JIRA Simplified Workflow - why does it create a new Workflow for each project?

[Anne Gallant]

We want to move to a simplified JIRA Workflow for our agile projects but I am concerned about the creation of a new workflow for each project, we have over 200 projects and this seems like bloat of data if the workflow is the same for each project.

[Andrew Laden]

When you create your project, you can choose to "Create with Shared configuration" and then pick another project to share with.

At my company we have "Project Templates" For example, we have a BAU (Buisness as usual) style project, a "Strategic Initiative" style, etc.

When creating a new project, we ask the user what template to follow, we then create the project using a shared configuration with the appropriate template. That cuts down the sprawl considerably.

Another advantage is that updating the template affects all the projects. So if we have a request from management to modify something, it we cover all projects in 1 edit.

If a user needs a change. we "branch" them off from the template, with the understanding that they will also not stay in sync with changes to the template.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Because the point of Simplified Workflows is to allow the board owners to change the underlying workflow, and you don't want that workflow changes to affect other projects.

It would be slightly more efficient to share a simplified workflow with all the projects included in the board, but that causes headaches, as boards can add or drop projects on  whim, with a simple edit of filter, and if you were to do that, you would have to build something to say "Ok, you've remove project X from this board where it is getting its workflow from, what other workflow do you want to migrate the project to?"  Which is an admin task, not  board owner task.

[Anne Gallant]

The documentation mentions Kanban board functions does that mean you cannot use a scrum board with this simplified workflow?

 https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwareserver/using-the-simplified-workflow-938845286.html

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, Scrum and Kanban boards both work fine with simplified workflows.