Atlassian ACP-600: Project Administration in Jira Server, Then and Now

ACP-600 was Atlassian's Project Administration in Jira Server certification. It validated the ability to configure and operate individual Jira projects inside the boundaries delegated to a project administrator: permissions, issue security, workflows, fields, screens, notifications, versions, components, reports, dashboards and JQL. It was narrower than system-wide Jira administration, but that narrowness made the exam highly practical because candidates had to know exactly what a project administrator could change and when escalation to a Jira administrator was required.

The exam is firmly legacy in 2026. Atlassian retired ACP-600 in November 2021 and replaced its project-administration track with Managing Jira Projects credentials for Data Center and Cloud. The Data Center successor later retired in September 2025 as Atlassian shifted its certification catalog toward cloud products. The Cloud successor, ACP-620, remains available in late 2026 but is itself scheduled to retire in January 2027 when selected project-administration content is folded into an updated Jira Administration for Cloud exam.

ACP-600 focused on delegated project administration

The Atlassian certifications catalog separated project administration from system administration because the scopes are different. A project administrator needs enough control to adapt a project to the team's work without being able to alter every shared object in Jira. The skill is therefore partly technical and partly about governance.

A project administrator might manage versions, components, project details, board behavior or some workflow and screen changes when Jira's extended project-administration conditions are satisfied. A Jira administrator can create or modify broader shared configuration and resolve dependencies that cross project boundaries. ACP-600 tested whether the candidate knew where that line was.

This is why project-administration questions often included an apparently simple business request plus constraints. The best answer was not always the configuration with the most power. It was the change that met the requirement inside the project administrator's authority and created the least unnecessary impact elsewhere.

Roles, permissions and issue security were foundational

Every project decision depends on who can access the work. Project roles provide project-scoped membership, while permission schemes define actions such as browsing, creating, editing, assigning, transitioning and administering issues. Groups may appear in permission schemes, but project roles are often the more maintainable choice because membership can differ by project without editing a global group.

ACP-600 candidates needed to understand combinations of permissions rather than isolated labels. Ranking issues on a board, moving issues between projects, logging or editing work, assigning issues and executing workflow transitions can depend on more than one permission or on related project configuration. The Browse Projects permission is especially fundamental because many other capabilities are meaningless if the user cannot see the project or issue in the first place.

Issue security adds another layer. A user may have permission to browse the project yet be excluded from a particular issue by its security level. Project administrators must know when issue-level security is appropriate and how membership in roles, groups or user fields can determine visibility.

Project configuration included versions, components and ownership

Versions and components are not merely labels. Versions support release planning and reporting, while components can organize responsibility and support component-specific default assignees. A project administrator needs to know how these objects affect filters, boards, reports and issue assignment.

Project details such as the name, key, lead and category have different scopes and consequences. Changing a project key, for example, affects how issues are referenced and may have implications for integrations, filters or human habits even when Jira preserves redirects or historical references. Project categories can help organize projects but do not replace permissions.

Templates and shared configurations also matter. Two projects can look similar while sharing different underlying schemes. Creating a project from a template is not the same as creating one with shared configuration. ACP-600 expected candidates to understand which elements remain independent and which can create cross-project coupling.

Issue types, workflows, fields and screens form one configuration system

A business process expressed in Jira usually spans several objects. Issue types distinguish classes of work. Workflows define statuses and transitions. Fields capture information. Screens determine where fields appear. Notifications communicate selected events. These pieces must agree with each other.

Suppose a team asks to collect an approval reason only when a certain issue type reaches a particular transition. Adding a global required field would be excessive. A better design may involve the correct field context, a transition screen and validation in the workflow. Conversely, if the requirement applies to all issues in a project, a more general field configuration may be appropriate.

Project administrators also need to know the limits of delegated workflow and screen editing. Jira can allow project-level changes only when certain prerequisites are met. If a workflow or screen is shared too broadly, the project admin may need a Jira administrator to create a safe project-specific configuration rather than editing a shared object.

Notifications should follow process events, not guesswork

Project notification problems are rarely solved well by adding more recipients everywhere. The administrator should identify which event is fired, which notification scheme is associated with the project, which recipients are configured for that event, and whether those recipients can access the issue.

Workflows can fire different events on different transitions, which allows notification behavior to reflect process meaning. A resolved event may reasonably notify a different audience from a generic update. Misconfigured events can make a correct notification scheme appear broken.

This illustrates a broader exam principle: understand the configuration chain before changing it. ACP-600 was less about memorizing screens and more about tracing how project behavior emerges from connected objects.

Boards, filters and JQL turn project data into working views

Jira Software boards are driven by saved filters. That means board membership, backlog behavior and many agile views ultimately depend on JQL. A project administrator who can configure columns but cannot interpret the underlying filter is likely to misdiagnose missing or unexpected issues.

A practical Jira foundation includes reading JQL, understanding status and resolution semantics, and recognizing how project, issue type, fix version, component, assignee and other fields change a result set. ACP-600 required candidates to translate business questions into filters rather than simply remember query syntax.

Boards also introduce permissions and ranking considerations. A user may see issues yet lack the capabilities required to rank or manage sprints. The board administrator, project administrator and Jira administrator roles can overlap in practice, but the exam expected candidates to distinguish them.

Reports and dashboards must match the question being asked

Jira provides reports for different kinds of work: sprint progress, versions, created-versus-resolved trends, workloads and other project measures. A report is only useful if its assumptions match the team's process. A sprint-oriented chart makes little sense for a team that does not run sprints, while version reports depend on disciplined version use.

Dashboards are broader containers that combine gadgets built from filters and other data sources. Project administrators should understand sharing because a dashboard or filter can expose information to a wider audience than intended if permissions and sharing are not aligned.

ACP-600 scenarios often tested the candidate's ability to choose the simplest native report or dashboard configuration that answered the requirement. Building a complicated filter when an existing report already models the question can be unnecessary; choosing a visually attractive report that measures the wrong population is equally weak.

ACP-600 was not the same as Jira system administration

The retired ACP-100 Jira Administration for Data Center covered system-wide access, shared schemes, global settings, fields, screens, workflows, directories and administrative troubleshooting. ACP-600 concentrated on configuring projects within delegated boundaries. The two credentials overlapped because project admins use system-provided schemes, but their authority and decision scope were different.

Understanding that distinction is still useful in modern Jira governance. Teams often want autonomy, while platform owners want consistency and controlled change. A well-designed Jira environment delegates project decisions that are safe to local owners and reserves global or shared configuration for administrators who can evaluate cross-project impact.

The replacement path moved project administration toward Cloud

Atlassian replaced ACP-600 with newer Managing Jira Projects certifications. The Cloud branch is represented by ACP-620 Managing Jira Projects for Cloud, which emphasizes project creation, board configuration, project management, automation and reporting in the cloud product. It preserves much of the project-admin mindset but reflects a different platform and a newer feature set.

ACP-620 should not be described as permanently current, however. Atlassian announced in September 2026 that it will retire the credential in January 2027 and incorporate selected content into an updated Jira Administration for Cloud exam. That change is another reminder that certification codes are snapshots of a product and role at a point in time.

For someone reading an ACP-600 page today, the useful question is not “How do I book ACP-600?” but “Which project-administration concepts remain relevant, and which active Atlassian credential now covers my platform and role?”

Legacy ACP-600 material is still useful when the status is explicit

The core ideas remain valuable: project roles should support maintainable access, shared schemes need careful handling, workflows should encode real process rules, JQL should answer operational questions, and reports should reflect how the team actually works. Organizations still running Jira Data Center may encounter many of the same configuration mechanics even though the exam is gone.

What should be avoided is treating historical Server-era behavior as authoritative for Jira Cloud. Features, administration boundaries and interfaces have changed. Candidates pursuing a current certification should learn from today's official objectives and use ACP-600 material as conceptual background rather than a current blueprint.

ACP-600's enduring lesson is the discipline of scoped administration: understand what the team needs, identify the configuration object that actually controls it, know whether that object is local or shared, and make the smallest change that solves the requirement without creating surprises elsewhere.

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