1 project or many projects ?

[Pierre Ammoun]

I am about to embark in the management of my company using JIRA tools.

I have been using trello, Smartsheets,Axosoft , Todoist.Assembla and toodledo.
So I do have some experience with Agile/Kanban.
I have set up JIRA yet I am faced with some "organizational dilemma".
My setup is as follows :
we are 4Developers.
2 fully dedicated to developing
1-Developing + managing the company (tasks/prioirities)
1 Developing + help desk

We are now managing around 30 Customers and we also have our own project (a New software to be launched in 2019)
I got JIRA software + confluence +Service Desk +Tempo Planner.
My question is how to configure JIRA.
1-Do I create a project per customer ? and if yes how to aggregate them later on ?
2-How to link the Service Desk to my project (s) -

If I allow 1 customer to post on JIRA Desk shouldn't that ticket be also showing in the project ?

[#2]

I have been using trello, Smartsheets,Axosoft , Todoist.Assembla and toodledo.
So I do have some experience with Agile/Kanban.
I have set up JIRA yet I am faced with some "organizational dilemma".
My setup is as follows :
we are 4Developers.
2 fully dedicated to developing
1-Developing + managing the company (tasks/prioirities)
1 Developing + help desk

We are now managing around 30 Customers and we also have our own project (a New software to be launched in 2019)
I got JIRA software + confluence +Service Desk +Tempo Planner.
My question is how to configure JIRA.
1-Do I create a project per customer ? and if yes how to aggregate them later on ?
2-How to link the Service Desk to my project (s) -

If I allow 1 customer to post on JIRA Desk shouldn't that ticket be also showing in the project ?

[Jack Brickey]

Based upon your latest info here is what i suggest.

One JSW project for all of current applications/customers. Use Customer field and possibly Component to differentiate each customer/app.

One JSW project for the new application under development.

One JSD project for customers to open issues. Add a required field that will help you distinguish between customers/applications. When a customer issue comes in that requires Development's support then Create a Linked issue in the JSW project. If there are multiple individuals w/in a customer organization that will be reporting issues and looking for updates then use Organization feature to group them. If desired/needed you can create a Queue per customer but generally I find that undesirable especially with 30 customers and if all customers are to be treated equally, i.e. No one on 'platinum' service.

[David Sumlin]

Answer:  It depends!

Here are some questions to take into consideration:

* Will you permit customers to have accounts in your JIRA project(s)?  If the answer is yes, then you might want to think about having a separate project per customer.  If no, then identifying issues by some other attribute (custom field, component, label, etc) could work and allow you to have all your normal issues in a single project.

* Will you have multiple sprints and scrum teams (per customer for example)...Having a backlog of work (project) per customer will make things easier for the scrum master to create boards, manage backlog, manage sprints, releases, etc.  If not and you're just working Kanban style, then dump everything into the same project.

* Will you have separate Confluence spaces per customer?  Will you be allowing customers to see/edit the spaces?

* You will normally have a separate JSD project for all of your support requests, no matter who the customer is.

[Pierre Ammoun]

Thank you for the comments.

Let me better explain my situation 

I have around 30 customers and each one has a different application that I am supporting (bugs/new feature).

On top.of that I have a new application that we have started that Is going to take a year to e complete that will eventually Replace ALL the different codes I have.

So my team will be working on 2 fronts. 1 to support the existing apps and 1 to work on the new application that is going to take some time to finish.

Meanwhile I also will be having a service desk allowing my customers to.post new bugs/ features. I don't see the necessity for.them to access any board. Maybe viewing whee their tasks stand? But I don't know yet how to.do this (I guess u found out I m new to Jira!)

Another point I m still contemplating at is how to have the issues that the customers will.post be showing in my board (s) As I don't have for the moment a dedicated service desk agent.

I will.be logging in regularly and see what is.in there and direct it to the Team member who is best at solving the issue.

Thanks for your help 

[Jack Brickey]

@Pierre Ammoun,

I highly recommend starting with Atlassian's documentation. Your question are very typical of mout folks starting out. The issue is that it really depends on how you want things and the details of your situation. With that said here are some things to think about:

1. Project per customer - Generally this is not the best way to do things unless the activities for each customer are unique. What is your product? Most folks use products as projects for SW development. Using business projects for short term bounded projects.
2. JSD will be in different projects that your JSW projects. JSD works well for IT, Customer Support interfaces placing a layer between the customer and the development team.
3. JSD - you can have one project per customer if you like but I prefer projects aligned with products. You can create different organizations in JSD to conline what customers see in the portal.

[Michael Woffenden]

"You can create different organizations in JSD to conline what customers see in the portal."

Jack - Could you elaborate on this point?  We would like to determine which customer see which request types as well as which Confluence articles.