Does JIRA Cloud support for nested workflows

Marek Dziedzic

Hello,

I am very new to JIRA and am hoping that some pretty advanced functionality is available within the tool since it has been around for a long time and from my understanding is extremely configurable.

 

I am looking to create nested workflows with individual views/boards in JIRA. This is what I am trying to do:

Primary Workflow: (start to end of a single task)

New -> Creative -> Development -> QA -> Done

Creative Workflow: (tasks that enter "Creative" above, start the workflow below)

Ready for Creative -> Copy -> Design -> Creative Review -> Creative Done

Development Workflow: (task that are Creative Done are moved into the beginning of the Development Workflow)

Ready for Development -> In Development -> Development Review -> Dev Done

QA Workflow: (tasks that are Dev Done are moved into the beginning of the QA Workflow)

Ready for QA -> Dev QA -> Creative QA -> Internal Review -> Client Review -> Ready to deploy

 

The goal is that each workflow has its own Board so that each team can focus on the tasks that are assigned to them AND that there is a high level board that the Project Management Team can review.

In a more complex version of this, there would actually be a set of workflows above this that would be client based where ideas for projects/tasks could live and then enter the Primary Workflow once they are sold into the organization.

Is this possible in JIRA?

 

Ryan Fish

@Marek Dziedzic

Possible, yes. Transparent, maybe.

In order for a user to view an issue with a specific status, then the board must contain the status in configuration/ columns/ column management. You can have any number of boards "nested" by figuring out your workflow as you have already.

• Each board needs to have a status to pass an issue to and from another board
• Status names should be unique to each board, and should not duplicate across boards
• The last (right most) column of each board must contain a "closed" status

e.g. In your original post, a user moves an issue through the life cycle.

Given:

Board A columns would include:

• New -> Creative -> Development -> QA -> Done
• A/ Done column contains the status of B/ Ready for Creative, which "passes" the status to the next board

Board B columns would include:

• Ready for Creative -> Copy -> Design -> Creative Review -> Creative Done
• B/ Creative Done column contains the status of C/ Ready for Development, which "passes" the status to the next board

etc...

A couple of agile questions to ponder:

How does the complex multi-stage workflow outweigh the benefits of transparency or simplicity? What are the administrative cost?

How do the teams benefit from operating on independent boards instead of a shared board?

 

Some reading material:

Configuring columns

Workflows

Working-with-workflows