Diffrences between two projects

[Marvin_Fang]

Hi there.

I have a question about locating the differences between two projects.

I recently cloned a project (w/ its sub-tasks) from other's project. However, if he changed anything in his project, it seems that my project cannot simultaneously get the update. Is there any way that I can "shadow copy" his project, so I can immediately get any changes from him? Or, is there a way that I can just locate the differences between two projects (so I can manualy change it), maybe by filter or some syntax?

Thank you so much!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Cloning takes a copy of something so that you have a separate copy to work on, it's not a synchronisation system.

If you need to work on the same issues, then I have to question why you are trying to synchronise, surely you should continue to work on the issues together in the same place?

If you do really want synchronisations, you'll need to set up something that can monitor both projects and update the other appropriately.  I wouldn't try to do it myself, check the marketplace for synchronisation apps.

[Marvin_Fang]

Thank you so much for your answer. The reason I want to clone other's project is: my team leader creates a Project that has a series of Tasks as a "checklist template", so I can check what to do to meet my team's requirements. As it is a checklist template for the entire team, I cannot just work on this template Project, since my other colleagues will use it as well. For example, if I have finished the second task in the project while my collegue yet, that will be really confusing. 

The reason I want synchronisation is: my team leader might want to, like say, add a new check point in our checklist template (to do so, he will add a new Task in this Project), then I cannot immediately get his update, unless I manually check his project and edit it in my project. This will be a big trouble if there are too many "template projects" in our team or too many updates from my team leader. 

Hope this makes sense to you!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That sounds like an utterly confused and pointless process.

If your team lead wants you to do something new, why don't they just add a new task in your project?

[Marvin_Fang]

Sorry about the confusion, I will try to make it clear.

I am working in a PM team, and there are three important points I have to mention:

1, All PMs in our team will follow the SAME GUIDELINE. Since it is the same guideline, our leader makes it a Jira Project, so we will all have a “template” to follow.

2, There are too MANY STEPS in this guideline. We cannot manually create it, which takes too much time.

3, There are too many PMs in our team, each PM will work on DIFFERENT PROJECTS.  It is impossible for our leader to update every tasks for so many different projects.

According to these three points, we will have a template (our leader’s Jira project). If any of us wants to start a new project, we will clone it to our own project. So we don’t need to create all these tasks by ourselves, and we will follow our own project’s progress.

A more specific example: a leader has created a new Jira project “BIG ALPHA”, which consists task A, task B and task C. These are what we are supposed to do in our projects. Now, Tom just starts a new project BRAVO, and he wants to clone the leader’s project BIG ALPHA to his project BRAVO. He cannot just work on leader’s project, because Mary plans to start a new project tomorrow, and Mary will use this BIG ALPHA as a template as well. Is that clear? BIG ALPHA is the template, is a guideline. BRAVO is Tom's project, and BRAVO also has task A, B, C.

Here comes the problem, right after Tom cloned this BIG ALPHA, the team leader decides that all her team members need to do a task D in their projects, so the leader adds this task D to the BIG ALPHA – which won’t affect Mary since she has yet have any projects, but that will affect Tom’s project. My question is: Is there a way, that Tom can receive this update from the BIG ALPHA immediately?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ok, that sounds like you've got a complicated mess with your project management, but not a bad solution to it in Jira.

I would not try synchronisation, and keep the "template" project as that - something that you copy from, but actually do no work in.  Then I would have code on the "create issue" transition that will copy new issues over into the other projects they should be created in.

[Marvin_Fang]

Yes, you are right. I guess there is no such a "sync" function. Thanks for your answer again!