How do you related multiple Epics to an Atlassian Project for reporting and visibility?

[Andrew Miller]

I am a bit baffled, so I will assume I am missing something important - how does Atlassian capture all of the work (end to end, across multiple departments) related to an Atlassian Project? From my understanding, only a single Jira Epic can be connected to an Atlassian Project ("Where is the work tracked?"). If I have an Atlassian project, where multiple departments are working towards it, and are working on separate team Jira boards, how is this captured if I can only link a single Epic to the Project? 

A Project needs to be able to rollup progress/reporting from multiple Jira boards and multiple Epics. For example, a project involves BA, Dev, UAT, Ops, and CS teams. Each has their own Jira work to track their actions. All of their Epics need to be tied to the overall project. The overall Atlassian Project needs to show overall progress (out of the 5 Epics, roll up the % completion, or stages, or at least see which Epics are effecting the Project). 

Same with reporting. Multiple separate teams should be able to contribute to Project's update, and the Project update should roll up all of their individual updates into a single Project update. 

Rovo tells me this is not possible. Please tell me I'm wrong! Or if my process above is against industry standards, what is the best in class solution for my need? 

[John Funk]

Hi Andrew - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

An Epic can only be associated with a single project. But the children of Epics can come from multiple projects. If you are on a Story or Task on one project, you can click in the Parent field and link it to an Epic in another project. 

[Andrew Miller]

Thanks John! I understand an Epic can only be associated with a single Project, that's not a problem for me. but can a Project be associated with multiple Epics to show the progress/reporting of the multiple Epics? It doesn't sound like it, so I'm curious how other Atlassian-SME teams work around this, to answer my original post/problem.

In my mind, this workflow makes sense - orgs are made up of different departments, each department/team has their own Jira board, but the different departments work together (multiple Epics) to deliver a single Project. How is all of this work captured/viewed/reported in a single place?

If you have a solution, please share!

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Hi @Andrew Miller,

In Jira, an epic can reside in a single project. But you can place elements (task, story, bug, etc.) created in other projects to an Epic from another project, but apparently, only if that project is of type company-managed - based on my tests it does not work if the parent epic is in a team-manage project.

Here is an example. DEMO-189 is an epic in project DEMO, which is a company-managed project. SDM-48 is a story in project SDM, which was added under epic DEMO-189.

One possible approach is to maintain a "main" company-managed project where epics are created, and then have separate projects (of any type) for each department, with their work items linked as children of the epics in the main project.

This allows each department to work within its own project and board, while still maintaining visibility and alignment through shared epics.

Another approach, a more "agile" one, would be to use projects with "cross-functional" team. This means that people from multiple departments (BA, Dev, UAT, Ops, and CS)  work on the same project. One project, one board, tasks in the same project for everyone that contributes with work to that project. 

But in any case, tracking the progress of the epics from a high level could be problematic in Jira. For example, the Jira's Epic report or the Epic Burndown report is project-specific, not cross-projects. For accurate reports and overall progress over multiple teams, you will need a 3rd party app from Atlassian Marketplace. 

In case you consider the option of using a 3rd party app, our Great Gadgets app offers all you need to track your epics across multiple teams or projects. This is easy to use.

For example, with its Work Break Structure (WBS) gadget you can display the epics along with their tasks and status in a tree structure:

While with the Pivot Table & Pivot Chart gadget you can display the overall progress of the epics in many ways (tables, heatmap tables, charts, etc)

   

More details here: https://community.atlassian.com/forums/App-Central-articles/How-to-display-the-progress-of-Epics-or-Initiatives-in-Jira-or/ba-p/2858840 

Danut.