Why are so many Jira configurations such a mess? Because people with no experience are handed a highly configurable tool, and no reasonable guidance, and told “do what you like”. Then they end up hating how it works and inevitably blame the tool.

When talking about something as complex as workflow and Jira itself, there are no such thing as “best practices” that apply in all contexts. There are good practices, however, and that’s what we’re going to start with here.

Recommended Jira setup

Project / Space

Recommended statuses: Backlog/ToDo, Ready, Done, Cancelled

One space per team

Board

Swimlanes

Standard
Expedited

Flagged for Blocked

Blocked is not a status/column

Difference between status vs column vs status category

Any one board should only show a single level of work items. The board that shows Story/Task/Bug should not show subtasks or epics

Spikes, just say no.

WIP limits on every column except done

For Kanban boards, how to turn on Kanban backlog

Use of Epics

Use of Story vs Task

Understanding that a board is a view, not a concrete thing.

Use priority field for priority

“request participants” field

Bugs vs unfinished work

Stalled colour coding

Time in column