How can I use every part of Jira without being blocked due to my template/product?

[Ethan Ave]

I'm using Jira for my small startup of 2 people. We are keeping track of EVERY part of a business from software development to company management, finances, marketing, sales, analytics, etc. I just want one template that is unrestricted and is capable of anything from any of the templates.

I keep running into features in Jira that do exactly what I need, but seem impossible to enable without changing my template/product, but then I lose other features that I still need.

Can I just do everything please? I don't care if it makes it possible to break something. We are two programmers running our first business; it is a very small operation right now. We don't need a dozen different projects across 3 different products that we will barely use that just clutter everything and make it difficult to keep track of, but at the same time, we do need a little of everything. Is there a solution?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

The different ways that projects work reflects what they are for, and some of the features directly clash with each other, so you can't do both at once.

That applies a lot more to team-managed projects than company-managed, you can pretty much change CMPs from one shape to another by reconfiguring them, so the answer is mostly "yes". 

But you'll need to choose a base template to start from.  Once you create a project from that, then you'll be able to reconfigure it to use any features you want.  What are the features you want to most widely use?

The clashing of features also applies to boards.  If you are using Jira Software, then you have a huge amount of flexibility to set up boards that go across projects (both CMPs and TMPs) but you can't use Scrum features on Kanban boards (Scrum uses estimates, Kanban does not, for example, and you can't get throughput reports for Scrum boards because that is a direct clash with the Sprint estimations)

[Ethan Ave]

I apologize, I'm new to Jira entirely and my partner who set up the project has only used it as a developer at other companies. 

We are on Team-managed Jira Software, Software Development template. We would like to be able to do software development, marketing, design, sales, operations, project management, human resources, legal, it operations, and finance all from one project.

We don't necessarily need every single feature, but want the ability to enable or disable features at our discretion; we would only need kanban or scrum not both. Do we need to switch to Jira Work Management to use 'Company-managed' projects?

Here are a few specific problems we've had:

• Enable child-issue planning on the timeline.
  • It seems this was recently added but it is impossible for me to enable `Start date` - In fact, I can't seem to enable any 'locked' issue field. 
  • https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/enable-child-issue-planning-for-kanban-teams-on-the-roadmap/
• Autoassign in-progress tasks to the person that set them to in-progress
  
  • Says I need to have the 'Server and Data Center' platform. What is a platform, and why do I need a data center to do this basic function?
  • https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/configuring-auto-assign-779158849.html

[Jeremy Cooley]

Hi @Ethan Ave 

First of all, glad you got some support here! 

I just came across your post and noticed that you want to use Jira for many use cases, including HR. I wanted to let you know that we recently created an HR Professionals community group. It's just getting started so there isn't a ton of activity yet, but we're hoping to make it a place where customers, community leaders, and product managers can talk about how they are using (or wish they could be using) Atlassian Products for HR applications. If that sounds interesting, check it out & join! 

Jeremy 

cc: @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- @Nikola Perisic 

[Nikola Perisic]

Welcome to the community @Ethan Ave 

I understand your requirement. With that said, what are the features that you used and also what is the current template that you are using for your project (I assume it is the software development one, correct me if I am wrong).

[Ethan Ave]

I apologize, I'm new to Jira entirely and my partner who set up the project has only used it as a developer at other companies. 

We are on Team-managed Jira Software, Software Development template. We would like to be able to do software development, marketing, design, sales, operations, project management, human resources, legal, it operations, and finance all from one project. Do we need to switch to Jira Work Management to enable 'Company-Managed' functionalities?

We are just beginning to look into managing the non-software parts of the company, so mainly our problems have been with software development workflow. Here are a few specific problems:

• Enable stories drilldown to view the list of subtasks from the Timeline.
  • Actually, it seems like this isn't even possible yet https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-18677
• Enable child-issue planning on the timeline.
  • It seems this was recently added but it is impossible for me to enable `Start date` - In fact, I can't seem to enable any 'locked' issue field. 
  • https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/enable-child-issue-planning-for-kanban-teams-on-the-roadmap/
• Autoassign in-progress tasks to the person that set them to in-progress
  
  • Says I need to have the 'Server and Data Center' platform. What is that, and why?
  • https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/configuring-auto-assign-779158849.html

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, you need to switch from using team-managed projects to company-managed projects.  Jira Work Management project templates can mostly be of either type.

Try creating a new "work management" project, and select "blank".  Under the "name the project" and "type", there is a "show more" expandable area, which will let you select Company Managed.

However, I would not recommend stuffing everything into one project, even for a small team.  Workflows and fields that work for development are useless for HR and finance.  You'll need to generate far too many confusing issue types in one place and then tie different configurations to them to make them work differently.

The auto-assign thing is about the Server and DC version of Jira, which is totally different to the Cloud Jira you are using.  Server/DC is software run on people's own servers, and Cloud diverged from it years ago.

[Nikola Perisic]

To do everything from one project is not possible. Jira Software is mainly used for the project management for the development teams.

Also, no you do not need to switch to JWM, to create company managed, you can create a new project and choose that project to be company managed.

From everything that I have read, Jira Work Management would be more suitable for you. It's focus is more on the business side though, but you can accomodate it for software development as well.

One distinguistion:

• Team-Managed - for teams who want to setup everything quick and customize everything by themselves, also is limited on configuration, simplified 
• Company-Managed - managed by Jira admins, more configuration, custom workflows

• For the first question about the Timeline, this is possible to have, but you need to have a premium version of Jira in order to change the issue hierarchy (since this is tied to the issue hierarchy)
• For the child issue it is only possible if you are on premium plan 
• Server is ending it's support in February 15th, so users are migrating to cloud or data center:
  • Server - type of Jira Software product (this was the first ever version of jira until cloud came)
  • Data Center - advanced version of server, more info could be found here:https://www.atlassian.com/enterprise/data-center/jira

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That's not quite true.

Basic Jira supports one child issue level.  If you add Software, you get a third, and Advanced planning lets you add more (as do some apps)

[Nikola Perisic]

Ah right, you are correct, missed that part.