when setting up a portfolio plan, why is a release required?

[Kelly Lawler]

Hello - we are working to use Jira across multiple projects with several cross functional teams - several questions are coming up

1. What is the purpose of the releases - are they required, I think the answer is yes, but what is the nuance, ie could we use them as time box/sprints, 1 per month, or are they better to be used for specific epic projects with many smaller projects that have a fixed date, ie the evacuation of a data center?

2. When working with the various teams, does it matter if they are setup for scrum vs Kanban - and if so, can you expain those nuances further - 

Thank you

Kelly Lawler

[Dave]

Hi Kelly,

A release is used to group a collection of issues that is usually mapped to a specific version of the the product associated with the project you're working on. 

It is not essential to use releases. For time boxing you should ideally configure a scrum team board for your project and use it to create sprints. These will then be included in your Portfolio plan when you include that project and team in your issue sources.

When using multiple teams in a plan the main nuance is that you can only use Kanban teams when estimating in time (hours or days) as you cannot use story point estimation in plans that feature Kanban teams.

I hope this helps,

Regards,

Dave