Process for archiving/deleting projects

[Lynda Zimmer]

Hello
We have a large number of old projects that people aren't using anymore that we'd like to get rid of.  And in doing that, put together an archival/deletion process at our company.
In our Projects list we have the ability to either archive or delete.

Do folks out there have a good process for identifying projects to archive/remove?
Perhaps when there's been no issues for x amount of time you do this?  Is it 6 months?  2 years, etc?
Do you make decisions on what to archive vs delete? 

Would love to hear what people have implemented at their companies, thank you!

[Lynda Zimmer]

Thank you for your feedback @Trudy Claspill !

[Aaron Pavez _ServiceRocket_]

Hi @Lynda Zimmer 

That should be a business decision. If they are not used and don't need anything from the project, delete them. But always backup.

Archive if you still need to reference the project.

There are a couple of posts that could help:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Why-should-we-ever-delete-a-Project/qaq-p/2502567

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Cloud-Admins-questions/When-you-archive-a-project-what-cleanup-do-you-do/qaq-p/2012299

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Answers-Developer-Questions/Archive-rather-than-delete-projects/qaq-p/528955

The community search is your friend here:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?advanced=false&allow_punctuation=false&q=archive+or+delete+project

Regards

[Trudy Claspill]

I generally recommend against deleting projects. When you delete them they are gone forever.

There is not a native process to backup and restore individual projects in Jira Cloud, so that could become cumbersome if you want to have individual projects backed up in a restorable format.

Archiving projects has the advantages of

1. making the project easily restorable,
2. making the project read only,
3. removing the issues from the Index which makes searching faster (noting that the issues in the archived projects will no longer be included in any search results.

The removal of archived project issues from the index might be considered a disadvantage. Any gadget or board or saved filter or link from another app that references the archived projects will no longer show the information from those projects.

[Lynda Zimmer]

Thank you @Aaron Pavez _ServiceRocket_ !!  Super fast response - I'll take a look at those pages.  Appreciate it.