How do I set up my JIRA system (projects, boards, etc.)

Jaime Anderson

I am trying to figure out how to break down our overall system here to place it into the JIRA system.  For example, we have a website (which I view as a project) then the website contains areas member login, renew membership, stats report, etc.  Would I consider each of the areas a component? or would I consider our membership login a component with individual components underneath.  Having a very hard time trying to figure out how to effectively set up our system so we can start working more efficiently.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I wish I could have someone walk me thru this.  Documentation is overwhelming and sends me down rabbit holes where I need a brief overview of how this all works.  

Jack Brickey

@Jaime Anderson, Yes I would make your website a project. Yes I would use Component for the various areas especially if you have different leads for the components so that you can assign to them. I realize it can be overwhelming to get started but you can always change things as you go forward. Obviously the more you get 'right' out of the gate the better simply because you won't have to retrain.

Things to think about that drives setting up a project:

• Who are the players and do you want to auto-assign issues to them based upon some variable, e.g. Component
• What Issue Types do you need/want (Task, Story, Epic, Sub-tasks, Bug, Enhancement, etc)
• What workflow do you want. My advise, from learning the hard way, is to keep it as simple as possible, e.g. To Do -> In Progress -> Done. But that might be too simple for your needs.
• Permissions - do you need to restrict access
• Notifications - who needs to be notified and when. My advice is to limit notifications to what is actionable otherwise your team will be inundated by notification emails and stop looking.

Bottomline - don't over engineer up front. Tweak once you are sure a change is needed.

Final Advice - Use the Community as it is a great resource w/ lots of excellent users w/ experience.