Jira Explanation Gone Wrong: Statuses

[Brant Schroeder]

Sometimes we explain things incorrectly but most of the time we just do a poor job ensuring that those who we are working with understand what we are explaining.  Have you ever had a Jira incident or problem that came from an incorrect explanation or conversation that was misunderstood?  If so provide it below.

When I was training a new Jira administrator we were going over workflows.  I was explaining to them how statuses work.  I explained to the new admin that you can change a status name on a workflow but doing so changes the status name everywhere.  I explained that If you want to make a change to a status name then you will need to create a new status.  I also explained that if it was close you should just work with the customer to help them understand that this is just a status and that Open or Opened really mean the same thing and there is no reason to create Opened and just use Open.  

Later that week he received a request to change Completed to Complete on a workflow.  He made the change and shortly after our support desk blew up with reports of filters, dashboards, etc all breaking.  After a short scramble, we found the issue.  When following up with the individual I was able to determine that he misunderstood my explanation.  

[Piotr Zadrożny _Eyzee_]

Hi @Brant Schroeder 

The problem with the explanation also works the other way around.

A long time ago I was asked to set up a new project template and then new project. I received a workflow diagram and a very comprehensive description of what to configure. I started to work - it was very time-consuming because I haven't got a lot of experience back then and the project had quite unusual requirements. Except for the Issue Security Scheme, virtually every scheme had to be created from scratch. After quite a long time configuring the schemas, I was done and wanted to create a project based on them.

Then I realized that I was not asked to create a new project template, but just a new project. All schemas have been already created previously by another administrator. My task was only to create a new project based on them, which is a total of about 1 minute of work. There is of course a lesson I learned from that experience - always carefully read requirements and its details!

Best regards,

Piotr