Product topology in jira recommendations

[Zoya Bedelyants]

Hi. Can you tell me if there is an article with recommendations on how to organize a project-team-sprint bundle? It is necessary to understand how to set up projects correctly in order to be able to correctly take into account the metrics of the team and the metrics of the product. We can have such scenarios: One team develops one product, several teams develop one product, one team develops several products

is it correct with the product approach to create a separate project for each team and use the CMDB link to be able to take into account the development and metrics of the product?Or is it recommended to create one project per product?

[Anthony Morais · Accepted solution]

Hi @Zoya Bedelyants 

Given your scenario of managing multiple software teams across different projects — each with distinct sprints, epics, and defect cycles — I’d recommend the following approach to ensure effective tracking, planning, and reporting within Jira:

Create dedicated projects for each team or product area:
Instead of combining all work under one general project, having separate projects for each team or initiative gives you clearer ownership, better visibility, and easier control over configurations such as workflows, permissions, and sprint cadences.

Use Advanced Roadmaps for cross-project visibility:
Advanced Roadmaps (formerly Portfolio for Jira) allows you to plan and oversee multiple projects from a single consolidated view. You can include all epics and related initiatives, track dependencies between teams, and visualize delivery timelines at a strategic level.

Set up team-specific boards:
Create individual Scrum or Kanban boards for each team. This setup helps ensure that sprint goals, backlog refinement, and progress tracking are aligned with each team’s unique workflow and rhythm. Boards can also be customized independently, making them more flexible for each team’s needs.

Leverage JQL filters and quick filters for consolidated insights:
Jira’s filtering capabilities let you bring together data from multiple projects into one shared view. You can also define quick filters that switch focus between teams, products, or initiatives, making navigation between contexts seamless.

Take advantage of Jira’s reporting and automation tools:
Use built-in reporting features such as sprint velocity charts, burndown reports, and dashboards to measure productivity and delivery trends. Combine this with automation rules or apps like ScriptRunner to streamline repetitive tasks — for instance, automatically creating subtasks, synchronizing due dates, or mirroring updates across related issues.

By structuring your setup this way — with separate projects per team, unified planning through Advanced Roadmaps, and powerful reporting/automation — you’ll achieve a balanced model that keeps autonomy at the team level while maintaining a consolidated, executive-level view of progress and delivery.

Hope that helps!

[Alexey Pavlenko _App Developer_]

Hi @Zoya Bedelyants ,

Since metrics are key for you, I recommend using as few projects as possible if you want to solve as many tasks as possible with native Jira tools.

Many things are available in Jira out of the box, but metrics for multi-team or multi-project setups are not. You should probably consider using a single project for the whole product. In this case, you can create one team board (which isn’t always a bad idea, because you can use swimlanes or filters to fine-tune your view) and rely on the Sprint Report and Velocity Report. If you create separate projects, you won’t have a consolidated view - you’ll need to open several tabs and switch between them. However, if you essentially merge all teams into one board, you won’t be able to distinguish the teams from one another.

If you want more flexibility and the following features that Jira does not support natively, you can install the app I developed - Multi-team Scrum Metrics & Retrospectives.

• Track and measure:
  • 9 pre-built sprint metrics (Initial Scope, Final Scope, Completed Scope, Uncompleted Scope, Scope Completed Outside, Removed Scope, Unestimated Scope, Re-estimated Scope, Added Scope).
  • Any custom metric (constructed by you via JQL).
    
    across several teams or projects over sprints, months, quarters, half-years, or years in a single view.
• Track trends between two periods.
• Track averages for selected periods.
• Drill down through aggregated periods for analysis.
• Conduct quantifiable retrospectives.

Analysis of the Uncompleted Scope bar:

Trends and averages:

The app is a paid solution, but it’s free for up to 10 users.

Best regards,
Alexey