I am trying to organize our projects in a way that is useful for project owners and their teams.

Sara Tiberio

Our team is currently using multiple different platforms to oversee projects. The project owners use one platform, and programmers/QA use Jira. I'm trying to get Jira to the point where it's easy to keep tabs on projects from a high level, allowing them to delegate quickly, and identify bottlenecks/blockers based on what department's task(s) are blocked.

A big, BIG goal is having screens where people can filter for items assigned to them, and have a moderate level of detail available in the search screen's results (% complete, status, labels, etc.)

The hierarchy I'm imagining is pretty basic: 

1. Project (the actual project, always assigned to the project owner)

2. Epic - these will be departments; art department, QA, programming, etc. They will be assigned to the leads within each department.

3. Tasks - within each Epic (department), there will be tasks assigned to various people in each department

4. Sub-Tasks - within each Task, assigned appropriately within each dept.

This setup is pretty easy. I am running into difficulty in a few places: 

Problem 1: Creating search result views that will show varying levels of detail based on what level you're looking at, like if the project owner saw their project was 75% done, they could instantly see which area was being held up without having to open each epic (open to ideas of how this could be done, but I would think the project's status could update based on what was going on with the Epics - See Problem 2).

Problem 2: Completion dependencies - I have Epic A, with Tasks 1 and 2, and Tasks 1 and 2 have Sub-Tasks a, b, c, and d (each has their own set)

Task 2 is 100% complete.

Task 1's Sub-Tasks a, b, and c are complete. Sub-Task d is not complete, so Task 1 should show 75% complete.

(Stay with me...)

With Task 2 at 100% complete, and Task 1 at 75% complete, the Epic should show 88% complete. Right now, Epics do not reflect the completion of the sub-issues.

I can't figure out a way to configure a quick screen where a project owner could see this (back to Problem 1)

Any help would be phenomenal. Thanks!

 

Inactive Stephen

Hi @Sara Tiberio

Is each sub-task and task the same size? If you're running a more standard Agile environment - i.e flexible stories, flexible scope - I would consider if those percentages will work in your favour - as Sub-task D could be as large Sub-task's A, B and C put together.

The other thing to consider is what if the scope increases? I've found using percentages previously can cause confusion for managers if we're 90% complete and then we add 10 more issues, so it drops to 45%. I find visuals more powerful in that instance - such as burn-ups or CFDs.

To your visualisation issues - there's a few options here:

• Consider Jira Portfolio - it's useful in instances like this to show estimates for completion, dependencies, blockers and expected releases. It'll be more of a one-shop view for your management.
• Build Dashboards which visualise issues - you can have a dashboard which shows progress of Epics, Tasks, etc. As part of that though you could search for issues that are blocked (impediment flag) and visualise those in a list so PMs can find the exact issue quickly.
• If you're looking for more powerful visualisations and drill-downs into your data - consider a BI Tool. That way you can extract or visualise your data in a more customised way.

But to some extent PMs will need to digest the data. Filtering for issues assigned to them / their team, showing the status of an Epic vs Tasks, completion, blockers, etc is all possible via a Dashboard or a Confluence page - but to understand the reasons or the amount of work will require more than just a visualisation.

Ste