Jira Software Configuration Advise - One Single Project or Multiple Projects?

[Sarah Chapman]

Hello Jira Community, 

I have been tasked with configuring Jira for a business, that is new to agile and Atlassian products.  I am trying to configure Jira in a way that is Simple for task management using Epics, Users Stories, Tasks; suitable for new users of Jira to understand; Flexible and suitable configuration to eventually integrate to Jira Service Desk.

I would be keen to get peoples advise and opinions on the best way to set up Jira Project Boards and any pitfalls we might encounter, based on the following options I am considering below. 

Option 1

• Separate Project Board for individual teams: Analysts, Development, Warehouse 
• Each would have the following issue types epic, user stories, tasks. 
• Epics to split out projects, Project A, Project B etc and duplicate across the 3 project boards for the teams
• Create a Master project to create Kanban Board to view all tasks across the 3 project boards (Analysts, Development, Warehouse) along with dashboards as well. 

Option 2

• One Project Board
• Component - Split by team Analysts, Development, Warehouse. 
• Epics would be used to split out projects, Project A, Project B
• Set up multiple Kanban boards for the teams, Analyst Board, Development Board, Warehouse Board.

Any advise would be much appreciated. 

Thanks 

[Andrew Kendris · Accepted solution]

Hello @Sarah Chapman - it’s great you are thinking this out now because it will save so much rework down the road!! 

At onset, I would say go with Option 2 because bullet 3 in Option 1 seems like it will get tedious down the road (it’s always good practice to minimize risk duplication from the start). Plus you can still use Dashboards for effective reporting and project health checks. 

I would add a few questions to think about:

- do these teams need to work together (ie do the analysts need to assign work to development)? 

- will one team have a different workflow than the other teams? 

- for the issue types, will one team have specific fields for an issue type that are not needed for the other two teams of that same issue type? 

[Sarah Chapman]

Hi @Andrew Kendris 

Thanks for your response. Really helpful. 

In response to some of the questions:

-Analysts will need to assign work to Dev to fix bugs issues etc. 

-Generally the workflow will be the same there might be a few different statuses but am planning to not set transitions so we can progress through any stage of the process. 

-Generally the fields for each team will be the same for issue types at this early stage. Dev might want to change this, with time and experience.

With that in mind one project board could be ideal at this stage.  

The thing I really want to avoid is the whole duplication and silo working approach as I have seen it really hinder team working practices. 

[Andrew Kendris]

Looks like you are set up for success 🙂 Keeping the configuration for workflows and fields as simple as possible with go great lengths down the road.  Good luck to you and your team on your new project! 🍀