In the previous chapters, we have learned some of the basics of JIRA and how to customize its look and feel for better data capture and presentation. In this chapter, we will dive in and take a look at workflows, one of the core and most powerful features in JIRA.
Workflow controls how issues in JIRA move from one stage to another, as they are being worked on, often passing from one assignee to another. Unlike many other systems, JIRA allows you to create your own workflows to resemble your processes.
By the end of this chapter, you will have learned:
- What a workflow is and what one consists of
- About the relationship between workflows and screens
- What are steps, transitions, conditions, validators, and post functions
- How to associate a workflow with projects
It is often said that a good software system is one that adapts to your business and not one that requires your business to adapt to the software. JIRA is an excellent example of the former. The power of JIRA is how easily you can configure it to model your existing business processes, through the use of workflows.
A business process flow can often be represented as a flow chart. For example, a typical document approval flow might include tasks such as document preparation, document review, and document submission, where the user needs to follow these tasks in a sequential order. You can easily implement this as a JIRA workflow. Each task will be represented as a workflow step, with transitions guiding you on how you can move from one step to the next. In fact, when working with workflows, it is often a good approach to first draft out the logical flow of the process as a flow chart, and then implement this as a workflow. As we will see, JIRA provides many tools to help you visualize your workflows.
Now that we have briefly seen how you can map a normal business process to a JIRA workflow, it is time to take a closer look at the components of a workflow and how you can create your own workflows.