Jira for Remodeling Company

[Henry Schiller]

Dear Atlassian-Community,

I started a specialized clearing and remodeling company a few years ago and we are currently looking to implement new software. My goal is to have something alike an operating system for our company that we can use to manage our cases and also in the future our internal stuff, like HR or inventory management.

I have heard great things about Jira and its capability to solve business problems, but I am struggling to find a good base structure for us to go ahead with.

For better understanding, let me tell you about our general workflow. We (office of 3, with 20 service personnel that get their hands dirty) have about 50-100 ingoing cases on a rolling basis, with 3-5 new cases coming in every day usually via email or phone.

Each case consists of various stages: clearing out furniture, deep cleaning, deconstruction and reconstruction. Some cases need all of these stages, sometimes people only need us for a single stage or a few of them. Each stage has its own sub-stages, for instance the reconstruction stage, in which we need to order material, wait for completion of previous stages and approvals and so on. Usually after first contact, one of us drives onsite and discusses scope. Then, after our quote gets accepted, the case goes along with work step by step and stage by stage. So, our general workflow is structured, but each case is different and has different dependencies regarding the situation onsite.

For now, we use paper folders onsite which (for now) is quite good because it's bullet prove for our service people. We have software for our quotes and CRM, but planning is also done within these paper folders, with material lists and memos handwritten. It worked great so far, but with 50-100 paper folders flying around in our office and steady growth, it's hard to keep track of everything. You might get an idea, why I want to beam us from last century into 2021.

I am not afraid of a longterm project to implement this, but my current struggle is: How do I structure Jira to work with this? Do I use a Jira Project for each new case or do I use issues and epics for a case? Or do I use tasks in Jira Core? Are there any great add-ons that you can suggest?

I would love some hint or best practice that might point me to a great solution.

Thank you so much for your help.

Henry

[John Funk]

Hi Henry - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Congratulations on getting your company up and running and having some growth there!

There are a few ways to go about this - when of the great things about Jira in my opinion is the flexibility that it provides. But that can make it a bit more daunting to get started with, too.

One way to approach it is to have different issue types for each of your standard scenarios. Then you can create a separate and unique workflow for each issue type. You can still have a single board with all of the issue types present on the one board, but you can also add quick filters to narrow down your focus on each type.

A Classic Software project would probably be the best bet in that case.

Or you can create a Business type project (that's Jira Core) and implement a single workflow with flexibility to move cards from one column to another based on the need. It's a little more loosey goosey this way and not as focused on the first approach above. But it's a little more straightforward to get things started.

If you think you will need the more flexible and powerful approach, you should go ahead with Classic Jira project right off the bat as there is no way to "convert" a project from one type to another. You can migrate it, so it is not out of the question at all, if you want to switch, though. 

Add-ons will become more apparent once you get up and using the basics first to see what you might need for complexity's sake. 

I hope that gets you started at least. Feel free to post back here. 

[Vicki Wilt]

Hi Henry, 

The best part/hardest part of these tasks are trying to find a way that works for you. I have only been using Jira for 2 years, and I never set anything up myself with it. From a project planning perspective, you can set up various 'swim lanes' that can show ALL projects and their status. Maybe you do this now on a white board?  This column is everything in quoting, this one is negotiations, this column is everything in progress needs 4 people this week to ramp up and not this equipment, but when they get the job going will require 8 people plus this equipment. Different phases show up on the board at different parts of a 'project', while juggling all projects and all resources that support your business. EPICS can be the main project and you make it the address or something '123 Hickory Street'. Tasks can be how many action items it takes at that site. They move in and out of 'to do, in progress, waiting on resources, closed' You can also create sub-tasks for each main task if you wanted. Every time a specific task is set up of a certain kind, it alerts 'Jim' the foreman of this area.  If you label the Epics and the tasks correctly you can filter and sort at the end of the month, quarter,  year where your work was focused.  I see there were 500 deep cleaning jobs in 1st Qtr 2021.  We quoted 500, and we didn't get 125 of them. 100 of those deep cleaning jobs were offices, 50 were factories, and so on.  All of these 'types' for later on filters are a setting on the Epic that you set up yourself.  

It is a powerful tool and it can grow as you learn to grow and use it.  My role is to move tickets in and out of different areas. I move them to TODO, I assign the work they mark it IN PROGRESS, then it moves to Quality Assurance, to Deployment and then Closed. At the end of 2020 I'm able to report on all the tasks and their types and the counts.  Hope this helps.  Good luck!