I'm getting the feeling that you understand this JIRA stuff pretty well :)
Maybe I am... ;-) I introduced PBT (where I'm about to leave) to JIRA about a year ago, and was the admin for about 10 months. I've implemented some crude, yet custom, workflows for our IT operations production change policy (they wanted the project called PCP for some reason). They also use JIRA for most technical project management, bug tracking and future task planning. Its a good tool... despite some of its weakness and awkwardness. Cheers, --jason