If your JIRA setup was a complete mess would you try to fix it or start over?

[Julia Kedward]

My company started using Atlassian (JIRA & Confluence) several years ago. But the person who administered this set it up, essentially as a blank slate, and told us all to "go for it". After various administrators, projects, and users,  JIRA in particular, is junk built upon junk. 

My question to the community is... would you essentially start over (all new user roles, work flows, permissions, everything) or take what's already established and "fix" it?

I initially started off thinking the latter would be best but then I have to deal with cleaning up and possibly negatively affecting existing projects (even if we don't work on those projects anymore). Now I'm thinking it would ultimately be easier to start fresh. 

And if I did start fresh would it better to create a whole new company so we don't have to contend with that junky baggage. 

[Deepanshu Natani · Accepted solution]

Hi @Julia Kedward ,

It really depends on the extent to which you would like to use the existing data in your existing Jira and Confluence.

If the existing data is not important for you to migrate, then you can surely opt for a fresh instance.

However, if the existing data and / or configuration is important, you might want to clean up the existing Jira/ Confluennce instance and even if you want to start fresh, you can probably analyse what data and configurations you may want to migrate to the new instance.

The data may include your Jira Issues, Confluence Spaces, any third party/ marketplace applications specific data. The configurations can include workflows, automation rules, issue type schemes, screens schemes, etc.

You can also reach out to an Atlassian Solutions partner to help out with this if you think your current Jira and Confluence instance is too complex to be managed.

[Julia Kedward]

Thanks for the input. Much appreciated.

[Matt Doar]

I would check out Rachel Wright's book about cleaning up Jira instances, and make sure you know how to set Jira up better for the long-term. It only gets harder to clean up as Jira grows. 

[Julia Kedward]

I'm going through Atlassian online training to make sure I know my various options and how things should be done. Thanks.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses. 

For 12 years of my Atlassian career, every job started with "Our Jira is a mess, can you help?".  In most cases, keeping the data was quite important, so we never took the "start clean" route.  But it can be a very useful option (and cheaper and easier route to a new place).

I'm completely with @Deepanshu Natani here - it's not an easy choice, but you need to think about your case!

[John Funk]

Hi Julia,

As @Deepanshu Natani said, it would really depend on how much you already have (number of projects, issues, etc.) and how much you want to retain. 

I think I might go at it as a fixer upper, but creating new shared schemes and applying the same scheme to as many projects as possible to bring some consistency.