Overall view of a list of projects, but projects are Epics

[John Bradley]

Hello, I have inherited a particular Jira setup for our ITS department and am looking for advice as to how to (or if I should) revamp it.  It's could based, and we have the Standard (but might upgrade to premium)

We currently have about 20-30 department projects to tackle, but most of the projects are entered into Jira as Epics or Stories.

We have to Jira Projects that were created, but they more pertain to the IT subdivision or category rather than an actual project to complete.  They are mostly company-based project setups. Most of the projects assigned to folks in the department are not software development (except mine)

The CIO would like to be able to see all of our department projects in a list.

The way I'm seeing this, I should change the setup in Jira so that a Jira Project has a 1-1 relationship with a department project. I'm I oversimplifying what we need or is that how normal projects are set up

Another option I have is to try to hire a Jira contractor that can show/do what we need to get us on the right path, but if my way is pretty much the way Jira projects are usually set up then it's at least worth trying and hopefully learning along the way.

Any thoughts or guidance would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

[Danut M _StonikByte_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @John Bradley,

If the departments work without interacting too much with other departments, my advice would be to have a project in Jira for each department. This will add more clarity in term of tasks/work/responsibilities/administration etc.

If there are cases when multiple departments have to work on the same project/job, you could create epics in one project (the one that has the ownership over the entire job) with tasks or stories in every department (Jira project) involved. You can also create a Jira agile board based on a filter that includes tasks from multiple Jira projects, so you can plan and track the entire cross-department project in one single place.

Another approach would be to have one single project in Jira for all departments and use a field like Components or Team to assign a task to each department.

Hope this helps.

Danut.

[John Bradley]

Hi @Danut M _StonikByte_ ,

Thank you for the reply, this is very helpful.  For the most part, the person responsible for the job is an IT sub-department head (DevOps, Security, Network, etc) and currently each of these sub-departments has a single Jira Project assigned to them, and the sub-department assigned jobs list are entered under each Jira Project as an Epic or Story.  

We do need one person - right now the CIO - to oversee all assigned projects across the board.  I'm starting to see a scenario where either:

there is a Jira Project called ITS Projects, where the epics or stories related to the assigned projects originate and assign them to a team or component, 

-or-

Have each sub-department continue with a single Jira Project for each and assign projects as epics or stories, but add a field for stories and epics that mark them as overall department projects that the CIO needs to keep up on.  Being an application developer, I will create an epic or story for large tasks that are not department initiatives.

Thanks again,

John