Updating a workflow mid project

Question

At present our team work of a company managed workflow with no validation on any fields and all statuses are "Allow all statuses to transition to this one".

I want to add a new workflow to the project that will allow the validation of some existing and custom fields when transitioning between statuses.

I have created the workflow which is inactive, not associated to this project and has no transition validations as the custom fields are not yet implemented in the project.

I'm unsure about the next steps. Should the next step be to add the custom fields to the project. Then once they are there how do I include the transition validation and correctly associate the workflow. I'm looking to minimize the impact to the ongoing sprint work.

Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting] · Accepted Answer

I would recommend that you get the Workflow operating as you want it to in a test Project.  Once you are satisfied with it, create a Workflow Scheme that is a copy of the one currently used on the Project that you want to change.  Add the new Workflow to that Scheme and assign to the desired Issue Types, leaving the remaining Issue Types with their original Workflow(s.)  During a time of low Jira usage, change the Workflow Scheme on the Project to the new one you just created.  When you do this, a wizard will come up asking you to remap the Statuses from the old values to what is available in the Workflow.  It may take a little while if there are a lot of Issues in the Project.

Afterward, I would recommend running the Integrity Check, to ensure that no Issues have an inconsistent Workflow state.