Project Types For Support

pnelsonsr

I come from a JIRA when it was just JIRA.  Started at a new company and talk them into JIRA online for Defect Tracking for a software product and IT Support tracking.  I instantiated our JIRA online as JIRA software and have questioned this from the get go.  We are not a Agile development house.  So I have to turn off anything agile to start with.  Although that's not fun it's manageable. The problem that I'm asking about here is this.  I no longer feel I really understand what Atlassian has done here as it relates to our needs.  We need 2 type of projects:

Software Issue Tracking (standard JIRA old way)

Support Issue Tracking (as and IT department needs)

I can not see a Project type that really matches either.  So I do a long process of converting an existing type (usually basic software) to these to needs.  So that's my situation.

My question is:  Is there a project type for standard Software and Standard Support type tracking defined anywhere that I'm just not seeing?  In the old JIRA days I don't remember spend so much time configuring the projects.

Phill Fox

If you wanted JIRA without Agile the choice would have been to go for JIRA Core. However, I believe that you have actually made a better decision although there is a learning curve to go through to get the most from JIRA Software. Let me justify such a rash statement.

Taking your requirement for Support Issue Tracking. 

1. The Kanban approach is ideal for support
   image2015-12-24 9:46:17.png 
2. This it has a simple three step workflow To Do - In Progress - Done 
3. You can prioritise items in the To Do column so that the highest priority is always at the top of the list. If you change the filter from ORDER BY rank to ORDER BY priority DESC, created this will then show you your items ranked in priority order and those of the same priority by creation date.
4. Dragging an item between columns to show a transition is simpler than using the workflow on the issue page.
5. You can customise the view with quickfilters/swimlanes to show different cuts of the support tickets.
6. The reports that come with Kanban boards allow you to report on how effective your support process is in resolving the support tickets. And to be able to provide historic evidence to justify anticipated completion time.
7. Do not call it Agile - just think of this as the way you have probably always handled support. Issues are raised - they are triaged and prioritised - they get dealt with according to priority and age - they are completed.

 

Now looking at your requirement for Software Issue Tracking

1. You can use the basic software development as your starting point and use this exactly as you did in previous JIRA boards
   image2015-12-24 9:47:10.png
2. This provides you with a standard set of issue types and a reasonable workflow
   image2015-12-24 9:48:32.png
3. This then presents you with a new navigation panel that enables you to see all open tickets (ie. To Do, In Progress, In Review) and action accordingly. 

Now to pick up your point about the time to configure projects - I would suspect that in the previous company you had already established all your schemes and when you created a new project it was a relatively painless task to assign the appropriate schemes to the new project. Now that you are starting anew a lot of these schemes will require modification/creation and that is why it probably feels more challenging in time. The actual schemes are no different to what was there in earlier versions.

 

Sorry if this sounds a bit over the top as a justification for the decisions you have already taken but I would not worry about the word "Agile" as a concept rather focus on how you want to work.

Phill

 

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