jira-best-practices

# jira-best-practices — use Jira leanly, structure work sensibly, adapt to the org Primary reader: an **agent helping a user** — one that *acts on* Jira through tools (the `jira` CLI, or the **`mcp-atlassian`** MCP server) and advises the user on **how to use Jira well**: what an issue *is*, where work *goes*, which fields/statuses/workflows to keep, and how to make Jira stop being a dread. This is the **judgment layer** above those execution tools — it decides *what* should change and *how work should be structured*; the tools do the *how*. This skill is **instance-agnostic and organisation-adaptive**. It never assumes a team's hierarchy names, workflow, or language — it shows how to *discover* the org's actual conventions and reason within them. It is **self-hosted-first**: the defaults below are for **Jira Data Center** (see the Cloud-vs-DC guard). ## How the work gets done (execution layer) An agent here almost always acts through one of two **issue-level, Data-Center-capable** tools — and that boundary determines what to *do* versus what to *advise*: - **`jira-cli`** (sibling skill) — the `jira` CLI, non-interactive automation contract, JQL, ADF. Use it for execution mechanics, flags, and auth. - **`mcp-atlassian`** ([sooperset/mcp-atlassian](https://github.com/sooperset/mcp-atlassian)) — MCP server for Jira+Confluence; supports **Server/Data Center (Jira v8.14+, PAT auth)**; ~72 tools incl. `jira_search` (JQL), `jira_get_issue`, `jira_create_issue`, `jira_update_is...