The Mortal Sins of a Jira Administrator

[Sergei Troshin]

As a Jira administrator, you have the power to create order — or total chaos. 

Some mistakes may seem harmless at first but can lead to performance issues, broken workflows, and frustrated users. To help you avoid these pitfalls, here’s a list of the worst things you can do in Jira.

Are you guilty of any of these sins? 😈 Let’s find out!

• Creating custom fields with the same name as system ones (e.g. "Summary").
• Creating fields with a global context that are used in no more than a couple of projects.
• Renaming an existing status.
• Not setting a resolution when transitioning to final (mostly green) statuses.
• Not clearing the resolution when exiting a final status (mostly green).
• Renaming the Create transition and changing its event.
• Creating resolutions that aren't resolutions (e.g., "Not Done").
• Running automation rules on a schedule every 5 minutes.*

* - this may be acceptable in rare cases, but in most situations, it is unnecessary.

What do you think? Have you encountered any of these mistakes, or do you have others to add? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[Rilwan Ahmed]

We learn from our mistakes and become better Administrators !!!

[YY Brother]

similar custom field names like start date, Start Date

[Jeramy]

"Creating custom fields with the same name as system ones (e.g. "Summary")."

Not me, but I inherited a Jira environment where the admin before me did this.  They created custom fields with the same name as system fields so they could change the field type and add automation with ScriptRunner around it. Then after 2,000 or so issues with this field, they removed it and went back to the regular system fields.

"Creating fields with a global context that are used in no more than a couple of projects."

 Yes. However, I've grown as an administrator and absolutely hate "Global" fields and labels. LOL

"Renaming an existing status."

Who hasn't done this at least once as a Jira Administrator. I will never forget my first time doing this and about 20 minutes later being called into my directors office being asked what in the H*** did I just do to Jira? lol

"Not setting a resolution when transitioning to final (mostly green) statuses. Not clearing the resolution when exiting a final status (mostly green)."

Yep. 

"Creating resolutions that aren't resolutions (e.g., "Not Done")."

Unfortunately, still have to from time-to-time. :(

"Running automation rules on a schedule every 5 minutes."

Not me, but I have to deal with people who think we need Jira Asset automation to update every five minutes. So there are multiple cases where they have automation running every five minutes. I'm working on those. LOL We had some automation outside of Jira, PowerShell/Bash/Power Automate scripts that ran every 30 seconds, but took four minutes to process. So needless to say, it crashed Jira frequently.

Some of mine or ones I've inherited.

• Multiple projects with different keys, but almost everything is the same with the exception of one field on one screen.
• Too many non-Jira admins with admin permissions...I inherited this one...but it is a challenge to untangle their mess... like creating a dozen custom, global fields for one project.
• Being a "Yes" administrator. Always saying yes to every request and not saying "No" early enough.

Good article. Thank you.

[Sergei Troshin]

Hi @Jeramy hope you're doing well!

Thanks a lot for your detailed feedback! It was really interesting to read about your opinions and experiences. 🙂 Keep it up!

Here’s my LinkedIn—let’s stay in touch! 🚀

[Jon Kelley]

• Not keeping up with training and release notes 
• Saying Yes to far to many things. 

The more you know, the less resources you have spend trying to do or figure out something that just will not work. As a plus, if you explain WHY you will not/cannot do something, most people will understand and it provides a place to help them better understand best practice which can help mitigate outlandish requests coming from users. 

[Sergei Troshin]

Hi @Jon Kelley hope you're doing well

Thanks for your feedback, I agree with you!

At the beginning of my career, I was eager to explore Jira’s potential and did everything I was asked to—from creating large, multifunctional scripts with 1,000+ lines of code to customizing the UI and building new forms using ScriptRunner Web Resources.

I gained valuable experience, knowledge, and skills, but in hindsight, some of those implementations were a bit too much!