Understanding workflows

Workflow is what JIRA uses to model business processes. It is a flow of states (steps ) that issues go through one by one with paths between them (transitions). All issues in JIRA are based on their issue type and the project they are in, and they have a workflow applied. Issues move through workflows from one step (for example, Open) to another (for example, Closed). For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the life cycle of issues. This life cycle is shown in the following diagram:

The preceding diagram shows a very simple workflow in JIRA. The rectangles represent the steps and the arrows represent transitions that link steps together. As you can see, this looks a lot like a normal flow chart depicting the flow of a process.

Issues in JIRA, starting from when they are created, go through a series of steps identified as issue statuses , such as In Progress and Closed. These movements are often triggered by user interactions. For example, when a user clicks...