Have you ever changed a project's type?

[Christopher Nortje]

We're looking to simplify Jira and we need your insights to help us.

The Jira platform lets software teams, service teams, and business teams collaborate with a single site to track their work.

We sometimes see teams change their project type after setting up a new project - usually from a software project to a business project.

Have you ever changed a project's type? If you have, why?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I recently helped someone change Software projects into both Service Desk and Business projects, for broadly the same reason - simplification.  You take a Software project being used for development and then gradually add non-development users to it so they can create their own issues in there without you needing to do it for them or help them with it. 

Once you get enough of them in there, your project purpose shifts - it's part way between "tracking the basics for the end user" and "lots of development information".  And, quite often, development teams shift around and teams change. 

So it's a split - the end users get the business or helpdesk project for gathering issues with simple tracking, and the developers get nice new development projects for new work and their new structures, and the judicious moving of some of the older stuff.

We've also seen (on Cloud), some development teams vastly under-using boards and saying "why can't it be more like Trello with a workflow?" - pretty much what a business board does.

And in the other direction, I have seen Business projects go to Software.  It's mainly when a team that is ok with Business (at first) builds up enough knowledge and familiarity that they're happy to work out the additional stuff you get with Kanban (or even Scrum) boards, especially the tracking.

[Christopher Nortje]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- Thanks for the insight.

From my observation when moving to another project type there are a few parts of the project that don't work correctly as the specific product features have not been configured by default (example: moving to Jira Service Desk there would be no queues, moving to Jira Software there would not be a board). Do you find that there is a lot of configuration needed to make the projects work after changing the project type? Why not move the issues to a new project?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'd judge each case on its own merits - we often did move issues to new projects. 

You still have to do all the "new" config whether you're moving or flipping the flag.  Moving to a new project can mean having to replicate some or all of the current config of the old project too (the further away from the template you use, the more needs doing), and that can become long and boring if you've done things like project-specific custom fields.  So we always look at how the projects currently work and how we want them to, then decide which way to go from there.  Generally, the starting point is "just how much do you want to change in this project?"

[Pete Dunham]

This new restriction (no longer able to change project type) has inadvertently hindered my organization ability to support projects.  We have some projects that were setup as Business projects that would now like Boards setup and are unable to meet specific requirements without converting to a Software project.

It is a problem to setup a new project with a new key due to the business impacts (teams are already referencing existing key). 

Are there any work arounds to avoid a new project setup? This would be be greatly appreciated. At the time of setup we have previously witnessed changes back and forth between Software and Business projects so this was not considered a critical decision at that time.

Thank you, 

[Christopher Nortje]

Unfortunately, there is no workaround that gets you 100% of what you're looking for. One of these two options might be an alternative.

1. New project option

• Create a new software project using any project key.
• Move all existing issues from the business project to the newly created software project.
• Delete the old business project to free up the project key.
• Rename the newly created software project's key to the key that you would like to use (old key).

Unfortunately, during the move; the issue keys are not guaranteed to maintain the same issue number (unless you move one issue at a time to match up the sequence, watch out for deleted issues). Example: OLDKEY-1 could become NEWKEY-2

2. Board only option

• Create a saved filter for the issues on the business project.
• Create a new software project and then create a new board using the saved filter.