How to avoid having the wild west of new status creation in Jira

[Martha Haley]

We implemented Jira several months ago and we've already amassed a big list of different statuses and it gets added to almost every time someone creates a new project.  Several of the statuses created appear to mean the same thing, just slightly different wording.  2 questions:

1. How do others manage this? Do you have a standard list of statuses to choose from or do you just let people create new statuses whenever they see fit?

2. I think some of the statuses aren't even being used by an active project. Is there a quick way to ascertain this?  If you look at the list of statuses, it shows you what workflows they are associated with, but then you have to figure out if those workflows are even in use.  Seems like there must be an easier way.    

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

This is one of the reasons I tell people not to use Team Managed projects unless they're a small organisation.  The repetition of fields and status completely messes up all your searching and reporting.

[John Funk]

Hi Martha,

If you are working with Team-managed projects, there is no way to avoid that. 

With Company-managed projects, you can create a base project (or some would call it a template project) that has the workflows and statuses like you want them. Then create the new projects using the existing project. This will copy the schemes (including workflows and therefore statuses) to the new project.