Closing a Project In Jira

[James Heaphy]

I am flabergasted to see that Jira, purporting to be a "Project Management" tool has, after several years, still not grasped what a project actually is. I understand that it might mean different things to different folks but REALLY ! ALL Projects have a START AND END DATE. Look it up on the project management institute site. PLEASE Allow for a status of closed. It is unusable in its present form regardless of whether you feel you have a large number of adopters of your Jira product. ITS pretty SIMPLE- PROJECTS CLOSE ! Allow users to mark them as closed without going through the manual and amateur nonsense you are proposing.

Thanks

[James Heaphy · Accepted solution]

Thanks Scott, very frustrating. Of the 3 suggestions you found, the first is so archaic I cannot comprehend that Atlassian would even allow such nonsense to be suggested on one of their forums. The other two don't provide any solutions either. Is there anyway this can be bubbled up to someone at Atlassian rather than hoping they see it in the community? We as large US clients will abandon the product pretty quickly if it cannot be resolved. All I see in all the comments is disbelief and frustration that Jira does not have a simple status "Open" "Closed" . Can Atlassian please start paying attention. Thanks again Scott.

James 

[Scott Theus]

Happy to help! The links I shared are not from the Community Forum, but rather directly from Atlassian's "to do" list. This is where support requests go, including  VOC product suggestions, bugs, etc. for the product owners to review. 

If there is a particular way you'd like to be able to close out projects you can submit it as an enhancement request here: Support Contact. 

-Scott

[James Heaphy]

Thanks Scott, that is very helpful so I will write something up and submit it there.

Cheers!

[Daniel Eads]

Hi James,

Daniel from Atlassian Support here. We are active on Community and care about your pain points! Earlier this year an Archive feature shipped for Jira Data Center. Based on your description, I’m pretty sure the Archive feature addresses your concern.

After archiving a project, the issues no longer show up in search and the project itself only shows up in a list of archived projects. It’s two clicks to archive a project.

Given your organization’s size, Data Center might be something to consider if you’re currently on a Server license. We’d love to get in touch with you and evaluate if Data Center makes sense.

Cheers,
Daniel

[James Heaphy]

Thanks Daniel, that will have to do I guess. It is not ideal! 

In any case, when I get to the Projects Admin screen I see the 3 dots but it takes me to "Project Settings" with no option to archive. We do actually use both an on prem and cloud instance of Jira and it is in the cloud version that I am trying to close a project but your 3 dots are taking you to a different place than mine. 

Cheers,

James 

[Daniel Eads]

Sorry for the confusion there James! The Archiving feature is exclusive to the Data Center deployment of Jira and isn't available in Jira Server or Jira Cloud.

[Amy.Harvey]

I agree with James on this entire chain.   Closing a project is a basic project management feature one would expect on a project solution.  

I'd like to advocate that a "close" or archive feature is critical for all versions of JIRA.  I'm on JIRA cloud, and struggling with projects that should be "closed" and are currently cluttering up the system.

I don't think using permissions is an acceptable work-around. Using a project status field would be acceptable - if the "closed" status would actually hide the project.  

Would be nice to see Atlassian support this.

[Shravan]

Daniel, When can we expect project closing option in JIRA cloud instance? This is really important point in project management.

[Alison Weidner]

I should have brought this up when I was at the Atlassian Team tour in New York.  I made a few contacts, perhaps I will send  them this thread.

[Shravan]

thanks, would be better if all can push if this feature is highly needed.

[Simon Hobson]

Hiya, this is something I'd really benefit from as well!

[Todd Jennings]

We are struggling with the same issue, insane in my mind as well to not be able to close/archive something. We want to keep the records for reflection or to look back but not have them on the main board or in other reports. At this point it is creating enough of an issue to start looking for another Agile solution stack.

[Dishant Patel]

Seriously! You have built such an excellent product and you have not provided an essential feature to Close the Project. This is beyond my understanding of what you were thinking. Every project is not going to be reusable, some projects are developed and delivered successfully and we want to close the project. But it continuously came across our eyes. Please do something and implement the close project feature ASAP. 

[Jack Brickey]

Hi @Dishant Patel , This is a really old post and probably isn't getting a lot of attention. There is the ability to archive project now which is different than it was back in 2018. Further you may wish to use the Feedback link in the application to provide your feedback to Atlassian directly.

[Dishant Patel]

Yes @Jack Brickey, but I am not able to post my concern and while finding out how to close the project I came across this chain. I am not concerned about achieving. How can I close my project as a status so that I can know this project is completed and closed. I am not finding that option. 

[Hartwig Schieck]

@Jack Brickey Although this might be an old post, somehow it's the only one we found searching for a solution to the "How to close or archive a project". I'm glad to hear that in contrast to 2018 there is a way to archive/close projects in Jira Cloud now, but could you please leave a hint where to find that feature in Jira Cloud 2022 or a link to some kind of documentation?

[Jack Brickey]

@Hartwig Schieck ,  indeed "archive" is available in Cloud Premium but not in Standard or Free tier. If you have Premium you will find "archive" as an option under the ellipses for each project in the Projects page. 

[James]

@Jack Brickey how is this a premium only feature, jeez. Atlassian seem to out do themselves regularly

[Jack Brickey]

@James Heaphy , I can't say as I don't work for Atlassian. With that said, I guess the line between standard and premium features has to lie somewhere. I guess the archive feature was hanging with the cool kids that day. 😉

[Scott Theus · Accepted solution]

Hi @James Heaphy,

I agree, I also have several projects that I would like to close out and remove from the list of in flight projects...once a project is done, it's done. At some point if changes are needed, even in a true Agile world, a new project should be stood up. 

There are a number of open suggestions for Atlassian to allow admins to close or archive projects, here are some of them: 

JRACLOUD-66849

JRACLOUD-68228

JSWCLOUD-16521

You can vote on these if you like; Atlassian does pay attention to the suggestions and the voting helps them set the priority on enhancements selected for implementation.

Hope this helps, if so please mark this as "accepted" so others can find it easily.

-Scott

[James Heaphy · Accepted solution]

In closing, my comments and suggestions are directed solely at Atlassian not the user community. I will send something directly to them and post a comment back here when I her back from them. Thanks Everyone!

[mike_bright]

Hi James!
Your question is very pertinent, I have the same need at the moment.
Did you find any solution that makes sense to use to manage project statuses (active, suspended, closed, canceled)?

Thanks!

Miguel Moreira

[Amy.Harvey]

Me too!   If there is any solution from Atlassian, please share.  

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

@James Heaphy, out of pure curiosity what would be an acceptable implementation of closing a project? More precisely in the current Jira application what would you want to see. Currently I have used the project Category for archiving projects. Basically I created Archived and I created an archive permission scheme that I apply to any project I wish to 'hide'. So I'm wondering what are the requirements for closure in your case?

[James Heaphy]

Hi Jack, I see them as completely different concepts and do not want to use something not designed to actually close a project to do so. Why don't I just get a post it and cover them on my screen when displaying projects at a management meeting. Its simple, project management principles have been around longer than Atlassian and one of those simple concepts is that projects close! To answer your question, I would like to see a status with the following flags available : " Open", "Closed" "On Hold" 

In closing, I truly believe anyone arguing against this feature implementation doesn't actually know anything about project management agile, full blown, whatever. By its very definition projects have a start and end date. Again, look up any Project management site, any PM discipline! MS Project ?

Do construction projects ever close? How about the Manhattan Project, is that still open ? The Apollo Mission ? Software projects are no different in that concept.

Seriously, get a grip guys!

Cheers,

James 

[Jack Brickey]

@James Heaphy, i wanted to reiterate that I was simply seeking more input from you on what an acceptable implementation would be. It seems that what you would like is to have a "Project Status" value (Open/Active, Closed/Complete, On Hold).

Earler you requested how to raise to Atlassian. I would refer you to jira.atlassian.com where you could open a suggestion. Hope that helps.

[James Heaphy]

Thanks Jack, yes, a Project Status would be extremely useful and I will open a suggestion to the link you provided.

James 

[James Heaphy]

Thanks Jack, thats what I plan to do.

James 

[Nikki DuBois]

We created an issue type of Project where we house all Project Management information. It goes through a workflow to support phases and finally use a status of done for closed out. The project issue type then archives after 2 weeks on the board for look back and reporting. If you would like to learn more about how this is working for us, happy to share.

[Adam Langmeyer]

Is there still really no way to close/archive a project in the cloud version?

[Ronald Cheng]

I believe you can update your account to premium, archive the Jira project and then downgrade your account.

[Rick Sawyer]

I, like others in this thread, am completely stunned and frustrated that a simple Project Status option isn't available. It's about the most basic of a PM stat as there possibly is.  I want to filter my Project Dashboard to include or exclude any/all projects by New (or Not Started), In Progress, On Hold, and Completed.  I don't want to jump through the hoops I've seen offered  on these boards like changing project permissions to read-only, or archiving or deleting projects, etc....   Just like JIRA issues have a StatusCategory of "To Do", "In Progress" and "Done", which I use all the time in my filters, projects should be same. 

[Oleg Golovko]

For completeness, I would add a "Canceled" status.

Otherwise, I completely agree with you.

[Blair Rodgers]

I also would like to be able to close projects in Jira Cloud, it's very frustrating having all this clutter around.

When are we going to have this feature in cloud please?

[Alison Weidner]

OMG, yes.  I was searching in vain for the ability to "close" a project.  I'm on the cloud version and I cannot believe that there is no such option Atlassian!