractor that manages small nonprofit software projects in elementary education. What's the best way to set up Jira such that while the project is happening with one or two collaborators, I am in control, but could hypothetically hand over the project (Jira, Confluence, BitBucket repos) to the PI when I hypothetically fade into the background. I'd like to be in a position to have multiple of these ("workspaces?"), each for a client, to cover project management (each client has a few long-term projects), documentation, and source code. I'd also like to stay in the free tier if I could; none of these things make money and are funded by the state or private grants.

So, do I create a separate Atlassian account for each of these projects? Or is there a way to separate them all within the free tier on one Atlassian account? There's less than ten people total that would be invited (at least right now), so that's not a concern, though I would be interested in what's best to do (and follows Atlassian's policies) if there were to be more than ten total collaborators across all the workspaces/projects/whatchamacallits.

Thanks so much, and excuse my ignorance! I'm trying to transition from a mess of ad hoc stuff to something more centralized and stable.

Stefan Salzl · Accepted Answer

Hi @jtth

if there were to be more than ten total collaborators

If this number is exeeded you´re running out of the free plan. Commonly Jira is set up for an organization.  Within that organization several (so called) sites can be created (the free plan has a limit of 1 site). If those projects are from different organizations I would recommend to set up a seperate cloud instance for each of them. But this is my personal view on the "how to". Please reach out to atlassian support or check atlassian policies.

Did you already do an online research for something like "nonprofit licence"? Guess I remember something like this. Or just reach out for Atlassian directly on this topic.

Best
Stefan

Ste Wright · Accepted Answer

Hi @jtth

I'd weigh up what is most important here - for example do you want to see...

* All your work in one place, and understand potential dependencies between work?
* Have a place for each client to see their work individually?
* A combination of the two?
* When you handover the work, would the client keep the instance? Or would they migrate it to their own?

Understanding your need will help you make a decision what the best option is. Some examples below.

Your Instance, Migrate Out

In this scenario - I'd suggest purchasing a Standard or Premium plan. Yes it does cost an amount, but there are benefits for you - such as...

* Seeing your whole backlog in one place
* Being able to map dependencies - such as where central work is required which impacts more than one Project, or where Project 1 could make Project 2 easier
* Pointing all clients to one central location, rather than having to manage access and security for multiple instances
* Not being limited by 10 users, if necessary

With Standard or Premium, you can then manage access permissions to each Project/Space - so that each client only sees what they need to.

If going with this option, I'd suggest...

* Splitting clients into separate Project(s) / Space(s), so you can manage the appropriate access permissions for each.
* Not providing Space/Project Admin access - so their data cannot be accidentally shared.

Each Instance is gifted to Client

In this scenario, I'd consider having each client themselves create the instance - then as you phase out, they can decide what to do with it. This means...

* Using free instances is an option, assuming the customer doesn't want more features
* Having the client own it ensures a clean handover in future, as they'll already be the technical contact, billing contact, etc
* There might be an option for the NFP to get a discount on paid licensing. Check out Community Licensing via this link.

Let us know your thoughts, and if you think there's other things to consider in your scenario, or if you need any other advice :)

Ste