Our Jira Workflow Best Practices
Jira, unlike more traditional project management tools, uses an agile approach to project development. In fact, Jira is the #1 software development tool used by agile teams. Jira can be used for Scrum and Kanban boards that offer teams collaboration and continuous improvement but it’s Jira Workflows that can really enhance your teamwork.
Every team has its own way of getting a task across the finish line and a workflow is a visual representation of this. Jira workflows are made up of statuses and transitions; they are designed to fit every project or team and help you increase transparency, accountability, and productivity.
When creating a workflow, you can use Jira’s range of templates or create a custom workflow from scratch. However, getting started with workflows can be daunting so we’ve put together these tips to help you transform your teamwork.
Our Jira workflow best practices
Involve stakeholders when creating workflows
The number one tip when building a workflow is to remember who will be using it; the workflow needs to work for them. There may be multiple stakeholders within your team, such as a product manager, software engineer, product designer or content designer. We recommend getting each of them involved in the process of building your workflow.
Once you’ve created the workflow, make sure they have the chance to check it over and highlight any areas that need improvement. If you don’t, you run the risk of creating impractical statuses and transitions and you may even miss workflow rules that could help your team.
Finally, we suggested making stakeholder reviews a continuous process. Workflows are always evolving and it’s important that they grow with your team.
Keep your workflow agile
The thing that sets Jira apart from the rest is its native agile processes. Your workflow should change and adapt as your teams and processes evolve. When it comes to Jira, everything is iterative and you don’t have to worry about perfecting workflows the first time.
This is where your team’s feedback is invaluable - they’re the ones working with Jira so they know where changes are needed. Agile may not come easily to your team (they might be more used to a ‘set and forget’ approach). However, it’s worth keeping in mind that workflows serve your team’s needs at the current time so they have to adapt as your needs change.
Create a workflow that works for your team
…not everyone else! Every team has their own set of requirements and not every workflow works for every team. While a certain status and transition may work for one issue type, it might not work for another and some issue types may require specific statuses and transitions, or even restrictions and automations that only work for them.
You can, of course, use workflow templates or duplicate workflows but remember that to maximise potential, your team need a tool made just for them. Putting in the effort to begin with makes it far easier to scale and adapt workflows in the future and opens up the possibilities of what your workflow can be.
Keep your workflow simple
While it may be tempting to add as much information as possible, with Jira there’s actually such a thing as too much detail. Your team have to be able to use and understand your workflow so overusing custom fields can lead to slower response times on Jira issues and avoidable holdups.
Instead, we recommend setting standard practices across your team for workflow customisation to minimise compatibility issues. Whenever something is added to or changed in your workflow, you should be thinking back to how this will affect your team, and therefore, affect your customers.
Each status and transition you include creates more complexity for your team. After mapping out how your team works, limit the number of statuses and transitions and focus on the ones that mean the most to your team. A simple structure is often more effective.
Test your workflow
Testing Jira workflows as you create them is a fine balance. If you don’t test them enough, your errors will build up, creating a bigger set of problems for you to fix. However, testing too much and too early in the process can hinder your progress and you won’t be able to move as quickly as you’d like.
Two ways to test effectively is to either test before you pass the workflow onto your team in a separate Jira project or instance. Or, test with your team in your actual project. This testing can become continuous and part of the agile process outlined above.
Make use of Jira apps
Jira workflows can be enhanced by the large number of apps available on Atlassian Marketplace. In fact, there are over 3,000 apps, add-ons and plugins that can be adapted to suit the needs of your team.
Take our app, Crumbs, for example. It is the simple CRM for Jira that lets you see customer information in context by linking a Jira issue to a customer. Unified customer data in Crumbs is accessible to Sales, Marketing, and pretty much any other function you can think of!
You can check out some more of our favourite Jira apps in our blog - How to get the most out of Jira Cloud with Integrations.
Stick to these tips, and you’ll have workflows that help your team increase transparency, accountability, and productivity. For more advice or Jira help, get in touch and we can answer all your questions.
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