Difference between Project Lead and Role Administrator

[Arno Wolter]

I couldn't find anywhere the difference between the Project Lead and the automatically generated role Administrator in a project.

Is there a difference?

[David Skreiner · Accepted solution]

The answer is here:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Managing+Project+Permissions

"Administer Projects

Permission to administer a project in JIRA. This includes the ability to edit project role membership, project components, project versions and some project details ('Project Name', 'URL', 'Project Lead', 'Project Description')."

--- The project lead in contrast does not appear to get anything much by default (except for tons of "New issue" emails, because he's the default assignee, and gets lots of notification from the default notification scheme).

The "project lead" is usually just the default assignee.

The project lead does not appear to get any permissions by default, these depend entirely on the Permission Scheme you use. So to find out what exactly the Project Lead can do, you'll have to look in the project's Administration section, click on Permission -> Scheme. It'll show you a list of permissions such as View Development Tools / View Read-Only Workflow / etc and which project role can do them. Not many Jira admins seem to use the system default permission settings for long.

[I got this info partly from https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-10996]

[... which, funnily enough, contains a link to https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-11011, a request to improve documentation of the Project Lead role. Unfortunately, Atlassian did not improve the description of the role in
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Managing+Project+Permissions
but did so in
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Defining+a+Project
"Project Lead— user fulfilling the role of project leader. Used as the 'Default Assignee' (see below), and potentially elsewhere in JIRA (e.g. in permission schemes, notification schemes, issue security schemes and workflows)."

Sorry for responding in a nine-years-old thread ... but a) we just discussed the same question here; and b) this discussion shows up as one of the first results on Google, so I figured I might as well append the answer we found.

[FagnerF]

Hi Arno,

In order to clarify your doubts let's see the following:

According Defining a Project document:

Project Lead — choose the person who will manage this project. You can change the Project Lead later if you wish. Note that issues can be automatically assigned to the Project Lead.

And according Managing Project Roles document:

A project role administrator typically contains people who administer a given project. And project administrator is someone who has the project-specific 'Administer Project' permission, but not necessarily the global 'JIRA Administrator' permission. A project administrator can also manage project role membership.

Kind Regards,

[Albert DeWeese]

Which permissions does Project Lead get out of the box? I just looked in my project and it was not immeadiately clear to me. I apologize if this is obvious. I am new to JIRA admin. Big beleiver in the tool but still new to it.

[Bharadwaj Jannu]

go to your project see which Scheme is using under Permissions menu.

now go to Admin->Issues->Permission Schemes->{go to permission scheme your project is using}->{find your requirement if present by the help of document mentioned above}

[Albert DeWeese]

Does Project Lead have the ability to confige the project or is this person mostly 'leading the project' within the confines of the workflow and associated prescriptions asserted by the Project Administrator who may be a different person?

I ask because I have people whom I wish to be responsible for executing a project but these people should not necessarily have the ability to edit project configuration or otherwise side step or alter Workflow.

[Ramiro Pointis]

Hi Murali, by project administrador you are making reference to one user in particular?

An user will be Jira Administrator if it's part of the group assigned to the global permission. If your user it's only in the Admin role then he will only be able to administrate that project.

If the user it's part of jira-administrators group then he will have jira administration permissions.

Hope this helps.

[murali krishna]

In our JIRA, project administrator is part of "JIRA-Administartor" group.

Does it mean "project administrator will have all permissions that a JIRA-administer will have?

[JM R_]

No.

[Kinnera]

Hi murali krishna 

Yes they(the project administrator) will have all the permissions as they are added to the jira-administrators group.

[Thomas Talinski]

Hey David, thanks a lot for your post. So it is like I've figured by myself.

Weird that Atlassian is not providing straightforward information about this.

BR

Thomas

[Thomas Talinski]

The same questions strikes me currently and I find it somewhat strange that noone seems to be answering it!?!?

Or is there maybe somebody now who can tell us?

I'd appreciate that very much!

[Albert DeWeese]

Right. I just checked again and I am using the default, out of the box permission scheme. Project Lead does not seem to have any permissions at all (unless I am missing something obvious). So I still have my orignial question:

How much power/responsibility does the Project Lead have?

Google and Ctrl+F are failing me. I am not finding any useful information on what exactly the Project Lead can and cannot do.

[Bharadwaj Jannu]

@Albert DeWeese

you see this https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AOD/Managing+Project+Permissions for knowing more about Project Permissions.