Outsourcing development to external partner/agency

Question

Hi all.

Doing a case study on JIRA.

How do I configure JIRA so I have internal users and external users (development was outsourced to an external agency)? Both parties are using JIRA.

What would be the ideal configuration? Any ideas or even templates?

Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks.

Regards,

Adrian

Deliverable Services · Answer

Hi Adrian,

This is a common setup when companies outsource development to an external agency. JIRA can handle this well with the right permission structure and project configuration.

A practical approach is to separate internal and external access using roles and permission schemes.

1. Create User Groups
Set up two main groups:

Internal team (product owners, managers, QA)

External developers (outsourced agency)

This allows you to control visibility and permissions more easily.

2. Use Project Roles
Instead of assigning permissions to individual users, create roles such as:

Administrators

Internal Team

External Developers

Then assign users to roles. This makes management easier as teams grow.

3. Configure Permission Schemes
You can allow external partners to:

View issues

Comment on tasks

Update development tickets

Log work

But restrict actions like:

Changing project configuration

Viewing internal documentation

Accessing sensitive tickets

4. Separate Internal Discussions
Many teams create:

Internal issue types or labels for internal discussions

Or a separate internal project linked to the main development project

This keeps internal planning private while still collaborating with the agency.

5. Use Issue Security Levels
If certain tickets contain internal strategy or business information, you can restrict visibility using Issue Security Schemes so only internal users see them.

6. Integration & Workflow
When working with outsourced teams, it helps to define a clear workflow such as:
Backlog → Ready for Dev → In Progress → Code Review → QA → Done

Both internal and external users can follow the same pipeline.

In many projects where companies use Software Development Outsourcing Services, this type of structured JIRA setup helps maintain transparency while still protecting internal information.

If your outsourced development team works closely with your internal product team, a shared project with role-based permissions usually works better than separate JIRA instances.

Hope this gives you a solid starting point for your case study.

Thomas Schlegel · Answer

@Adrian Baussen, you should be clear about the roles and permissions in your project.

Have you designed a workflow already? Are there workflow transitions that should only be triggered by Team 1 or Team 2? Then you need workflow conditions for that.

But first, I would create project roles.  There are two project roles already in your project: Administrators and Developers.

I think, administrators are some people from Team I, developers is Team 1 and 2.

Maybe you need more project roles, e.g. Scrum Masters.

Then you have to look at the permission scheme of your project.  Look carefully at the different permissions and decide which project role or single user or group should be granted the permission.

Adrian Baussen · Answer

Hi Thomas,

thanks for your response.

a) there is one project. The way I see it is the following: the project will be done by 2 teams - Team I) consists of e.g. PO, Scrum Master etc. and a few e.g. designers but are all in the same company A.

Team II) does the actual programming and consists of team members from company B --> basically company A outsourced only the programming of the project to company B.

Does this clarify your questions? I hope it helps. So how would I configure JIRA accordingly? Remark: Considering the development is done by company B (they play a very important part) I can basically give them access to the entire project without any restrictions?

How would you approach the above mentioned issue?