Jira project types: A comprehensive guide

Jira is an agile project management software developed by Atlassian that helps organizations plan, track, report, and manage their work performance across teams. Accessible via a web browser, Jira’s software collects all project workflows in one centralized platform, helping project managers drive projects forward, no matter how complex these initiatives are. 

Inside Jira, work progresses through Jira projects, which assist the entire project team in organizing and completing their tasks. Let’s explore both Jira project types to unlock this powerful tool’s full potential.

What is a Jira project?

A Jira project is a container in which project tasks are organized into workflows to achieve favorable outcomes. Each highly customizable project within Jira can represent a specific department, initiative, or organizational structure. Teams use Jira projects to develop new software, resolve bugs, plan and launch marketing campaigns, and more.

Following the agile development method, Jira enables teams to break down their project into smaller parts called issues. A project manager can assign these issues to relevant team members and create flexible workflows to move the project along its lifecycle.

Key elements of a Jira project

Each Jira project has three fundamental elements: issues, people, and workflow. These components help you track all kinds of projects and workflows, from everyday tasks like completing an expense report to multifunctional projects like launching a company-wide wellness initiative. 

Let’s look at each element in detail.

Issues

Jira uses issues to break a big project into more manageable pieces. Issues are the essential components of work inside each Jira project. They are tasks that must be accomplished, looked at, or evaluated to achieve the desired project outcome. Issues can also represent other work units, such as software bugs or customer complaints.

Issues are further grouped into issue type schemes, which you can easily share across projects. For example, a software project admin may create a scheme with bug and feature issue types, which can then be applied to similar future projects.

People

The power of Jira software lies in its collaborative nature. People are users you can invite to join a specific Jira project, letting teams easily integrate across functions such as engineering, legal, and marketing. 

Workflow

Jira projects follow a specific process, called a workflow, to move the project from beginning to end. Workflows can be customized to complement your unique organizational structure, team set-up, or work style. Project managers can choose various statuses and transitions when setting up workflows, configuring them the way they want.

What are Jira project types?

Jira offers two main project types: team-managed projects and company-managed projects. The main difference between these project types stems from their administration, which can be set at either the team admin level or company admin level. 

Team-managed projects

Team-managed projects are great for autonomous teams who want to get started quickly and retain control over their processes in a self-contained space. Managed by project administrators, these projects have a simplified configuration that anyone on your team can start and maintain.

Team-managed projects are set up independently, so changes to these projects won’t affect other Jira projects in your organization.

Company-managed projects

Company-managed projects are best for initiatives that involve multiple teams and need to interact with other business initiatives. These projects are managed by Jira administrators using a shared, often complex configuration to standardize projects across the organization.

Unlike team-managed projects, company-managed projects support advanced functions, such as running multiple sprints or pulling issues from other projects to your board.

Creating a Jira project

Jira offers several project templates so teams can start work quickly with projects tailored to specific use cases (e.g., HR configuration or software development). These templates, such as scrum or kanban, come with default issues, workflows, and helpful configuration functions like a list view that sorts and visualizes all project work into a single list. 

Follow these steps to create a new Jira project:

• Select “Projects,” then “Create project” in the main navigation

• Select a desired project template, then select “Use template”

• Choose your project administration level with a team-managed or company-managed project

• Enter your project’s name

• If you’d like to bring in settings from another project, select “Share settings with an existing project”

• Select “Next”

Examples of Jira projects

Jira is a highly adaptable software that can be tailored to just about any project you can dream up. Whether you need to track issues for software development, process IT requests, or manage procurement and vendors, you can adjust a Jira project to fit your organizational needs.

Here are some of the most common Jira project examples:

Simple issue tracking

For software developers, Jira provides a comprehensive issue-tracking solution designed to efficiently manage and resolve bugs. Features include real-time bug reports, automated bug assignments and status updates, and integration with development tools like Github.

Jira’s tracking tool gives teams a single view of backlogged items, including unresolved bugs, data center complaints, and critical tasks for software development. This use case highlights one of Jira’s key benefits: the ability to focus on big-picture goals while keeping track of every single issue.

Project created in Jira agile

With agile project plan templates, project managers can create continuous update delivery pipelines and collaborate at scale across teams.

Jira Align is an integrated agile platform that helps teams of any size quickly implement solutions. Jira Align’s agile sprint planning tool allows you to release continuous software updates. Features like scrum and kanban boards and interactive timelines support product refinement, idea generation, user story documentation, and more. 

Jira service management

With more demand for digital products and services than ever, Jira service management brings together development teams, operations, IT, and business teams to quickly deliver a seamless service experience.

Jira service management is a high-velocity service management platform for IT professionals handling service project requests from customers or internal teams. Although it provides end-to-end service tracking capabilities, Jira service management has only four core processes: request fulfillment, incident management, problem management, and change management.

Use Tempo to maximize your Jira projects

Jira is a powerful project management tool that allows organizations in various industries to track, manage, and implement work across multiple projects, teams, functions, and use cases. With features like customizable workflows, AI-powered insights and reports, and visualization tools, Jira is an indispensable productivity platform that helps you get work done. 

Jira’s impact can be multiplied with Tempo, a premier suite of tools that enhance Jira’s native project templates to help you build next-gen products and services. Tempo’s product line-up, found inside the Atlassian marketplace, includes smart integrations like:

• Timesheets: an AI-empowered time tracking and capacity management app

• Custom Charts: a flexible custom reporting app

• Financial Manager: a real-time financial health tracker

• Structure PPM: a portfolio management solution

Tempo excels at maximizing your Jira projects with capabilities like resource and capacity planning, roadmaps, portfolio management, and budgeting so you can focus on what matters most to you.