A World-Weary Engineer’s Guide to Regaining Control of a Lawless JIRA Project

I’ve managed software teams, platforms, and roadmaps for years, but nothing has aged me faster than trying to maintain discipline inside a JIRA project. The codebases have been fine. Infrastructure? Manageable. Humans? Reasonably cooperative. But JIRA boards? Utter bedlam.

At some point, my backlog stopped being a planning tool and morphed into something between an archaeological dig site and a haunted house. Every time I ventured into it, I found something that really shouldn’t be there.

• Stories marked In Progress with no assignee. Spectral ownership at its finest.
• Tickets so old they could legally order a drink.
• Epics proudly marked Done while their sub-tasks continued wriggling beneath them like something you’d find under a rock.
• Mystery tickets with titles like “Look at this?” — no description, no acceptance criteria, no hope.
• Stories started without story points, because apparently estimating effort is an optional courtesy.
• Work floating around with no Epic Link, contributing to no initiative anyone could name.

It was chaos — but a quiet kind of chaos. The kind you only notice when you’re asked, “Can you generate a reliable delivery report?” and you realise the answer is no, because half the tickets are lying to your face.

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How I Used to Handle It

Like every seasoned project lead, I tried diplomacy first.

• “Please assign yourself before starting work.”
• “Can you close subtasks before the parent, please?”
• “Would it kill you to add a description?”

Shockingly, this approach achieved approximately nothing.

Developers continued working however they pleased. Scrum Masters made peace with entropy. And leadership assumed everything was fine — because the board looked fine at a glance.

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So, I Did the Only Sensible Thing

I stopped reminding people. And I wrote software instead.

Specifically: the JIRA Cloud Auditor plugin for my platform, Insights. It doesn’t nag. It doesn’t guilt-trip. It simply scans the entire project and politely announces:

• “This story has no description. Nobody knows what it’s about.”
• “These tasks are In Progress with no assignee. Possibly being actioned by ghosts.”
• “This epic claims to be Done, but three children are still crying beneath it.”
• “This ticket is 104 weeks old. It is now more historical document than plan of action.”

Best of all — I made the rules completely configurable.

• Don’t care about components? Turn it off.
• Want to enforce story points before starting work? Switch it on.
• Want to add custom rules like “Reject any ticket with the word ‘misc’ in the title”? Be my guest.

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The Result

My JIRA project now resembles something maintained by professionals rather than gremlins.

• Epics close when they’re actually closed.
• Stories don’t sit rotting in limbo.
• Unassigned tickets are immediately named and shamed.
• And when someone forgets to write acceptance criteria, I don’t need to say a single word — the system quietly highlights their sins.

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Final Thoughts

If your JIRA board is pristine and perfectly maintained, congratulations — you’re living in a different Universe from me and this post isn’t for you. But if, like me, you’ve stared at your backlog and thought: “I don’t manage a project. I manage a crime scene.”

...then perhaps it’s time to stop begging for discipline and start enforcing it pragmatically. That’s why I built Insights and the JIRA Cloud Auditor plugin. Because sometimes the only way to restore order is to codify common sense.

Take control – take a look at Insights.