Jira & Confluence Label Standards

Labels observe the following conventions

• Case-sensitive: Labels are case-sensitive. Always use lower-case characters when adding labels to tickets. For example, Jira creates separate labels for the entries "Catalog" and "catalog".
• Spelling: Spelling differences in labels affect search results in Jira; for example, Jira distinguishes "pre-requisite" and "prerequisite" as unique terms. A search on "pre-requisite" may retrieve different tickets than a search on prerequisite.
• Jira labels are shared across Jira projects; Confluence labels are shared across all spaces

Suggested label conventions

• Re-use existing labels whenever possible.  Having two labels that mean the same thing essentially renders the labeling system dysfunctional.
• The labels should be short and not too wordy. The labels should aid in filtering issues effectively and multiple labels are acceptable.
  • Not preferred:
    • performance-scalability-reliability-and-regulatory-report
    • performance-and-scalability-report
    • performance-scalability-reliability-and-not-regulatory-report
  • Preferred:
    • performance
    • scalability
    • reliability
    • regulatory
    • report
• Use abbreviations for lengthy labels. A label should be at least 3 characters in length.
  • e.g., nfr (Non Functional Requirement)
• Use lower case with hyphens to separate words
  • it-standard (hyphenated compounds)

Standard labels