Finding out if Jira fits us, thoughts about project setup?

[RedBottle]

So we are currently testdriving Jira (and some other products) to see if it fits our project management needs.

We are a small company (10 people), who provide consulting services to a variety of customers.

We have different kind(/type) of services we provide for our customers, which we would like to track in Jira, so it's not just floating somewhere in a consultants head ;)
Most of those projects require multiple people to work on, so thats why we are looking for a good tool to help us keep track.

Those projects(/services) for customers could last from a month up to 2 year (or even more). Also some customers could have multiple projects running at the same time.

I'm now thinking of what could be a good way to set this up in Jira.

For example, should we set up a Jira Project per customer, and drop all projects for that customer into that Jira Project, or should we set up a Jira Projects per project, so we would have multiple (seperate configurable) Jira projects?

Another important thing is that we want to standardize our projects, so it would awesome if we could easily create a new Project and have some default issues and status types automatically created. (maybe via templates or something?)

When i search around for this 'feature', i can't seem to find much, although there are some paid plugins that are still quite a hassle to achieve this 'simple' feature.

[John Funk]

Hi Red,

I would create a project per Customer. Then create Epics for each "project" for that customer. And you can certainly setup automation rules to create new Epics and associated pre-defined tasks/stories for the Epic using automation rules. And that's all built into Jira Cloud - you don't need a plugin. 

[Charlie Misonne]

This is also how I would do it!

[Stephen_Lugton]

@RedBottle My thoughts on Jira project per Customer vs Jira project per Project:

The version of Jira you are using (Standard, Premium, etc.) would change my thinking on this, but based on the size of your company I will assume you are going to be using the Standard version.

This version allows for 3 hierarchy levels in each Jira project:

• Epic
• Story/Task
• Sub-task

If you use one Jira project per Customer you would have to separate out the different Projects at the Epic level. Although this is possible it will mean that all the Deliverables and Work items will be grouped as Stories or Tasks and you can end up with what seems like a never ending list as more stories are added throughout the Project.

We tend to prefer using Epics as deliverables so the work can be split up into smaller chunks of value hence we would use Jira projects per Project if we were on the Standard version.

Since each Jira project has a unique 'key' you can use that reference for tracking. reporting, etc.

You can use filters to group together all the projects related to a specific Customer, and indeed you could have a Jira project per Project and then a separate board that has a filter for all the Projects for a specific Customer

E.g.:

labels = "Customer 1"

You could then create a new board using that filter with swimlanes set up per project.

So, with what limited info we have, for your use I would recommend Jira project per Project, especially since you can link Jira projects to your billing cycle for those smaller projects

---

An added feature in Premium versions of Jira is the ability to add extra hierarchy levels and many people have a hierarchy setup something like: 

• Theme
• Feature
• Epic
• Story/Task
• Sub-task

This would allow you to use the theme level for different Projects and have all the work for one Customer in one Jira project.

[RedBottle]

Thanks for your extended answer! This helps me a lot to understand the ways we could use Jira.

If we choose Jira, we will go for the Standard plan, i don't think we need the extra hierarchy levels. (yet..)

I agree with your comments about a Jira project per project:
For some types of projects we would like to use some extra status types, i think that would clutter our boards if we put multiple projects in one customer Jira project.

[Stephen_Lugton]

I don't remember whether company managed projects are available in standard, but I would recommend that you use company managed projects which would allow you to set up default issue types and statuses / workflows (even if that just means copying from another project when you set up a new project)

[Alexey Sorochkin]

@RedBottle 

Its is probably good idea to have one Jira Project and Confluence Space per customer.

You also can create the Template Customer project with pre-set Epics and and tasks.

The other option would be to create automation rules that perform initial setup, once new project is created.

On the top of the standard Jira hierarchy you also can set custom levels ("Initiative" for example). It will help you address multiple phases / engagements with same customer.