Using JIRA Software for Web Design and Development?

[Robert Slippey]

Good morning, I've been evaluating JIRA Software for use with out small web design and hosting company. We're a small team and many of us still have full time jobs as well as other side projects in addition to our pursuit of a web design and hosting business. I can see the power of JIRA and the price seems right for our situation, however I'm struggling to understand how our workflow would fit.

Our goal would be to use JIRA to track specific web design projects from customer contact (lead) through deployment.

Our process looks something like this:

• Customer contacts us
• Meet with client/Discuss expectations, purpose of project
• Data collection (images for the site, text for website, ect)

At this point once we've got all of the data (mind you, we will begin development before getting all of the data as sometimes images can be made specifically for a website) However, at this point we move into a design phase

• Design Layout (think stick model)
  • customer review/approval
• Design complete layout (whole site designed as an image
  • Customer review/approval/change request

Once approved we move to the development phase where the design and content are combined into (usually) a WordPress website.

It might be important to note that in some cases a specific team member may work on the entire project from start to finish with only very minimal help from other team members in between.

As I understand a JIRA project would be the whole web project, an issue is individual issues or tasks required to meet the project goals. Any ideas on how can use JIRA for our project as it would seem issues would always remain the same? Or am I thinking about this in the wrong way?

Also important to note is: once the project completes it would go into a maintenance phase where we maintain the site which obviously results in completely different workflow. Is it possible to transition like this from one project type to another? We like the idea of using JIRA Software as we use Git and Bitbucket to maintain the repositories and branching.

Thanks for your help in advance, and I do apologies if my mind isn't completely wrapped around this properly.

[Robert Massaioli _Atlassian_]

As I understand a JIRA project would be the whole web project, an issue is individual issues or tasks required to meet the project goals. Any ideas on how can use JIRA for our project as it would seem issues would always remain the same?

This seems to be your fundamental question but I think I'm going to need you to expand on what you mean by that. Here is how I would setup your JIRA instance:

• Create a new JIRA project for every Website you build.
• You can allocate different workflows to different issues types. This is critical because, if I were you I would create two different workflows: one for the people building the website and one for customer approvals. I would then use all the standard issue types and add one more: a "Customer Demo" issue type.
• Issues made with the Customer Demo issue type would have a workflow that requires the customers approval. All other issues would follow your development workflow. You can configure issue types to use different workflows by employing schemes.
• Give you customers access to JIRA BUT don't give them access to all issues. Use groups and Issue Security schemes to restrict what the customer can see.

All of this combined will give you a very powerful JIRA instance that will meet your needs and let you move fast. Please let me know if that does not make sense.

[Robert Slippey]

Thanks Robert, Your response makes perfect sense to me. I've read a lot of documentation over the last week and I think where I'm falling short in my head is issues vs projects. I see my workflow (currently) as a project and status. So project Website1 is in mock-up status. What JIRA sees (and where I have trouble translating) is Website1 with issue1 is in mock up status. So I think it boils down to converting the workflow from a project centric to an issues centric. Does this mean I have to come up with a way to use issues to track the different stages of my projects? - Maybe, I'm willing to work with it. I've decided JIRA to be flexible enough for my needs for both my web projects and other projects as well as my business management processes in general that it's worth it to me to spend a little time figuring this out, just for the productivity I get out of it on the end.

[Vlad Ferguson]

Who can give an objective assessment of the design of my site: http://under-the-open-sky.com , I really need this information as I recently redesigned the site. It is advisable to look at the site from the user's side, how convenient the interface is, the site loads quickly, whether navigation is convenient, etc. P.S. I will be very grateful for the feedback ..!