Background
Tryzens Group wished to review and redesign their existing Jira Software server instance which had organically evolved and scaled over a number of years.
We were also asked to:
- advise on administrative aspects like setting permissions and approvals;
- apply a server and application health-check and advise on required changes inline with best practice;
- advise on planning tools and methodologies;
- advise on appropriate add-ons to meet business needs.
The Challenge
New Verve Consulting was asked to design and implement a lean Jira Software solution for the development and testing teams with minimal issue types, fields, screens, and workflows.
We faced numerous challenges:
- analysing an existing Jira instance with over 40,000 issues, 107 workflows, and hundreds of configuration schemes;
- carrying out a major software upgrade, from v6.3.10 to v7.2.4;
- recommending a set of process flows and best practices that would work for multiple teams.
The Solution
We first carried out an extensive health check for Tryzens, reviewing server and application configuration. A workshop was subsequently held at the Tryzens offices to examine the outcomes of the health check and to discuss lessons learned.
A mirror of the production Jira instance was created and upgraded to the very latest version. This involved a number of key steps:
- MySQL upgrade;
- Linux kernel upgrade;
- disk volume reconfiguration;
- 2-step upgrade of Jira, first to v7.0.0 and then to v7.2.4.
The Jira migration itself was planned carefully due to various add-on compatibility issues. These included API changes which necessitated updates to custom ScriptRunner workflow scripts.
Post-upgrade, we recommended various disk performance improvements and appropriate backup policies.
Our next challenge was to begin rolling out the health check recommendations. A pilot project was created and configured to meet business needs. Work included:
- configuring of issue types, screens, and fields;
- mapping process flows to a lean set of workflows;
- setting up Scrum and Kanban project boards;
- configuring Tempo timesheets with account-level reporting.
Our initial pilot was rolled out successfully to a small set of projects. At the time of writing, Tryzens continues to monitor the performance of these projects before rolling out our solution across the business.
Categories: Automation
Technologies: Jira Software, ScriptRunner, Tempo
500 users
our solution was designed to serve up to 500 Jira users
40+ add-ons
over 40 add-ons in active use.
300+ projects
over 300 cross-team projects needed to be managed in Jira.
40,000+ issues
when we came aboard, the existing Jira instance held over 40,000 Jira issues.
5 issue types
a lean set of 5 issue types was designed to meet the business needs.
12 custom fields
12 bespoke fields were setup to capture information for each issue type.
6 workflows
6 bespoke workflows were created for development and testing processes.