Some lessons learnt from 7 years of Jira administration and how to avoid some of the mistakes I made. With a little help from spongebob!

1. Seven Sins of Jira
Administration
How not to destroy your Jira
Matthew Cobby
1Thursday, 16 May 13

2. How to represent the sins?
2Thursday, 16 May 13

3. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brueghel_-_Sieben_Laster_-_Disidia.jpg
Seven Vices by Brueghel (1558)
3Thursday, 16 May 13

4. Dante’s Inferno
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy
4Thursday, 16 May 13

5. There must be another way...
Modern, loved by millions, colourful?
5Thursday, 16 May 13

6. SpongeBob Squarepants!
Ref: http://www.toonzone.net/forums/nicktoons/190291-spongebob-7-deadly-sins.html
6Thursday, 16 May 13

7. Lust
Lust (or Lechery) is seen as sexual
wants but it’s original form was
desire, desire of money, fame,
power.
Spongebob
“Life is as extreme as
you wanna make it”
7Thursday, 16 May 13

8. Marketplace is brilliant!
but ask yourself...
Is the plugin maintained?
How widely used is it?
Does it have a good reputation?
How well does it perform?
Do support questions go answered?
Check Atlassian Answers
Do you really need it?
How many users will benefit?
Is it worth it's cost?
Consider federating your Jira instances to save costs.
I want, I want, I want!
Lust
8Thursday, 16 May 13

9. Press Release upgrades
Beware the Beta
Release early, release often can have drawbacks
Remember you’re there to service a business
Lust Premature Upgrading
9Thursday, 16 May 13

10. Wrath
Wrath, also known as rage may be
described as inordinate and
uncontrolled feelings of hatred and
anger. In its purest form, presents
with self-destructiveness, violence,
and hate that may provoke feuds.
Squidward
“That’s not what I
meant barnacle
head!”
10Thursday, 16 May 13

11. Wrath What do you mean, “it’s slow”?
Be proactive with performance measurement
Know your Jira
Listen to the users (anecdotal)
but get evidence (empirical)
Know your cache & pool sizes
Understand the basic of the JVM
Consider a reverse proxy with Apache
11Thursday, 16 May 13

12. Sloth
Sloth is sometimes defined as
physical laziness, spiritual laziness
and a failure to do things that one
should do and so evil exists when
good men fail to act.
Patrick
“To Do List: nothing!”
12Thursday, 16 May 13

13. Don’t run with the default schemes
Decouple your config
Use strong naming conventions
MyIssueTypeScheme,
MyIssueTypeScreenScheme
Set up 4-6 standard project types
New project request workflow
Have 80% of projects on a standard configurations
Customizations by exception
Sloth Not setting standards
13Thursday, 16 May 13

14. Slow death of complexity
Configuration easy to add, hard to take away
Not cleaning up old projects
Do you still need that custom field?
How do you know?
Manage user churn
Subscriptions, Filters, Dashboards,Watchers
Forgotten XML backups
Sloth Silent Killers
14Thursday, 16 May 13

15. Greed
Greed, like lust and gluttony, a sin
of excess is an inordinate desire to
acquire or possess more than one
needs, especially with respect to
material wealth.
Mr Krabs
“Hello, I like money!”
15Thursday, 16 May 13

16. Too many administrators
Developer administrators
Decentralized administrators & centralized
configuration
Delegate via roles
Lack of documentation!
Have a deployment methodology
Change management process
Approve & document changes
Source Control
Greed Can I just have..?
16Thursday, 16 May 13

17. Envy
Like greed and lust, is characterized by an
insatiable desire. Envy is similar to jealousy
in that they both feel discontent towards
someone's traits, status, abilities, or
rewards. The difference is the envious also
desire the entity and covet it.
Plankton
“I will rule the world!”
17Thursday, 16 May 13

18. One Jira to rule them all!Envy
Know Jira’s limitations
Jira will grow & grow fast!
Maintain service levels
Be wary of taking on too much too fast
18Thursday, 16 May 13

19. Pride
Pride (or hubris in greek) is the original and
most serious of the seven deadly sins, and
the source of the others. It is identified as a
desire to be more important or attractive than
others, failing to acknowledge the good work
of others, and excessive love of self
Sandy
“I’m hotter than a
hickory smoked
sausage!”
19Thursday, 16 May 13

20. Practising in production
If the worst happens:
Do you know your backups work?
Database,Attachments & customizations
Run the integrity checker, mistakes do happen
...and who put the delete project button next to the browse?
Nothing can go wrong!
Pride
20Thursday, 16 May 13

21. Gluttony
Gluttony is the over-indulgence and over-
consumption of anything to the point of
waste. It can be be interpreted as
essentially placing concern with one's own
interests above the well-being or interests
of others
Gary
“meow”
21Thursday, 16 May 13

22. Custom fields
Push back & reuse
Beware field configuration schemes
Don't overload the existing core field behaviour
Jira Field Helper is available
Simple workflows are best
Do you really need..?
Gluttony
Just because you can...
22Thursday, 16 May 13

23. @mcobby
Matthew Cobby
mcobby@gmail.com
mcobby
matt@andamooka.com
matthew-cobby
Thank you!
23Thursday, 16 May 13

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