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Help to create one board with multiple projects and one single sprint to share

Rebekah Ettedgui

Hello,

I need help creating one board containing multiple projects. Right now the terms are a bit confusing to me, but here is what I want:

Need:

-1 product, let's call this TAX

-4 teams within that product, let's call these IS, DA,IM, PM team

-The 4 teams above share one sprint but have their own backlogs to create tickets

-If possible these 4 teams share the same epics. I don't know if this can be done or I will need to use components.

Current state:

TAX has a project and a board for the 4 teams, nothing's broken down. When I go to the board filter query I have the following: project = TAX ORDER BY "Rank

Thanks for the help

Accepted answers

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Rebekah Ettedgui

Welcome to the community.

The first question is, are you using a Team Managed project or a Company Managed project? It will say at the bottom of the navigation pane on the left. I think you are using a Company Managed project, based on you saying you could "go to the board filter" but I want to confirm that.

One way you could set this up is to create a Company Managed Project for each Team. Then create a filter that pulls issues from all the projects:

project in (project1, project2, project3, project4) order by rank asc

Then create a board from that filter.

That would have all the various teams' issues in one board where they could share one sprint. Since a Backlog is associated with a board, the teams would share the Backlog and it would show issues from all the projects.

You could then use Quick Filters in the board to create a filter for each project/team:

project=project1

Activate the Quick Filter in that board to show the issues for just one team. In that way you change the display, but not the underlying data, to reduce the backlog to the issues relevant to one team.

All comments

Jack Brickey

Hi @Rebekah Ettedgui , welcome to the Community!

I have one question about what you have conveyed here you initially mentioned multiple projects but then you go on to say you have one product. Usually, but not always, projects equate to products. So my question is do you indeed have for projects or do you have a single project with four teams?

Assuming one project here is what I would suggest...

Use components to contain the issues for each team
Create for boards one for each team this will allow them to manage their own backlog. The board JQLs would look something like this - project = xxx and component = IS, project = xxx and component = DA, etc
Create a scrum of scrums board that consolidates all of the issues on to a single bored. JQL for board - project = xxx
You can certainly I have the teams share an epic as they are not specific to boards
If you want to have a single sprint for all teams then you will use the master scrum board.

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Rebekah Ettedgui

Welcome to the community.

One way you could set this up is to create a Company Managed Project for each Team. Then create a filter that pulls issues from all the projects:

project in (project1, project2, project3, project4) order by rank asc

Then create a board from that filter.

You could then use Quick Filters in the board to create a filter for each project/team:

project=project1

Rebekah Ettedgui

Hi Jack,

Thanks so much for the welcome message and for your assistance.

We have indeed 1 project to deliver and 4 different teams are working on it. Thus, I would like to share a single sprint for these 4 teams but I would like them to have their own backlogs (where they can create their own issues). Otherwise it becomes too big to manage.

Ideally, they should share the epics too, since they all have their own unique work but deliver the same initiatives.

Is the suggestion you gave me above - to use components and four different boards - ideal for my type of team? thanks again!

Trudy P Claspill

Adding my thoughts on this methodology for solving the issue.

I originally wrote a similar response but discarded it for the following reasons.

If your teams have 4 separate boards it will be harder to share a single sprint. The sprint will initially appear only on the board where it is created. It will not show up on the other boards until and issue within the scope of that board is assigned to the sprint.

If the teams share a sprint, how do you manage the creation, starting, and completion of the sprint? Once the sprint is displayed in any of the boards, any of the teams would be able to modify it, start it, or complete it (if the users have Manage Sprints permissions).

To ensure that all relevant issues appear on each team's board you have to implement a method to ensure that the Components field is always getting filled in for all types of issues in the project (Epics, Story/Bug/Task, Sub-tasks). If any of the issues has a blank Component field, then that issue will show up only on the "master" board.

Rebekah Ettedgui

Hi Trudy,

Thanks for the help. I am actually starting to get confused and I no longer understand what is the best solution for my case. Maybe I didn't phrase it properly, let me explain it again.

I have 1 product (TAX) and this product has 4 different teams(IS, DA,IM, PM). They work separately but deliver work for the same product. Thus, for the moment in JIRA I have 1 project named TAX with 1 single board and 1 active sprint running issues for 4 different teams. It gets really messy.

Thus, what I want is to still share a single sprint for these 4 teams but I would like them to have their own backlogs to manage their own bugs, stories, task and sub-tasks. I don't want to mix them on a day to day basis.

I was thinking on re-starting everything from scratch and creating 4 different backlogs but I don't know what is the best way to do it and how to ensure these backlogs share one single sprint.

I hope this is clearer. Sorry for the confusion, I have been DevOps user for a while and JIRA is quiet new to me. Thanks!

Trudy P Claspill

This is going to be a long reply as I try to cover several Jira concepts concerning tracking work and agile functionality.

1. Jira is highly configurable. There will usually be multiple ways to address a need. Only you can decide which one is the "best" one for your organization based on your evaluation of the complexity of the setup and the complexity of using that setup.

2. The work (issues) are contained in Projects. An issue exists in only 1 project.

3. Agile Boards (Scrum or Kanban) are a way to visualize and manipulate the issues. Boards are based on "filters" that select which issues will be displayed in the board. The filter can select all issues from one Project, a subset of issues from a Project, or a set of issues that come from multiple Projects. The issues themselves though are not "owned" by the board. The board is just a way to see and manage issues that exist in Projects. You can even have multiple boards that have filters that encompass the same issues.

4. The Backlog displayed in a board is based on the "filter" that defines that board.

5. Besides the original filter that specifies what issue get included in the board, you can also define Quick Filters for the board. You can use Quick Filters to further filter what is being displayed at the moment. Quick Filters are defined using the same JQL syntax used for the board filter, and let you look at subsets of the board's issues.

6. A Sprint is created in a Scrum board. Issues included in that board can be added to the sprint.

6.a. However, Jira does not restrict what can be added to the Sprint. Jira allows you to add issues that are not part of your board to a Sprint created in that board. This can be done by editing an issue and directly entering the Sprint name into that issue's Sprint field.

6.b. Because Jira doesn't prevent you from adding issues to a Sprint when those issues are not part of the board, Jira allows Sprints to be "shared" across multiple boards.

6.c. A Sprint will display in a board when either of these conditions is met:
- The sprint was created in that board.
- The sprint includes an issue that is within the filter scope for the board, even if the sprint was created in a different board.

Example:

You have Project ABC. You've created a board for that project and the board uses the filter "project = ABC". All issues from project ABC display in this board. You've created Sprint 1 in that board and added an issue from project ABC to Sprint 1. At this point Sprint 1 displays only on the board for project ABC.

You have a second project XYZ. You've created a board for that project also, and the board used the filter "project=XYZ". All issues from project XYZ display in this board.

You edit the issue XYZ-1. In the Sprint field for that issue you enter "Sprint 1". You save the issue.

In the board for Project ABC you still see Sprint 1, and it shows only the ABC issues added to it. That is because
- Sprint 1 was created in this board
- The board filters dictates that the board will display only the issues from project ABC.
Even though XYZ-1 was added to Spirnt 1, you won't see XYZ-1 in Sprint 1 when you are looking at the board for Project ABC.

In the board for Project XYZ, you now see Sprint 1 there also. And on that board Sprint 1 shows only the issue XYZ-1 in it. That is because
- Sprint 1 now includes an XYZ issue, so Sprint 1 2will display on the XYZ board.
- The board filter dictates that the board will display only the issues from project XYZ.
Even though Sprint 1 has issues in it from project ABC, when you look at Sprint 1 on the board for XYZ you will see only the XYZ issues that are in that sprint.

Given the above, either the solution that I suggested or the solution that Jack suggested will work. There are pros and cons to each solution.

1. Jack's suggestion: If you use multiple boards (one per team, and a master "scrum of scrum" board) then you will have to deal with the challenge of getting a Sprint to show up in multiple boards. The Sprint has to be created initially in one board, and will show only in that one board initially. It will not show in the other boards until issues get added to that Sprint and the issues are within the scope of the board's filter. In this suggestion you have a simpler presentation of the issues that are relevant to a team by having a board that shows only that team's issues (versus my suggestion).

2. My suggestion: If you use one board then you have to deal with having a board and a Backlog that encompasses the work of all the teams. This would be the same display you would see in Jack's "scrum of scrums" board. In my suggestion, instead of using separate boards to show the backlogs specific to each team, I suggest that you use Quick Filters with one defined per team. As each team viewed this one board they would activate the Quick Filter for their own team. That would visually "hide" the issues that belong to the other teams. With this method you don't have to deal with getting the shared Sprint to show up in multiple boards, because you are using only one board. You could still use the Component field to set a value for the Team that "owns" the issue, and then use "component=DA" in the Quick Filter to show the issues for just the DA team.

I hope that helps to clarify the two different suggestions we've presented.

Trudy P Claspill

One last thing.

Both suggestions are based on the assumption that you are using a Company Managed project. It will say what type of project you are using at the bottom of the navigation pane on the left.

If you are trying to use a Team Managed project, that presents a different set of challenges. Quick Filters are not available for boards that come with a Team Managed project. Also, Jira does not support creating multiple boards for Team Managed projects. Well, technically they do support it, but the additional boards don't function the same way as the board that gets created automatically for the Team Managed project.

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