What are Jira business projects?

Jira business projects are a collaboration tool designed to help teams track all activity considered work. Work might include running projects, managing approval processes, performing daily and periodic tasks, creating documents, and a lot more.

In business projects, your team gets a shared view of what needs to be done, what's in progress, and who's assigned to what.

It isn't like most other work tools, so if you haven't used it before, here's a few key concepts to get familiar with.

Work is represented by ‘work items’

A work item can represent an activity, a document, an asset (creative or concrete), a purchase or even a person. You can create your own work types to suit your team’s processes.

For example, a marketing department might have these work types:

• Task - for doing any work task such as designing, invoicing, creating documents, etc.

• Asset - for keeping an inventory of creative assets, like branding materials and photos.

• Website - for tracking activity related to website changes.

Work items are managed within projects

Projects are a way to group work items, and clearly define what and how work gets done.

Some people set up business projects separately for business units, like HR, finance, and marketing. Others set up their clients in separate projects; a creative agency or a construction company tracking big jobs might do this.

A project provides a shared view of work for the team, and enables leads and managers to see where more help might be needed or where an activity is not progressing. It also acts like a 'to do list', so tasks can be added at any time and then picked up after other tasks are completed.

Work is tracked along workflows

A workflow defines the steps that progress a work item from unstarted to completed. Workflows are made up of statuses (work item states) and transitions (work item actions).

Workflows are usually modelled on existing business processes, so they can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be. It is common for different work types to have different workflows.

As work gets done on a work item, the assigned person moves it through the workflow, to transition the status. Work item status is critical for accurate visibility of work, for example, to ensure that all web changes include analytics before being published.

Admins make things better

Whatever kind of business projects you work in, you're sometimes going to notice that things could work a little better. When you do, speak to an admin.

There are two kinds. Here are some of the different things they do:

Jira admin

This person usually belongs to an IT department or is the product purchaser. They can:

• Create new projects

• Control user access

• Manage shared configurations

• Extend user licenses

Project admin

This person might be a department manager, project lead, or client account manager. They can:

• Manage project settings

• Control project-level access

• Set up project-specific workflows and custom elements

If you're a new project admin who hasn't worked with business projects before, check out how to get started as a project administrator.