# Coming from Linear or Jira

> How Linear's and Jira's words map to By Dawn's, what works differently once agents do the building, and how to bring your team's work over.

This guide is for a team moving to By Dawn from Linear or Jira. By the end you'll know which By Dawn word to use for each
thing you know, the few habits that change once agents do the building, and how to bring your work across without
stopping it.

Most of By Dawn will feel familiar: a board, tickets, sub-tickets, epics, cycles and labels. What's new is who does the
work in the middle of the board, and that changes a few habits more than it changes the words.

## The words

| Linear | Jira | By Dawn |
|---|---|---|
| Workspace | Site | **Organization** |
| Team | Project | **Project** for the board, with its own columns and repos, and **Team** for who owns the work |
| Workflow states | Workflow statuses and board columns | **Columns**: Backlog, Planning, Running, Review and Completed in a new project |
| Issue | Story, task or bug | **Ticket**. Jira's issue types become labels, such as `type:bug` |
| Sub-issue | Sub-task | **Sub-ticket**, shown as `BIL-142.1` |
| Project | Epic | **Epic** |
| Project milestone | | **Milestone**, a phase of one epic |
| Cycle | Sprint | **Cycle** |
| Estimate | Story points | **Estimate**, on a scale the project picks |
| Blocks, related, duplicate | Issue links | **Relations**: blocked by, blocks, related to, duplicate of |

Two of these trip people up. A Linear *project* is a By Dawn **epic**, because in By Dawn a project is the board itself.
A Linear team's workflow (its columns, cycles and ID prefix) belongs to the By Dawn project, and its people and their
tickets to a By Dawn [team](https://docs.bydawn.com/teams/), so several teams can share one board. A ticket keeps its ID when it moves to
another team. And By Dawn nests one level of sub-tickets under a ticket, so a deeper tree, such as a Linear
sub-issue of a sub-issue, is flattened when it comes in.

## What works differently

### Moving a card starts the work

In Linear or Jira, moving an issue to *In Progress* records that someone has started. In By Dawn, moving a ticket into
the Running column starts an agent on it. So the board is something you act through, not just something you keep
up to date, and By Dawn moves the cards itself as the work goes: to Running when an agent starts, and to Review when it
has finished or needs you.

### A ticket describes an outcome, not a task for a person

An issue written for a teammate can lean on what they already know. A ticket for an agent says what should be true
when it's done, how you'll check it, and what not to touch. [Writing tickets an agent can
finish](https://docs.bydawn.com/learn/writing-tickets/) shows the difference on a real ticket.

### Blocked means blocked

A *blocks* link in Linear or Jira is a note to people. In By Dawn, an agent can't start a ticket until everything blocking
it is completed, and an epic launch starts each ticket as its blockers finish. So add a blocking link only where the
order really matters, and don't leave stale ones behind.

### Your time moves to the ends

With agents building, the work that takes your time is at the two ends of each ticket: writing it and agreeing its
plan at the start, and reviewing it at the end. Plan your cycles around how much your team can review, not how much
it could build. [Running a cycle with agents](https://docs.bydawn.com/learn/running-a-cycle/) covers it.

### Done is proved, not reported

A mission checks each ticket before it's called finished: tests and build, CI, and whatever else your team ticks,
each marked as **Verified**, **AI-reviewed** or **Reported**. A ticket in Review comes with that evidence, so a review
starts from facts. [Reviewing agent work](https://docs.bydawn.com/learn/reviewing-agent-work/) explains how to read it.

## Bring your work over

You don't have to start from an empty board. A project admin can bring your work in from Linear or Jira, either
once or kept in sync for up to 180 days while your team moves over. A sync lets people who still work in the old
tracker carry on, and their changes usually reach By Dawn within a minute.

By Dawn proposes the whole mapping from your tracker's own data: which column each status lands in, the priorities, who
each person is, and how epics, sub-tasks and sprints come across. You check it, and a dry run shows what would
happen before anything is created. A few things to know before you start:

- **Imported tickets get new identifiers**, such as `BIL-412`. Each card shows where it came from, such as
  **Jira · PROJ-123 ↗**, which opens the original.
- **An import doesn't start agents** or notify anyone, even when it brings in a ticket that sits in the Running
  column. It's bookkeeping, so the team decides what to start.
- **No one is invited.** People are matched to your By Dawn members by email, and anyone left over keeps their name on
  the ticket, unassigned.
- **Only active and future sprints or cycles** join a By Dawn cycle, and By Dawn never creates a cycle for them.

The guides for each tracker walk through the connection and the mapping step by step:

- [Import and sync](https://docs.bydawn.com/import-and-sync/): what every import shares, conflicts, pausing and ending a sync.
- [Linear](https://docs.bydawn.com/import-linear/): how Linear's states, projects, sub-issues and cycles map.
- [Jira](https://docs.bydawn.com/import-jira/): how Jira's statuses, epics, sub-tasks and sprints map, and what syncing back through Jira's
  workflow means.

## A first week that works

1. **Import one project**, kept in sync, so the team can still use the old tracker while it learns By Dawn.
2. **Rewrite three tickets** the way [Writing tickets an agent can finish](https://docs.bydawn.com/learn/writing-tickets/) describes, and
   start each in **Plan + build**, so you see an agent's plan before it builds.
3. **Review them together**, as a team, using [Reviewing agent work](https://docs.bydawn.com/learn/reviewing-agent-work/). You'll learn
   more about how agents read your tickets from three reviews than from any guide.
4. **Plan your first cycle** around what you reviewed comfortably in that week.

When the team has stopped opening the old tracker, end the sync. The tickets stay in By Dawn and stop updating.

## Where to go next

- [Intro to By Dawn](https://docs.bydawn.com/learn/intro-to-saw/): one ticket, start to finish.
- [Words we use](https://docs.bydawn.com/glossary/): every By Dawn word in one place.

Source: https://docs.bydawn.com/learn/coming-from-linear-or-jira/