Managing Shared Epics Across Departments – Best Practices or Plugins?

[behzadnaz]

Hi,

I’m looking for a way to manage Epics that are shared between two or more departments in Jira. Here’s the scenario:

• An Epic starts with Department A, and once their part is done, it moves to Department B.

• Each department has its own team members and may want to assign tasks/stories to them.

• We need a single overview that shows:

  1. Which department currently “owns” the Epic?

  2. The progress of tasks within each department.

  3. Status of the overall Epic.

My questions:

1. Is there a recommended way to set up workflows or dashboards in Jira for this scenario?

2. Are there any plugins/add-ons that make managing cross-department Epics easier?

3. Any best practices for tracking department-level progress while keeping everything in one Epic?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

[Rich Allen]

Hi @behzadnaz , can I approach this from a different angle, interested in the strategy to move and Epic to different departments.
From most of my past experience, especially in the Agile space, is that an Epic would be owned by a Department/Area/Team. The work within that Epic, typically 'related for something' would then contain the tasks for Epic completion, whether those tasks are within or have multiple contributing departments or teams.

With this approach, we can utilise the large array of filter and display options within Jira Plans; Atlassian have done a fantastic job evolving this tool as part of the core Jira offering. Using the Jira hierarchy, Plans can display status and progress of the Epic, assigned work, just a few for example.

Not sure whether this helps, but maybe a workable approach/solution.

Cheers.

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Hi @behzadnaz,

Welcome to the Atlassian Community! 

I don't see an easy way to track this with Jira's out of the box tools. 

But in case you want to try an app, this can be easily done by using the Pivot Table & Pivot Chart gadget offered by our Great Gadgets app.

With this gadget you can display multi-dimensional stats in form of tables, heatmap tables or charts of various types. 

Here is how this app will address your needs:

1. Which department currently own the epic 

2. The progress of tasks within each department

In this example the progress is by number of tasks in each status category. You can also display progress by sum of story points or by status instead of status category. 

For this to work, the tasks must also have the department field set on them.

3. Status of the overall epics

 

This gadget is capable to display similar stats for initiatives, themes or features (- two levels above the Epic in he Jira issue hierarchy. 

For how to do this, see this article: https://community.atlassian.com/forums/App-Central-articles/How-to-display-the-progress-of-Epics-or-Initiatives-in-Jira-or/ba-p/2858840

If you need any help or maybe a demo, feel free to contact us at support@stonikbyte.com.

Danut. 

[Rahul_RVS]

Hi @behzadnaz 

Welcome to the community !!

Not sure if this can be achieved out of the box in Jira. If you are open to try out a mktplace solution for this need, I can suggest 

Agile Tools

The app allows you to view your project issue hierarchy (cross projects as well) created with issue links as well or standard Jira hierarchy or both in a tree view. You can view %complete progress at each parent level. It sums up the time tracking fields, story point or numeric fields at each parent level. The app can be added to a dashboard as well.

Disclaimer : I am one of the app team member

[Valerie Knapp]

Hi @behzadnaz , welcome to the Atlassian Community and thanks for your post.

A plugin we have implemented in the past to show cross-project scope and its progress is BigPicture.

They have a demo instance which you can check out here - https://softwareplant.com/demo-bigpicture/plugins/servlet/softwareplant-bigpicture/#/box/ROOT/o/hierarchy 

You can see the work breakdown structure and the progress at each level (iteration in this case).

BigPicture is quite a powerful plugin and might be a bit overkill for what you are trying to achieve. If you have questions about this tool, you can reach out to the vendor to ask them - https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1212259/bigpicture-portfolio-resource-management-for-jira?hosting=datacenter&tab=support 

Best wishes