Managing shared workload between initiatives and epics

[henry_bersani]

Hi all,

I'm managing a program of work that includes initiatives with set milestones some of which will be delivered by multiple teams. I'm using a jira planning board for visibility and pre-existing team boards for delivery. My goal is to minimize the number of spaces teams/people need to work in so I need a solution to the following problem:

How do I let teams contribute to a shared milestone without leaving their home board?

The current structure is as follows

1. Strategic Priority (Strategy item, sits in advanced planning roadmap)
   1. Initiative (Initiative item, sits in advanced planning roadmap)
      1. Milestone (essentially a workstream; ??? item type, needs to sit in advanced planning roadmap - this is where the problem lies)
         
         1. Deliverable 1 (Epic, sits in team #1 board)
         2. Deliverable 2 (Epic, sits in team #2 board)

I want visibility over the deliverables in the advanced roadmap view so I can see where the different team deliverables are contributing to the overall delivery of the milestones.

Does anyone have a solution they can share for this that doesn't require a plugin? (We're a privacy company and heavily locked down).

[Mary from Planyway]

@henry_bersani 

It sounds like you're working on a complex program with multiple teams contributing to shared milestones, and you want to manage everything from one central view without forcing teams to leave their home boards. This is definitely a challenge, but Jira has some great options to help, and Planyway for Jira can make this much easier.

With Planyway, you can manage cross-team milestones and gain visibility over how each team's deliverables contribute to the overall program. Planyway supports two types of milestones that would fit your use case:

1. General Milestones (Cross-project Milestones). These are high-level milestones that span across multiple projects and teams. You can easily set these milestones in Planyway. They visually help you understand how you are progressing towards your goals. (red flags on the image below)
2. Epic Milestones. These are specific to a single Epic but can be tracked and visualized in the cross-project roadmap. With Epic Milestones you creak down key deliverable and track them visually, assign to responsible people, color-code and track statuses. (diamonds on the epics).

Here you can see more info on epic milestones.

[Danut M _StonikByte_]

Hi @henry_bersani,

I don’t see any other options in Jira besides Plans (Advanced Roadmaps) without using a plugin... 

But if you decide to reconsider the option of using a plugin from Atlassian Marketplace, please let me know and I will come with a good recommendation.

Danut.

[Ajay _view26_]

Hi @henry_bersani 

What you’re describing is usually handled best by using Plans / Advanced Roadmaps as the cross-team view, while keeping execution on each team’s own board.

A structure that generally works is:
- Initiative (higher roadmap level)
- Milestone / Workstream (another hierarchy level above Epic, if you really need it)
- Team Epics on each delivery board
- Stories/tasks under those epics on the team boards

The key point is that the team epics can stay on the team boards, while still rolling up into the higher-level roadmap item in Plans, as long as your hierarchy is configured correctly. Atlassian’s hierarchy docs for Plans support adding levels above Epic, and Plans can then show those parent/child rollups across spaces/projects.

So instead of making teams work in a separate “program board,” I’d usually do this:
1. keep delivery work in the existing team boards
2. create a higher-level item in the roadmap for the shared milestone/workstream
3. make each team’s Epic a child of that milestone/initiative
4. use Plans for the portfolio/master schedule view, not as the place where teams do day-to-day work

If multiple teams are contributing to the same milestone, I would not try to make one shared Epic owned by multiple teams. I’d keep one Epic per team and roll them up to a common parent item in Plans. That tends to preserve ownership and board clarity while still giving you milestone visibility.

[mr john]

This is a common challenge with cross-team planning. One approach is to link team epics to a central “Milestone” issue type (via issue links or a parent field if available), then surface everything in Advanced Roadmaps using hierarchy + filters.

That way, teams stay in their own boards, but you still get visibility at the milestone level without extra plugins