Once you’ve created your Jira account, the next step is setting up a space where you’ll organize and manage your work. A Jira space provides a dedicated area for related projects, boards, and workflows, allowing you to keep different types of work organized and separate.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a Jira space using the Kanban template. My example focuses on building a personal Job Search space that only I will use, but the same process works for countless other purposes, including project management, content planning, business operations, and team collaboration. Along the way, I’ll explain why I made each choice so you can confidently adapt the setup to fit your own workflow.

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What You’ll Learn

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

• Create a new Jira space
• Choose the right project template
• Understand the difference between Team-managed and Company-managed spaces
• Configure your space name, key, and access settings
• Invite team members (optional)
• Complete the initial space setup
• Star your new space for quick access

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Common Uses

• Job search management
• Personal project planning
• Content creation and editorial calendars
• Small business project management
• Marketing campaigns
• Product development
• Team collaboration
• Process improvement initiatives
• Event planning
• Client work and freelance projects

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Requirements / Compatibility

• A Jira Cloud account
• At least one Jira site already created
• Internet connection
• Modern web browser

This tutorial uses the current Jira Cloud interface. The overall process is similar across plans, although some options may vary depending on your subscription level, permissions, and whether you’re creating a Team-managed or Company-managed space.

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Understanding How Jira Works

Before creating your first space, it helps to understand what role it plays within Jira.

What Is a Jira Space?

Think of a Jira space as a dedicated workspace for a specific area of work. Each space contains its own boards, work items, workflows, and settings, helping you keep different projects organized.

For example, I created one space for managing my software tutorial projects and another specifically for tracking my job search. Keeping them separate allows each space to have its own workflow while preventing unrelated work from becoming mixed together.

Choosing the Right Template

Templates provide a starting point for how work will be organized. Rather than building everything from scratch, Jira creates an initial board and workflow based on the template you choose.

For this project, I selected the Kanban template because I wanted a visual board showing where each job opportunity currently stands, from initial interest through completion. If your work follows a different process, another template may be a better fit.

Team-Managed vs. Company-Managed

One of the most important decisions during setup is choosing how your space will be managed.

• Team-managed spaces allow each team to customize its own workflows, issue types, and settings independently. They’re ideal when teams want flexibility without affecting other projects.
• Company-managed spaces use shared configurations that can be standardized across multiple projects. This approach works well when consistency is important or when you want to reuse workflows and settings across different spaces.

Since this is a personal project and I wanted the flexibility of a standard Jira workflow without managing a separate team configuration, I chose the Company-managed option recommended during setup.

Remember that there isn’t a universally “correct” choice – the best option depends on how you plan to use Jira and whether you’ll be collaborating with others.

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Step-by-Step Instructions

Once you’ve created a Jira account, log in to the site.

Note: Your options and screens may vary depending on the choices made throughout this process, so your experience may look slightly different from what I’ve documented here, but the general process will be the same.

Step 1: Navigate to spaces management

• When you’re logged into Jira:
  • Click on the settings icon on the top right of the page
  • Click on Spaces

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Step 2: Create a new space

From the space management page, click on create space to create a new space.

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Step 3: Select a template

Jira provides a variety of templates to organize your space in the way that best works for what you want to accomplish. Browse through the suggested templates as well as the various categories down the left side of the page to find a template.

• Click on a template to open a modal with information about that template.
• Click the X to close the modal or click Use Template to choose that template for your space.

For my job search project, I opted for the Kanban template so I can view a board that shows the various stages of my job applications.

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Step 4: Name your space

In this section, you’ll name your space, determine how it will be managed, who will have access to it, and a key to identify items within this space. As you enter information into these fields, it will appear in the corresponding locations in the preview on the right.

• Name: Choose the name for this space. I opted for Job Search.
• Management type: Choose the management type for your space.
  • Team-managed: For teams who want to control their own working processes and practices in a self-contained space. Mix and match agile features to support your team as you grow in size and complexity.
  • Company-managed: For teams who want to work with other teams in a standard way. Encourage and promote organizational best practices and processes through a shared configuration.
    • Tip: Since I will be the only one using this space, I opted for Jira’s recommendation for me – Company managed.
• Access: When using team-managed, you’ll need to set the access as well.
  • Private: Only admins and people added to the project can search for, view, create, or edit its issues.
  • Limited: Anyone with access to this Jira site can search for, view, and comment on this project’s issues. Only people added to the project can create and edit its issues.
  • Open: Anyone with access to this Jira site can search for, view, create, and edit this project’s issues.
• Key: Choose a descriptive prefix for your space’s work item keys to recognize work from this space.
  • Tip: Since my space is named “Job Search”, I would use JS, which Jira automatically created for me.
• Click Next once you’ve made your selections.

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Step 5: Add team members

Next you can invite team members as guests or administrators, if that’s relevant to your setup. Since I’m setting this up just for myself, I clicked on I’ll do this later at the bottom of the screen.

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Step 6: Connect your work

Here, you can connect various features to your space, if desired and applicable. For this setup, I just left everything as-is and clicked Done at the bottom of the page.

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Step 7: Your space is now set up!

After completing the last step, you will be taken to your new board.

I highly recommend adding this board to your starred items so it’s easy to find. To add this board to your starred items:

• Click on the 3 dots to the right of your new board as shown below
• Click on Add to starred

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Additional Tips

Helpful Tip

Star any spaces you use frequently. This places them in your Starred list, making them much easier to access without navigating through the full Spaces menu each time you log in.

Alternative Approach

If you’re still exploring Jira, don’t worry too much about choosing the “perfect” template. Most aspects of a space – including workflows, boards, issue types, and statuses – can be customized later as your needs evolve.

Common Mistake

Many new users try to put everything into a single Jira space.

Instead, consider creating separate spaces for different areas of work, such as personal projects, business projects, content creation, or job searching. This keeps workflows focused and much easier to manage over time.

Version Differences

This tutorial was created using the current Jira Cloud interface. Atlassian regularly updates Jira, so you may notice minor differences in menus or wording while the overall process remains the same.

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