Next Gen Projects in Jira

I was recently working on implementing Jira and Jira Service Desk for my company. We went with Jira mostly because we were using a helpdesk system for both help desk and project management, which is obviously a nightmare. The tight(-ish) link between Jira Software (JSW) and Jira Service Desk (JSD) meant that we could properly pass tasks around the company between teams without stakeholders losing visibility. This part actually played out quite well.

However, when looking into project types, we made the decision to go with a "Next Gen" project because it was seemingly only missing a few features that would eventually be added. The reality is that it is missing tons of features that make using it incredibly hard.

  • Subtasks
  • Epic Link
  • Notification Control
  • Billable Hours Field
  • Time tracking in hours (only story points)
  • Multiline Fields
  • Fields not available to 3rd party plugins
  • Account Field on the issue
  • Board Views and Filters

That said, I do like some of the goals of the next gen project- less complex configuration, open permissions by default, easy ad hoc configuration. That said, at the moment, I don't think next gen projects are useful for anything beyond a small startup team. I would not recommend them right now. There are too many things that are missing / undocumented. We ended up migrating back to a "classic" project.

Issues with Jira Overall

  • Create Linked Issue
    • This option is only available from the service desk, not from a Jira Software project. Instead, you have to create an issue, then add the link back to the first one.
  • Create Issue in Status
    • You can only create issues in the first status in a workflow, so if that status is hidden (like a backlog), the newly created issue is not impossible to see without searching. Often, I will want to create tasks for things that are already being worked on.
  • Slowness
  • Cleanup
    • Creating a new anything (project, etc) creates a ton of other configuration objects. Those don't go away when you delete the project even if nothing else is using them.

Overall, I think Jira is about 80% of a good solution if you need both software project management and an integrated helpdesk.