Seeking Advice on Workflow Standardization Across Diverse Teams

[Rainier Klopper]

Hello Atlassian Community!

I’m reaching out to tap into the collective wisdom of this knowledgeable group. I work for a company that’s in the early stages of integrating Jira across multiple departments. We’re excited about the potential for streamlining our processes, but we’ve hit a bit of a snag when it comes to standardization — particularly with workflows.

Here’s our challenge: Our projects span a diverse range of disciplines including software and hardware development, testing, requirements engineering, and project management. Given this variety, finding a one-size-fits-all workflow seems impractical. Yet, management is keen to avoid a scenario where we have a multitude of custom workflows and fields for every project, which could lead to a maintenance nightmare and dilute the benefits of standardization. Self-managed projects are also not an option.

We’re currently deliberating how to balance the need for specialized workflows for different teams with the desire to maintain a manageable and standardized system within Jira. Has anyone else encountered this tension between customization and standardization? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences, strategies, or solutions that worked (or didn’t work).

To summarize, here are the key points we’re considering:

1. Maintaining a level of standardization in workflows to streamline process management across the company.
2. Accommodating the distinct needs of various teams (software/hardware development, testing, requirements engineering, project management).
3. Avoiding the overhead of managing and maintaining a large number of custom workflows and fields.

Any insights on workflow strategies, tips on striking the right balance, or anecdotes about your journey in a similar situation would be greatly appreciated!

Looking forward to your thoughts and thank you in advance for your help!

Best,

Rainier

[David Nickell]

Your problem is not unique (not by a longshot!).  

The trick is to get the "humans" to agree to a process and set of terms - Primarily Issue Types, Statuses (and workflow), Priorities, Fields, and of course Roles.

If someone says "There is a SEV2 Problem with the Production Customer Web", everyone should have a common understanding of what "SEV2", "PROBLEM", and "PRODUCTION CUSTOMER WEB" mean.  

To achieve that, you can use something like the Configuration Report I've worked on in the past.  This is NOT a sales pitch ... it's not quite ready for prime time.   But it is an illustration of a concept.   Think of it as a Data Dictionary for your Jira install.  Using the REST API is sooooo much more efficient than trying to keep documentation updated manually in Confluence (as an example).

This is pointing to Jira.Atlassian.Com but the data hasn't been updated in a while.  Be sure to check out the four existing tabs.     Hope this helps.

https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiM2YyMDk2OGUtYmIyOC00N2NiLWE5YzAtNTkxNTRjNjk4YjBhIiwidCI6IjNjZDVhOTg1LTBkM2YtNGM0ZC1hY2M1LTU2NTlhMTJiMTEyMyJ9