Seeking Advice on Workflow Standardization Across Diverse Teams

Question

Hello Atlassian Community!

I’m reaching out to tap into the collective wisdom of this knowledgeable group. I work for a company that’s in the early stages of integrating Jira across multiple departments. We’re excited about the potential for streamlining our processes, but we’ve hit a bit of a snag when it comes to standardization — particularly with workflows.

Here’s our challenge: Our projects span a diverse range of disciplines including software and hardware development, testing, requirements engineering, and project management. Given this variety, finding a one-size-fits-all workflow seems impractical. Yet, management is keen to avoid a scenario where we have a multitude of custom workflows and fields for every project, which could lead to a maintenance nightmare and dilute the benefits of standardization. Self-managed projects are also not an option.

We’re currently deliberating how to balance the need for specialized workflows for different teams with the desire to maintain a manageable and standardized system within Jira. Has anyone else encountered this tension between customization and standardization? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences, strategies, or solutions that worked (or didn’t work).

To summarize, here are the key points we’re considering:

* Maintaining a level of standardization in workflows to streamline process management across the company.
* Accommodating the distinct needs of various teams (software/hardware development, testing, requirements engineering, project management).
* Avoiding the overhead of managing and maintaining a large number of custom workflows and fields.

Any insights on workflow strategies, tips on striking the right balance, or anecdotes about your journey in a similar situation would be greatly appreciated!

Looking forward to your thoughts and thank you in advance for your help!

Best,

Rainier

Crystelle S · Answer

You have some distinct job roles there - it's likely that they encounter the same things and then some things that are different. The key here is to bring them together where they are looking at or processing the same information and then let them split off where it differs. At least a few of these functions feed into and support one another.

Example that comes to mind - you have software and hardware development listed. I bet there are a lot of fields that won't make sense across the board! However there is a high likelihood that the software is running on the hardware - where is that crossover? make sure you don't have one team take a generic term like "Platform" and use it only for themselves. Believe it or not there will come a time when your business evolves and all of a sudden that term is overloaded and you have to look through 1200 projects to figure out how to untangle.

Ask me how I know.

Same for status. Where teams are handing off work to one another try to align that terminology and remember, in Jira you can align any status to that final column on the board. Even if the status is not "Done" in engineering because testing needs to pick it up, Merged can be counted in the board toward velocity and as "finished" for that group.

Just some thoughts. Reach out if you want to chat more :)  (this is kind of old)

David Nickell · Answer

Your problem is not unique (not by a longshot!).

The trick is to get the "humans" to agree to a process and set of terms - Primarily Issue Types, Statuses (and workflow), Priorities, Fields, and of course Roles.

If someone says "There is a SEV2 Problem with the Production Customer Web", everyone should have a common understanding of what "SEV2", "PROBLEM", and "PRODUCTION CUSTOMER WEB" mean.

To achieve that, you can use something like the Configuration Report I've worked on in the past.  This is NOT a sales pitch ... it's not quite ready for prime time.   But it is an illustration of a concept.   Think of it as a Data Dictionary for your Jira install.  Using the REST API is sooooo much more efficient than trying to keep documentation updated manually in Confluence (as an example).

This is pointing to Jira.Atlassian.Com but the data hasn't been updated in a while.  Be sure to check out the four existing tabs.     Hope this helps.

https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiM2YyMDk2OGUtYmIyOC00N2NiLWE5YzAtNTkxNTRjNjk4YjBhIiwidCI6IjNjZDVhOTg1LTBkM2YtNGM0ZC1hY2M1LTU2NTlhMTJiMTEyMyJ9