Should our team use one project or multiple projects for multiple applications

[Lieselotte Swinnen]

There’s already a lot written about this, but I can’t figure it out. I’m looking for an answer to the question whether, with our team (one team) that works on multiple IT applications, we should use one project or rather a project per application.

I read that the principle is to use one project per team. However, in our case, we come from multiple teams that each worked on their own IT application (and therefore on separate projects), but this has now been merged into one team that works on multiple applications. Both options have pros and cons.

For me, the biggest disadvantage of working in different projects per application is that with our current license, we can’t use the timeline (we bundle the projects in 1 central project to use the active sprint board). We work in Scrum, and the sprints are created in the central project, which means the sprints are not shown on the individual projects, making the timeline hardly useful (we don’t work with start and end dates on tickets). On the other hand, it should also be immediately visible which application a ticket belongs to, and that seems harder to visualize with one project (possibly by using components, but I find that not very clear).

What would you advise?

[Thorsten Letschert _Decadis AG_]

Hey @Lieselotte Swinnen

Great question. To confirm, I understand your use case: you're not planning to run sprints per application, correct? If so, I'd go for the "one project" approach, due to several advantages:

• Single backlog, single sprint, single source of truth

• Timeline, sprint planning, reports → work out of the box

• Matches Scrum reality: the team commits as one unit

• Easier prioritization across applications (“what’s most valuable now?”)

About your visibility problem:

Having a dedicated (single select) custom field or using components should both do the trick - components would include some advanced features like component (or here "application") leads that can be used for assignments, etc.

Either way,

• Adding the field being used for application assignment to your card layout via board settings > layout > card layout
• Using distinct colors per application assignment via board settings > layout > card colors
• Adding quick filters per application via board settings > layout > quick filters

should all help you overcome the visibility constraints.

Regards from Germany,
Thorsten