The goal isn’t a “perfect” system. It’s a system the team will keep up to date.
If you’ve ever been the accidental Jira admin for an agency, you know the trap: configuration becomes the work.
This guide is about guardrails: defaults that stop drift without turning you into process police.
Principles
- Prefer fewer statuses over more rules.
- Prefer visible next steps over dashboards.
- Keep support and delivery in one workflow.
- Make retainer boundaries explicit early.
The agency-shaped workflow
- Tickets as the unit of work
- One queue for intake and triage
- One thread per ticket for client updates
- Time logs tied to the ticket with short notes
If you want to keep the Jira-style mental model and cut the admin overhead, see: Import from Jira.