How to structure Product & Project Lifecycle & Management in Jira

[Jason Lin]

Hi, I am evaluating Jira for our company's hardware & software development efforts-

• We split development of a Product into multiple funding rounds, where Product A is funded by:
  •  Grant 1, which constitutes multiple phases:
    • Application preparation, Application submitted, Application won, Application unsuccessful, Initiation, Planning, Execution, Closed
      • Grant 1 consists of multiple objectives
        • Objectives consists of multiple Stories & Tasks

Questions:

1. How can these concepts be "fit" into Jira's project management structure (we are currently not considering using Jira Plans). For example, project objectives are most likely Epics.
2. Should Grant 1 be a Jira Project or a Project Version/Release?
3. If represented by a Project Version/Release, how can we report on what Phase the project is currently in (application preparation, submitted, won, etc)?
4. Separately, I see Jira has a Grants Management Template where we can track Application Stages. However, it does not link to the project itself.
5. Can Visibility/Permissions be controlled on a per Epic or per Version level? or ONLY per Project level?
6. If I create an Epic due date of 11/6 that's tied to V1, but set its Version Release date to 10/30, Jira does NOT appear to warn you of a problem here...am I missing something?

Thanks!

[Rik de Valk]

Hi @Jason Lin , 

Reading your requirements, I would suggest to have 1 Jira project for tracking Product lifecycle. You can create a new Issue type and call it 'Product'. Then model a Workflow for products that represents the product lifecycle you describe (the Grant 1 phases). 

Next to this "Product lifecycle tracker project" you can create 1 Jira Project for each Product development project. These can be typical Software development projects, that uses Epics, Stories, Bugs and Tasks. 

Per Jira project you can set permissions (by granting users a project role on the project). 

This way you will have one high-level Jira project for tracking your portfolio of products. And one project for each product development initiative. 

For question #6: a release is different from an Epic. Your Release (Fix Version) should represent a product version. And a product version will contain multiple Stories and Bug (fixes). These can be STories from one single Epic or multiple Epics. But there is not necessarily a 1-to-1 relation between the Release and an Epic.

Hope that helps. 

Kind regards, 

Rik 

[Jason Lin]

Hi @Rik de Valk ,

Thanks for your quick and helpful response! Yes, I was just thinking the same to create separate projects for product management & product development.

1. Would one be able to report on the velocity/etc development metrics PER release/version? I'm thinking this reporting could be quite useful especially if I create a Release/Version for each Grant the product was funded by.
2. Regarding question #6, my thought process was that all issues/Epics scheduled for a release need to be completed before the release can happen. Is there a way in Jira to indicate this dependency and warn users if something exceeds the scheduled time/etc?

Thanks!

[Rik de Valk]

Hi, 

The standard velocity is a report specific to a Scrum board. And it purpose is to show velocity per sprint. It cannot report per release. 

However, you can create dashboards. And dashboards allow you to add and configure your own graphs and tables, based on filters you create. So you can create a filter for a release and use it to create a graph (EG: bar chart of completed issues per week). 

For highlighting  a scheduling conflict for Epics planned after their release date, you could use Plans. In a Plan the release icon above the timeline will turn red. And when you click on the release icon, it will show 'Off track by X days'. 

Have a nice day! Rik