Jira (and may be other Atlassian solutions) need to provide a way to change the system status.

Let''s look into our context. Our Jira implementation has 1190 active users. We currently have 56,000 issues (we have 49'000 in Nov 2008) and we have the intention to migrate to 3.13. First problem, the upgrade proposed by Atlassian is quite combersome, especially that you need to run a backup to have all your issues.

While planning this I thought what could I do to avoid my users to keep using the system: I can't backup the issues and let them be modified again before completing the migration. So with this in mind I would like to propose the adoption of a system option called "System Operation Mode".

The SOM can have 3 possible values:
1) Production:
2) System Maintenance
3) System Check

In Produciton status, everyone can login and work.

In System Maintenance, only the system administrator can login, all other logins are refused.

In System Check, only the system administrator and a limited number of people (testers) can login. Testers are all the people that are included in a new permission group or role named "System Check users".

In this way, if any operation requires the server UP but all your users off it, you turn the SOM into System Maintenance. The before releasing to public, the admin sets the SOM to System Check and runs the tests with the team and later on the SOM is turned into Production mode.