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Governance & compliance
Jira the Right Way
Standing up Jira from zero with governance built in — and exiting Asana before the licence expired.
01
The challenge
Most Jira messes start the same way: a tool stood up fast, with no plan, that teams outgrow within a year. This mid-market technology organization wanted to skip that chapter entirely — and it had a deadline, because its Asana licence was expiring. In twelve weeks we stood up a governed Jira and JSM foundation from zero, right-sized the licensing, and got them off Asana with reporting that finally told the truth.
Standing up Jira from zero is deceptively easy to get wrong. Move too fast and you bake in the duplicate projects, tangled workflows and permission chaos that plague instances everywhere. Asana had become a significant constraint on governance, service delivery and cross-team reporting, and its licence was running out. Leadership — the VP of IT, the CTO, Legal and the organizational PMO — aligned on a single Jira foundation that would scale with their growth, and asked us to advise on Atlassian licensing to right-size cost and future-proof renewals, establish governance and configuration standards to keep Jira clean and auditable, and structure a net-new instance for scalability, maintainability and clear reporting from day one.
02
Our approach
We built for the organization it was becoming, not just the one it was. On licensing, a user segmentation analysis separated agents from collaborators to right-size Jira and JSM licences, a 12-month demand forecast avoided overbuying and managed renewal cliffs, and a Marketplace app review replaced costly add-ons with native automation where feasible.
On governance, we wrote a lightweight charter before creating a single project: an ownership model with a tool owner and product council, a change policy with versioned standards, a project taxonomy and naming convention for consistent roll-up reporting, and a role model covering creators, maintainers, agents and requestors. Reusable workflow patterns — sprinted delivery, intake to triage to fulfilment, approvals and SLAs — came with guardrails for custom flows, and configuration standards added a custom-field registry, a screens and schemes library, and change request templates to prevent config sprawl.
The instance itself was a greenfield Jira Cloud build: managed project templates aligned to governance, an issue type architecture mapped to HR and IT services, automation for transitions, field hygiene and notifications, and a JSM portal branded and simplified for non-technical users with knowledge-base linkage for self-service. Standardized fields powered board and leadership reporting on cycle and lead time, SLA attainment and backlog health.
Convention over improvisation, from the very first project.
03
What we built
- Governance charterComplete with change policy and a RACI matrix, agreed before the first project existed.
- Project taxonomy & naming standardsConsistent prefixes so reporting rolls up cleanly across the organization.
- Role-based permission modelCreators, maintainers, agents and requestors, plus a comprehensive scheme library.
- Workflow pattern catalogSoftware delivery, request and incident, and approval patterns ready to reuse.
- JSM portal MVPBranded, simplified and integrated with a knowledge base for self-service.
- Automation packStatus transitions, field hygiene and notifications.
- License optimization & renewal planA cost-effective footprint sized for sustainable growth.
- Admin runbook & trainingDocumentation and enablement for the team taking it over.
04
The results
12 weeks · go-live inside three months, ahead of the Asana licence expiry.
- A clean exit from Asana inside three monthsDelivered against an aggressive deadline set by the expiring licence.
- Cost clarity and predictabilityA right-sized licence plan and renewal roadmap, with the assurance of annual Atlassian billing.
- A governed start, not a cleanup projectNaming conventions, permissions and field standards that prevent future rework and technical debt.
- Faster intake and visibilityA simplified service portal for HR, Legal and IT that cut time-to-triage.
- Executive reporting without stitchingA consistent taxonomy enabling portfolio-level dashboards with no manual reconciliation in Excel.
05
In their words
Avaratak stood up a clean, governed Jira quickly. We didn't think it was possible — we exited Asana with a right-sized plan. Not only did they standardize our projects, issue types and screens, but we finally have portfolio-level reporting without manual stitching in Excel. It's the first time our data actually tells the truth. — Program Manager
The new JSM portal and reusable workflows have made a significant impact for both Legal and IT. Intake is clear, approvals are built in, and SLAs are visible. Our time-to-triage is clear, and we're confident we can scale without the config sprawl we struggled with before. — CTO
Clean foundations from day one
Stand up Jira the right way
Getting Jira right from the start is far cheaper than fixing it later. Start with a licensing and governance health check and we'll build you foundations that scale.