Jira Project - As a Program Only (Initiatives > Epics)

[Lee Street]

I would like to create a Jira Project as a Program of work (Initiatives and Epics) with multiples Teams (Each Team a Jira Project) feeding from the Epics (Epics connected to the Team user stories)

Is this possible?  I'm looking for advice or an article on this?

[Mark Segall]

Hi @Lee Street 

This is absolutely possible.  On larger programs/projects, I routinely set up projects for each workstream and an initiatives project. If your epics are multi-team, I don't see harm in putting your epics there as well.  Then I use a combo of advanced roadmaps and a number of boards to bring it all together.  

A great starting point is Atlassian's article here:

https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/epics-stories-themes

Boards

Usually in this scenario, I'm dealing with a scrum of scrums so I have a consolidated board for those on the program team to have visibility into the tactical work regardless of team. Then boards for each team to filter out the noise of the other teams.  You just need to ensure that your "program project" is included in the board filter so they can easily drag and drop stories into the epics.

Advanced Roadmaps

This is where I conduct the high level release planning and run through what-if scenarios. I'll sit with project execs and show them how the roadmap will play out as we add/remove scope. 

Another tip - I like to leverage project category for all of the related projects.  It's much easier to execute a query of Project Category = "x" vs Project IN (a, b, c, d, e, etc)