Structuring my agile platform for identical tasks across clients and projects

Bearcat M. Şándor

(this was marked as spam an hour ago and i don't know why. I put it in discussion by mistake, so that may be the reason. I've removed the two fake links just in case it was marked automatically)

I've been trying to get a good agile system setup and despite the number of tutorials and articles i've been through, i'm still not sure how to arrange my system in Jira (or any of the others i've tried for that matter). I just started using it the other day.

I am a web developer and web hosting company with multiple clients, and multiple websites.  I'm often working on multiple project at a time (a main build, and a few emergencies and bugs in a week) and i'd like to be able to have a clear view of my work week and what things are due across multiple clients. 

I"m seeing it this way (using a imaginary company Cool Cats as an example):

Project: a great website

Epic: Build the initial website

Story:  Set up a hero area for the main page

task: find a great graphic

task: insert wonderful text

-----

Project: a secondary website for cat sunglasses

Epic: Make store where cats can buy shades

Story: The glasses should look great at night

task: make sure they can wear them at night

task: so they can, so they can

------

So i often run into the following needs, and i want to make and view issues for them:

I have a status meeting with Cool Cats on Thursday and i want to see all work for them at once.

The company asks me to apply a new terms and conditions to their sites. Now i have one new issue that i want to apply to multiple sites at once in one company.

Google makes a change to how their SEO spiders work and i now have an issue that applies to  multiple sites in multiple companies.

So, is it better to set up the company as the project and the sites as epics?  Should i have the company as a category?   How would i list "Everything i need to do for Cool Cats" if the sites are broken up in projects?

Thanks all

 

Kat Warner

This is a challenging decision to make without one clear answer.

Most of the organisations I have worked in used a Jira Project to mean different things based on the category assigned to it (customer projects, development, internal operations, service and support, ect).

You have given an example of customer projects so I'll try to give a couple of suggestions based in your Cool Cats example.

Example 1

Set up an Agile board that looks at a custom filter which pulls in all tickets for Cool Cats regardless of Jira project.

Use this filter in a dashboard to help give a global 'Cool Cats' view.

Example 2

Set up 'Cool Cats' as a Jira Project. Add components to assign to each ticket for Initial Website, Secondary Website, etc. This allows you to run reports for all tickets or by component. You can even have the default assignee vary by component.

Use epics with stories and tasks to track discrete pieces of work with a set timeframe or list of deliverables.

 

In the Google SEO spiders example, you will typically want to create multiple tickets so work a) could be assigned to different people, b) can have difference due dates, and c) can be on-charged to different customers.

 

Let me know if any of this is on the right track for you.