What would be your advice to first-time Jira Software admins? My Top-10 tips

Reading my Twitter timeline I found this discussion in Atlassian Community: What would be your advice to first-time Jira Software admins?.

This got me thinking about it and answer with these tips: 

1. Keep it simple as you can and reuse. This piece of advice is applicable for many points: workflows, custom fields, agile boards, dashboards, etc.

2. Limit the number of Jira Administrators. The less the better. It`s better only one Jira Admnistrator full dedicated than several ones partially dedicated. If you decide to have several, you should implement collaborative processes (with Atlassian tools too, obviously ;)).

3. Standarize configuration schema names, workflows, screens, etc. It's different "MT3 Screen-2" than "Development project [create] screen for [Bug]". In general, you should stablish name conventions.

4. Configure permission and notification schemes based in roles. Try to avoid use single users or groups. If you need change something related to notifications or permissions its easier to do it in the roles section of every project (in many cases changing the group membership of a user is enougth). This allows to reuse notification and permission schemes for projects of the same category. Oh!, other piece of advice: use the project categories, It's more usefull than it seems (you can use it in some dashboard gadgets and JQL, and for organization purposes, of course).

5. Reuse configuration schemes for projects. Not always use the default templates to create new projects. If you need a new project of an existing project category (eg. Scrum development projects) you can use the option "create with share configuration" in the first creation pop-up. Make your own project templates. And if your Jira instance is Server and has installed Script Runner you can use the "copy project" built-in script that can copy versions, components, roles assigments and even issues if you want!

6. Reuse custom fields. When you have to create a new custom field, check before if exists other that you can use or add a new context for it.

7. If you have to implement some requierement: first, try to do it with configuration (and perhaps a bit of simple scripting). Second, search an add-on (app) that covers the necesities. And finally, analize to to it through custom development (don′t forget the Jira API REST).

8. Keep in the loop. Subscribe to Atlassian newsletters and blogs, follow Twitter accounts Atlassian-related, Linkedin forums and people that are working with Atlassian products, "watch" confluence spaces of oficcial documentation, etc.

9. Atlassian University and Certifications. May be a good way to learn.

10. Attend to Atlassian events: meetups, AUGs, and Summit of course!

I hope it was helpful and good luck for the newbies!