Best way to structure JIRA Portfolio for multiple projects?

[jtay]

Hi, I'm new to JIRA portfolio and trying to figure out the best way to structure projects for my organisation, and would appreciate some guidance or validation if my planned approach is the right one, and if not what should be changed to fit best practices.

My current organisation consists of 5 teams, and all the work that we manage are bucketed into 1 JIRA Project Key and each team have their own Scrum boards.

The projects are currently broken down as such:

• Each team will be assigned 8 projects in a year / 2 project per quarter
• Each project consists of work(scope) for 2 markets (countries)
• A scope of work may comprise of 2-3 MVP releases
• Within each MVP there may be multiple functionalities to be delivered
• Each functionality (that we group into Epics) will have a series tasks assign to it

Having read some of the JIRA Portfolio documentation, I'm struggling to decide how to set it up well.

My current thoughts around the set up are:

1. Create a JIRA Program (to house all projects)
2. Set up as a Plan in Portfolio for each Project by Market (essentially 16 Plans)
3. Each Plan will comprise of the various Releases for the MVPs which then gets broken down by Epics and Issues

Some confusion I have with the above set up is how will this setup factors into the team Boards, as I've read from the Getting Started Guide that All Issues on a board will be included into a Plan. Or a can Portfolio push multiple plans into a single board (per the above setup)

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and appreciate any advise and experience you can share.

[Danny]

Hello @jtay

Were you able to find a solution to this issue or are you still seeking guidance?

My thoughts and queries on your set up are thus:

1. You can set up a plan using an issue filter, a project, or a board as an issue source. Boards have the added bonus of carrying over the sprint data, though what you have described above makes me think you could either use multiple boards as issue sources or the project itself. 
2. Portfolio acts as a sandbox in which you can push your changes out. The changes are to the issues themselves, what sprints they are assigned to, assignee, team, story point values, estimates, etc.
3. My first question is why only one Jira project when you have 8 individual projects per year. Could you clarify this decision for me? It seems like you would have a lot of issues to search through which increase after each year.

Hope this helps,

Danny