If you’ve worked with me on projects over the past fifteen years or so, you’ll know I’m a very vocal proponent for Atlassian’s Jira application. We use local server and cloud versions of Jira, Roadmaps, and Jira Structure in my consulting business for managing projects, and longer term planning.


In the past year, leading up to this week there have been several apparently disconnected events that are causing us to review our planning toolsets.
As the pandemic gained ground last year, and many of our clients moved almost all their staff to remote working environments, we also saw a shift toward Microsoft’s M365 platform, and increasing use of the Microsoft Planner tool.
Around the same time, Atlassian announced their products will be moving to a Cloud only model. As of February 2024 there will be no support for server based versions.
This week, ALMworks, who develop Jira Structure announced their cloud pricing. When I read the email, I had to sit down. For a small company like ours, the cost looks prohibitive in terms of what we pay versus the benefits.


Every one of our clients is involved in Healthcare in some way. We are subject to the same HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance regulations for privacy and security as our clients.


This next point may be significant when it comes to some of the client trends I mentioned above. Microsoft is very clear they are HIPAA compliant with their M365 platform. Atlassian’s Cloud Terms of Service prohibit submitting or receiving “Sensitive Personal Information” on its Cloud Products, which includes “patient, medical or other protected health information regulated by HIPAA.” Ryan Ozawa wrote a very good piece on this at the end of last year.
There are companies like Valiantsys who offer HIPAA compliant hosting of Jira, but again there’s quite a cost impact,


Taking everything together, we are currently reviewing exactly what our requirements are for management and planning, starting with, is Jira overkill?
And what does this have to do with writing?


Well, a kanban board helps keep me focused so I actually finish a story and don’t jump into the next bright shiny idea. The solution there may be as simple as index cards on a white board.


I’ll post updates here as we make decisions.