Clean up!

Question

We are currently reevaluating the way we use Jira in our company and trying to introduce more discipline and structure.

2 points I need advice on:

1. Are there any templates or best practices available that we can adopt? these includes fields etc. (we currently to have a number of custom fields which we will need to consider)

2. Based on the current data, in order to move to the new "structure" or template, do you advise we start a new Jira instance and can the old data? or do a data clean up?

Looking forward to your thoughts. Thanks in advance.

Hubert Kut_tg1xyl · Answer

Hi @Shena Goorawa 
For cleanup and best practices of custom fields, data management, Jira administration and much more I would recommend to give a try to our app.
Doctor Pro: Audit, Optimize & Manage Configuration for Jira
https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1231705/doctor-pro-audit-optimize-manage-configuration-for-jira?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

If you have any questions feel free to reach out to us!
Best
Hubert

Asha Goyal_0i7i5i · Answer

Hello @Shena Goorawa

In addition to @Walter Buggenhout reply,

To be more specific, here are few things which you can consider while going for cleanup:

Projects --
Are there any projects that haven't been updated for at least 2 years?

Are all Project Leads active and assigned to the proper projects?

Issue Types -- 
Are there unused issue types?

Issue Type Schemes -- 
Are there any Issue Type Schemes that are not associated with any projects?

Permission Schemes -- 
Are there any permission schemes which are not in use?

Screens -- 
Which Screens are not currently being used?

Screen Schemes -- 
Which Screen Schemes are not connected to any Issue Type Screen Schemes?

Issue Type Screen Schemes -- 
Which Issue Type Screen Schemes are not connected to any project?

Workflow Schemes

Notification Schemes

Custom Fields with No Data

In addition to that, make sure you are reusing the components between the projects to avoid the duplicacy, like custom fields and all.

You can always clean up the old instance.

Feel free to ask in case any other specific queries regarding this.

Thanks

Asha

Walter Buggenhout · Answer

Hi @Shena Goorawa ,

You may want to take a look at this community article for inspiration. While not written specifically for cloud, the principles and best practices in there are largely applicable.

From your description, it seems as if you (i.e. your organization of course) haven't done cleanup regularly in the past, so you may face a tougher first time exercise. Make it a recurring practice, so you can do smaller iterations instead of big ones.

Cleanup should not require you to start on a new instance, unless cleanup would mean start over fresh and forget about (most of) the past. Migrating your data to a new site migrates a lot of the old mess along unless you clean up first.

About templates: Jira works best if it supports your team processes. Most of the things that are currently in your Jira have been added for a reason at some point. But things change of course, and what was once important may no longer be that anymore. So do evaluate your content and decide what you still need or not. And try to share your configurations as much as possible. That should reduce the number of configuration schemes you have in your instance and surface things you no longer need (like inactive fields, workflows, statuses, issue types, etc ...)

Hope this helps!