Classic and next-gen project templates in Jira Software Cloud

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Author's note: The content on this page is out of date. The latest comparison information between classic and next-gen Jira can be found at our official documentation.

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If you're a Jira admin, you may have noticed that we have two different Scrum and Kanban templates in Jira Software - next-gen templates and classic templates. We've written this article to explain the difference, to help you make the right choice for your team. 

Next-gen projects is agile as you know it, and aims to combine the power of Jira with the simplicity you expect. It enables teams to start clean, with a simple un-opinionated way of working, and is poised to progressively add more structure to the way your team works, as and when you need it.

The way we’re approaching the new next-gen experience mirrors this philosophy - we started with a clean slate and we are rebuilding Jira front to back, and progressively disclosing the power to you.

Next-gen will eventually satisfy all the needs that classic projects satisfy today, and more. 

I don't wanna read a whole article - what's the difference between the two right now? 

What are next-gen project templates?

The new Jira Software experience is easier to configure and grows more powerful every day. Part of the new experience are next-gen Scrum and Kanban project templates. They provide a streamlined experience, are easier to use, and quicker to set up than classic projects. Think Trello, for software teams. If you're new to Jira, new to agile, or work in a small team, we recommend you start your project with one of these templates.

We're always listening to your feedback and making improvements to these templates based on what you say. If you're keen to help us shape the future of Jira Software, hit the Give feedback button in the project menu. To find out what features are coming next, check out our release notes page. 

 

What are classic project templates?

The classic Scrum and Kanban project templates have all the power and functionality that Jira is known for. These templates have a steep learning curve, but a huge number of options for planning, tracking, and reporting on your team's work. If your team is familiar with Jira, has a mature agile practice, or has a complex workflow, we recommend sticking to these templates. 

  

A more detailed breakdown of the differences

Classic projects	Next-gen projects
Expert configuration Complete control over workflows, issue types, custom fields, permissions, and just about anything else you can think of.	Lightweight configuration Simple setup for issue types, custom fields, permission and status transition rules.
Centralized management by Jira admins Standardized configuration for the way teams work with the ability to share that configuration across projects. Configuration objects (like issue types, fields, and workflows) are globally reusable across your Jira site.	Independent management by project members Teams configure their project's settings without impacting other projects. Empowers teams to manage their projects, without bothering a Jira admin or breaking global configuration.
Detailed permissions Detailed and granular project permissions. Get more specific about who can do what in your project.	Simplified permissions Simple access permissions only. Choose if a project can be accessed by the team, or by everyone on your Jira site.
In Jira Software (software projects)
Advanced custom fields Add custom fields to track more detailed information. Customize your issue types with required fields, default values, checkboxes, dates, labels, selectors, attachments and more.	Basic custom fields Create custom text, number, date, time, and label fields for your project's issue types. Required fields, default values and more custom field types and options coming soon. Priority and resolution per project is coming soon.
Story points and time estimation Estimate your team's current performance and forecast what's to come using story points or time estimates.	Story point estimation only Estimate your team's current performance and forecast what's to come using story points. Time estimation coming soon.
Comprehensive agile reporting Gain insights into all aspects of your team's agile performance such as velocity, cycle times, burndowns, and more.	Essential agile reporting Track and analyze your team's output with velocity and burnup charts.
Advanced workflows Fully customize your workflows, statuses and issue transitions. Automate certain Jira tasks using post functions, validations, and conditions.	Rules Easily automate repetitive actions when you move issues across the board or into new statuses. Rules add more power to your board, allowing you to track work in more detailed ways. Workflow configuration coming soon.
No counterpart in classic projects.	Roadmap (built into next-gen software projects) Track your project's milestones, themes or epics with a brand new timeline view. Plan, manage, and visualize epics on your team's roadmap, and share it with stakeholders for easy communication.

New to next-gen projects in Jira Software Cloud? Check out this guide to getting started with next-gen projects. 

Would like to know a lot more about next-gen? Watch the new Jira begins now.

Interested in what's coming next? Please visit the public roadmap.

[Doug Odegaard]

Thank you for writing this up.  I created a new JIRA instance today with a client to get them going on the product and found myself speechless in front of them as features had disappeared after I had touted the awesome things in there.  This gives me a perspective on what is going on. 

[Doug Odegaard]

If we use the new templates how long will we wait for Epics and Estimation features and will we have to do deep work on customization of those templates to make it happen once they are released?  If you can describe the path we will take to include those elements it would be great for planning and implementation choice now.  Thanks

[John Joyce]

There should have been a lot more clarity on this release, it's a major step backwards IF you've managed to created a project using the new templates.  One of my admins has created a new project mistakenly against a new template and now we have no way of administering the notifications, the project lead or very little.

I have no idea why someone would want such a feature to be honest but it seems as though people must have asked for it.

[MaryP]

@John JoyceYou should be able to convert it to the template you want to use.

[Faisal Sharif]

@Doug Odegaard pretty much same thing happened to me also. I am in the process of moving a client to Jira and ... stuck now.

Even this page kept logging me out on MS Edge. Had to switch to Google Chrome to be able to read it.

Just wondering that why didn't Atlassian develop it fully before rolling it out.

It would be better to not have a Jira rather than a Jira without estimates.

[Kelly Albrecht _Western Massachusetts_]

It doesn’t look problematic to bulk edit/move issues to/from the old/new template. Has anybody tried?

[patrickt010]

Hey, Y'all! Thanks so much for your feedback. 

@Doug Odegaard The team is currently working on Epics and Estimation, no deep work required to get it up and running once we roll them out. Hopefully, this helps provide clarity around your decision to use or not use the featured projects. 

@John Joyce A large part of the strategy behind these templates are to create a simpler starting point for teams as we progressively build up the power. You can create another project template and migrate your issues from this project if the one you created does not suit the needs of your team.

@Faisal Sharif You can still create the existing project templates if these ones do not meet your needs. The team is currently working on adding estimation which will be released soon. 

@Kelly Albrecht _Western Massachusetts_ Yep, you can bulk move issues from one project to another. Here are more details on how to do it.  

Keep the feedback coming! This helps us prioritize what we work on next. 

[Jenya Farris]

I'd also like to know when story points and estimation is coming to this template. It is very confusing that the online documentation describes functions and steps to set up your project that are inapplicable to these templates.

[Faisal Sharif]

@Patrick Thompson how can I create projects with "classic project templates"?

[Brittany Balog]

I can no longer access my shared configuration option to create new projects and cannot move forward with clients or our work and reporting until this is fixed - support has not answered a solution to this would be very appreciated. 

[Patrick Thompson]

@Jenya Farris You can learn more about these projects in the managing independent projects and the working with agility boards documentation. Story point estimation is coming very soon. 

@Faisal Sharif If you're an admin of your site, you should be able to see all of the project templates that exist and choose the option that works best for that team. Non-admins only see independent projects. 

@Brittany Balog We recently moved shared configuration out of the list of templates, once you select a template it is available under 'Advanced' as a checkbox 'Share settings with an existing project'. I've attached an image below, hopefully, this helps. 

[Vanessa Barrett]

Releasing these new templates without all functionality available, then placing them at the top of the list so they are most likely to be selected is a combination of the worst release and UX decisions you could have made. 

There is so much functionality missing from the new templates that, unless you want a basic project for an individual, they are pretty much unusable. 

For what, I would imagine, your staff at decision making level are earning, this is pretty poor,

[patrickt010]

@Vanessa Barrett Thanks for taking the time to give us feedback. We're progressively building up the power of these new templates and adding features regularly. This experience has been in the product for a little over a year but we just recently increased their prominence within templates. We believe that these templates meet the needs of most teams but we understand if your team requires the existing power of Jira available within the classic templates. I'd love to understand what features your team uses that aren't available within the new templates. This information helps us prioritize what features we work on next. Thanks again! 

[Doug Odegaard]

@patrickt010 thank you so much for the feedback and next steps.  I appreciate the transparency.

[patrickt010]

@Doug Odegaard No worries, we know how critical Jira Software is for teams today. As we roll out the next generation experience of Jira Software we view this as a two-way conversation, please continue to give us your feedback and if at any time I can help send me an email at pthompson@atlassian.com. 

[Ryan Lederman]

I created a new client "scrum project". In the past I was able to select a project template "Create with shared configuration" so that the project tickets went to a shared board with all our clients. I no longer know how to do this with the new UI. Please help ASAP so I can get this into our internal sprint ryan.lederman@denverdata.com 

Thanks

[Vanessa Barrett]

@Patrick Thompson Thanks for the fast reply. We use the advanced configuration as different issues are assigned different workflows and fields and we like to customise our transitions. 

We also use epics, subtasks and time-tracking. 

We also use multiple boards with  different filters and config settings on the boards. 

None of these were available (or were so hidden that I was unable to find them) in the new UI. There may have been other things missing, but I was more focused on trying to fix my issue than to go through and find the other things that were missing that we would use. 

[Vanessa Barrett]

@ryan - I think Patrick answered this one above...

We recently moved shared configuration out of the list of templates, once you select a template it is available under 'Advanced' as a checkbox 'Share settings with an existing project'. I've attached an image below, hopefully, this helps. 

Hope that is what you were after :)

[Joel Murray]

These should have been called Beta Templates, since they are cut down to almost no features and under development. Having almost no features is not "easier learning curve", it is just a lack of functionality to do the job Jira was selected for.

I just started setting up projects after evaluating Server version, assumed stuff must be hidden in different menus, got frustrated with none of the instructions for Cloud having the options and buttons mentiond in the documentation. So now creating new projects ignoring the suggestion wizard and reading what these new templates are.

Now I have to start again with the Classic templates or try and convert templates, which is probably asking for bugs which will haunt the projects forever and confuse tech support so best to just start the projects fresh.

[Eoin]

Hi @Joel Murray. Apologies for the frustrating experience you've had! Your feedback here is great and we are currently working on making it much more discoverable that there is a new project experience and what features are currently available in this experience. We absolutely want to avoid getting into the situation that you found yourself in. 

The best way to continue your work on a classic template is to create a new project and move your issues over. Feel free to reach out to me (eryan@atlassian.com) if you are having any difficulties with this.

Again thanks for the feedback!

[Steve Terelmes]

Implementing this type of functionality that cuts somewhat sideways across PM and Admin worlds can create a lot of problems from a governance standpoint. I don't personally care for the new functionality and believe it goes the wrong direction in supporting cross-team success. It also may confuse a company's efforts to implement tools that depend on scrum/kanban - like Portfolio. But if Atlassian finds a lot of support for this kind of thing, I would strongly recommend including some control features with it. Maybe allow admins to turn it on/off. Or maybe create a global permission for it. 

[Eoin]

@Steve Terelmes we are looking to make it easier to add control where necessary rather than making the experience over restrictive by default. There is a global permission for independent projects (we're working on how we name the new project experience so this may change). In the future, we'll also look to have a way to share settings between the new projects so that multiple teams in the same company can share their ways of working. Thanks for the feedback!

[Reiss Snooks]

Is the plan with the new Incident Management template to eventually have full Service Desk functionality or is it going to be just for the purpose of handling major incidents?

[Kevin Bui]

@Reiss Snooks Thanks for asking, and sorry for not getting back to you sooner. While I don't work on the new Incident Management template, I can see a question quite similar to yours is covered at the Jira Ops FAQ:

Do incidents in Jira Ops overlap with incidents in Jira Service Desk ITIL workflow?

Good question. We've thought about this a lot and spoken to many customers about it. Our plan with Jira Ops is to offer an incident response solution for teams managing major incidents in a DevOps or "You Built It, You Run It” environment, a new challenge which ITIL doesn’t really cover.

For Jira Ops, we have features like alerting team members via on-call solutions, creating integrated chat rooms for discussions, and running a postmortem process to analyze and fix the underlying causes. These features that only make sense for a small subset of typical ITIL incidents (broken laptop, etc). This together with the changing landscape around DevOps teams also seemed to justify a distinct solution.

Jira Service Desk will continue to offer a consolidated ITIL workflow and improved features for IT teams needing asset management and related features. We also see integration between Jira Service Desk and Jira Ops improving quickly over time, so helpdesk/support staff can escalate major incidents into the process managed in Jira Ops.

[rasto_mirek]

The usability of new templates is much improved... That being said, why to limit customisation options? As the new user learns the basics and start working the will require more features and more customisation options. If should be able to unlock more customisation options and more features under project settings. I would place them to project settings where they do not bloat UI but are accessible when needed.