Looking for Guidance on Handling “No Longer Needed” Work Item Types

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Looking for Guidance on Handling “No Longer Needed” Work Item Types

Good morning everyone, Our team is reviewing how we manage work item types that are no longer needed in our current process. We want to keep our working space clean and focused, but we also need to retain historical data for reference, audits, and reporting.

Right now, we’re considering two possible approaches:

1. Create a separate space/area for all historical work items This would let us archive older items elsewhere so the active space stays clean.

2. Keep everything in the same space but clearly label older items For example, tagging or marking them as “Legacy” or “Historical” so they’re still accessible but visually separated from active work.

Before we move forward, we’d love to hear how other teams have handled this. Is one of these approaches considered best practice, or is there another method you’ve found more effective for maintaining a clean working environment while preserving history?

Thanks in advance for any insights you can share.

Regards

Kim

Ugnius Aušra

Hi @[deleted]

Great question — this is something many teams run into as their processes mature.

In most cases, creating a separate space/project just to store historical work items is not considered best practice unless the data truly belongs to a different operational domain. Moving items elsewhere can break reporting continuity, complicate permissions, and fragment historical metrics.

A more common and sustainable approach is:

Keep everything in the same space, but control visibility

Instead of separating spaces, consider:

• Removing the work item type from the active issue type scheme (so it can’t be used going forward)

• Transitioning existing items to a dedicated “Archived” or “Deprecated” status

• Using labels like legacy or historical if additional filtering is helpful

• Updating boards and filters to exclude archived items by default

• Restricting creation permissions if necessary

This keeps:

• Reporting intact

• Audit history preserved

• Data model clean

• Active boards uncluttered

We did same process in our organization.