Project for executive leadership?

Question

I'm looking for a good starting point to have a project for executive leadership. The main issue I see are most projects are development based or too simplified so I keep going back to a JIRA Software project. That seems a bit over kill in a way.

The requirements I see so far are to have multiple boards, simplified workflow. That's easy enough in JIRA software but reporting options are abysmal. JIRA core reporting doesn't look any better either.

What do you recommend? How would you go about it?

Dave · Answer

That's a fair point @Dan, but with respect it really depends on the size of the org. The company I was at before Atlassian was a start-up with 20 employees (with only 2 execs), before that I was at company of 400 ... this approach probably would have been been good enough (maybe pushing it for the latter). However you can add as many hierarchy levels as you need (and additional overarching projects) and then "ladder up" all the work. In our case we actually added 2 hierarchy levels but for simplicity of an answer I just suggested one as an example.

Your original question didn't specify org size so you're 100% right that this solution might not meet your specific needs, but it is a way of providing a higher level summary for people in an org that don't want to be "in the weeds" of the work.

Regards,
Dave

Dan_xn2p9q · Answer

Dave, your solution does not give a large enough picture to an executive level leadership. It is better suited to a PMO.

Dave · Answer

HI @Dan ,

I agree with @Clark Everson that Advanced Roadmaps could be a good fit here (full disclosure: I work in the Advanced Roadmaps team). One thing that we've done quite successfully is to create additional hierarchy levels above Epic and then created a project that just contains those levels and then made issues of those levels parents of issues in specific projects.

You can then create a plan using Advanced Roadmaps that overarches all the work going on. So the levels you create might be something like "Initiative" or "Theme" (or anything you choose) and this can then provide a very good high level view of work going on across an organisation. It also means that you can ensure that all work ladders up to a specific high level objective.

Advanced Roadmaps is available with a Jira Premium subscription - you can find more details on it here: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/roadmaps/advanced-roadmaps

Regards,

Dave