Looking for Best Practices to Improve Jira Project Organization in 2026

Question

Hi everyone,
I’m looking to improve the way our team organizes projects and issues in Jira as we head into 2026. We’ve been using Jira for a while, but our workflows and boards have become a bit cluttered, and it’s getting harder to maintain consistency across teams.

What are some best practices or tips you recommend for keeping projects structured, workflows clean, and boards easy for everyone to follow? Any suggestions for configuration, automation, or team habits would be greatly appreciated!

Alexey Pavlenko _App Developer_ · Answer

Hi @carl ,

Consider the app I developed - Multi-team Scrum Metrics & Retrospectives.

With it, you can track, measure and improve team performance - several teams, individual metrics, custom metrics, several periods, drill-downs, in-place retrospectives, trends, average metrics and so on and so forth. Here are a couple of screenshots:

Best regards,
Alexey

John Funk · Answer

Hi Carl,

Use generic names for Workflow statuses. Put multiple statuses in a single column if you have several columns - but it is best to limit the number of columns you have. If you have too many, your process is too complicated.

Implement WIP Limits on columns and discourage users from working on more than 2 cards/work items/issues at one time.