Summary

The use-case and requirement is to convert a Jira Software project to Jira Work Management project keeping the issue/project keys intact. This document explains how to migrate issues from Jira Software project to Jira Work Management project and what things to keep in mind while converting the JSW project to the JWM project.

Environment

Jira Cloud.

Things to keep in mind while migration

• Features differ between project types and templates. Be sure the new project you’re moving to has all the features your team needs to carry out their work. Read more about the types of projects that come with each Jira product and their features.

• If your team’s current project uses custom schemes (for issue types, workflows, security, notifications, etc.), you’ll have to associate the new project with those schemes.

• Sometimes things go badly. It’s always a good idea to create a backup before starting bulk operations. Read more about backing up your Jira Cloud site.

• Please check the attached article if the migration is from a team-managed project to a company-managed project: Things to keep in mind if you migrate from team-managed to company-managed
• Please check the attached article if the migration is from a company-managed to a team-managed project: Things to keep in mind if you migrate from company-managed to team-managed

• There is one more warning regarding the parent-child relationships if the users are using the Epic issue type in the Software project- 

  • If there are more than 1000 issues that need to be bulk moved, and since only 1000 issues can be moved(bulk operation) at once, the system will give a warning message of parent-child relationship to be lost for the Epics that could be not available in the first 1000 issues to be moved.
  • In this case, we need to filter the Epics and its child issues first to perform a bulk operation and move them together.
• While bulk moving issues, some data may be lost. Please review this link to get complete insight: Learn more about data that is lost while bulk moving issues.
• When bulk moving issues from one project to another, the original sequence of the issues issue key will be lost during the process. For example, if an issue ABC-1 moved to project DEF, then during bulk operation, it can become DEF-6 in the new project. Eventually, when the project ABC is deleted, and project DEF is renamed as ABC, the final issue key will be DEF-6.
• Additionally, to bulk move issues, please ensure the user has the Make bulk changes global permission. Learn more about global permissions.

• Please make sure the user has the required permissions on the destination project to Create Issues, comments etc.

• Kindly note with Jira Work Management projects, the default issue types are Task and Sub-Task. Thus, it is essential to create Issue Types in advance in the destination project, which are present in the existing Jira Software project, such as Story, Bug, etc., before performing bulk move operation.

• The development-related data like Components, Versions, & Releases data in the initial project cannot be transferred to the destination project when migrating from a Software Scrum project to a Business project. This is logical because each release is just for that project, and when you move issues from one to another project, they will not be retained.
• It is recommended to perform the testing with 1 or 2 issues initially to see if it got successfully migrated to the destination project.

Solution

In short, the solution by which this can be achieved is by bulk-moving all the issues from your Software project (let's say ABC) to the newly created Business project (let's say XYZ) and then deleting the Software project ABC, which will release the project key ABC of a Software project. In the end, you can change the project key of the new Business project from XYZ to ABC. See more detailed information regarding changing the project key in Change your project's key

Let's go through the solution and the steps in detail now:

To move multiple issues to another project:

• From the navigation, select Search.
• Select Advanced search for issues.
• Search for the issues you want to move. Learn more about searching for issues.
• Select More (…) > Bulk Change all <n> issues.
• Select the issues you want to move and select Next.
• Choose the Move Issues bulk operation and select Next.
• Select your destination project and issue types. Learn more about selecting the destination project and issue type while bulk moving issues.
• If necessary, map any statuses and update fields to match the destination project. Learn more about mapping statuses and updating fields.
• Review your changes and select Confirm.

For your reference, please read through the link: Bulk move issues

Change your project's key

To change your company-managed project's key, you’ll need to contact a Jira administrator. Please go through the document Things to consider before changing a project key to note the things to keep in mind before changing the project's key.

• From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Details.

• In the Key field, enter your desired key. Your project's key must:

  • be at least two characters long

  • start with an uppercase letter

  • and, contain only uppercase letters or numbers

• Select Save details.

Stuck? Need more help?

Contact the Atlassian Support team if you need further assistance.