There is nothing quite like a new, untouched JIRA or Confluence instance, but given the increased adoption of the suite, it is less and less likely to encounter one. Instead, you’ll likely inherit an existing instance, and those tend to fall into one of two categories. Either the instance is very out-of-the-box with minimal oversight and frequent branching, or the instance is brutally locked down through policy or legacy integrations where one struggles for a meeting to discuss the privilege of working around someone else’s decisions.

While Operations textbooks would refer to these as near-green or brown field implementations, a useful analog is to consider the difference between graffiti and a tattoo, respectively. Each has unique benefits, tradeoffs, and considerations. Both can be great, but both can be terrible. Whether you’re arriving on a team with an existing setup or advising in a consulting role, there are tactics for each that will make your resulting changes effective, sustainable, and maybe even the envy of others.