How to setup a professional software development application in Jira including a Relational database

Question

Hi,

What Business Objects I plan to build

I would like to setup a process, where Initiatives lifecycle can be related to second process where deliverables lifecycle can be related to third process  where estimates lifecycle lives. Here is how I envision this:

Initiatives

I should set up a new Jira Project called Initiatives (which can have initiatives as child initiatives) has the following statuses to Kanban:

* Requested (perhaps better suited for Service Management)

* Approved

* Completed

Deliverables

I should set up a new Jira Project called Deliverables (which can have Deliverables as child Deliverables) which has the following statuses to Kanban:

* Draft

* Specified

* Estimated

* Ordered (perhaps better suited for Service Management)

* Delivered (perhaps better suited for Service Management)

* QA'ed

* Presented

* Approved (perhaps better suited for Service Management)

* Paid / Closed

Estimates

I should set up a new Jira Project called Estimates (which can have Estimates as child Estimates) which has the following statuses to Kanban:

* Draft

* Proposed

* Approved

* Presented

* Sold (perhaps better suited for Service Management)

Database design

Here is how I would design the data structure in a relational database:

Setting it up In Jira

I am not sure if/how I can setup the above data structure in Jira, but overcoming that hurdle my idea is then to:

* Create an Initiative (in the Jira Project called Initiatives) and transition that into the status of Approved.

* Create Deliverables (in the Jira Project called Deliverables) and relate these to their respective Initiatives. (One Initiatives can have many deliverables, One Deliverable belongs to only one Initiative: 1-to-Many relationship)

* Create Estimates (in the Jira Project called Estimates) and relate these to their respective Deliveries. (One Deliverable can have many Estimates, One Estimate belongs to only one Deliverable: 1-to-Many relationship)

* Expose own Initiatives and Deliverables to our customers

* Expose own Deliverables to our Supplier

The happy case process flow

* Customers Request Initiatives

* Customers Specify Deliverables associated with their Requested Initiatives.

* My Organisation Draft, Propose, Approve, and Present Estimates for the customers' Specified Deliverables.

* Customers Order Deliverables associated with My Organisations Presented Estimates.

* A workflow transitions Estimates to Sold when associated Deliverables transitions into Ordered .

* My Organisation creates Projects, Epics and User Stories in my Suppliers' Jira Software clouds.

* My Suppliers Deliver the Deliverables.

* My Organisation QA's and Presents the Deliverables to the Customers.

* Customers Approve the presented Deliverables.

* A workflow triggers external invoicing system to issue an invoice based on the Estimate_Price value from the Deliverable's associated Approved Estimate.

* Custom pays invoice

* A workflow transitions Deliverables status from Approved to Paid / Closed upon receival of customers payments.

Questions:

My questions are categorised below:

Data Questions

* How (if) is it possible to setup three Jira Projects with these data relationships somehow?

* How do I across projects relate Deliverables to Initiatives?

* How do I across projects relate Estimates to Deliverables? (I presume same fashion as the above?

Atlassian products questions

* How should I cater for the happy case Customer self-service steps 1, 2, 4 and 9 above?
(Jira Service Management Cloud?)

* How should I cater for the happy case Supplier self-service step 7 above?
(Jira Service Management Cloud?)

* How should I cater for the happy case My Organisation steps 3 and 8 above?
(Jira Work Management?)

* How should I cater for the happy case My Organisation steps 6 above?
(Jira Software Cloud? My Suppliers do not use Jira Software Server)

* How should I integrate My Organisations Jira (- Software / - Service Management / - Work Management) cloud with my Suppliers Jira Software Cloud?

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Lars Schou Øhrberg __  @Lars Øhrberg

Welcome to the community.

You are asking a large scope question. You would be better served by seeking an Atlassian Solution Partner to help you with this, as these forums don't usually address in detail questions about how to set up and configure multiple projects/products, workflows, and integrations to this scope.

https://www.atlassian.com/partners

(Disclaimer: I am an employee of an Atlassian Solution Partner.)

I can address a few of the points you brought up.

First, the built in hierarchy of issues types is Jira is

Epic
|-- standard issue types (Story, Task, Bug, Service Request,etc)
    |-- subtasks

In the Standard plan for Jira products you can create additional issue types at the "standard" and "subtasks" level, giving them the names of your choice, and Jira functionality will be applied to them identically to the other types of issues at that level. You cannot create additional issue types at the Epic level.

With a Premium plan for Jira Software you get the Advanced Roadmaps feature. That allows you to extend the issue hierarchy above the Epic level and manages parent/child relationships between those levels.

You say multiple times that you want to create an issue type where it can have child issues of the exact same issue type. I don't believe Jira natively supports a parent/child relationship between two issues of the exact same type. You could use the generic Issue Linking functionality to specify that one issue is the parent and the other the child, but Jira would not automatically treat the issues differently because of that link. You might be able to use a third party app to support parent/child relationships for issues of the same type.

You can create three different projects as you outlined and use the generic linking function to relate the issues across the projects or use the Advanced Roadmaps feature to relate the issues.

There are a few different ways to expose information to external entities and allow them to interact with that data. Jira Service Management would allow you to let external entities interact with issues in just Service Management projects without requiring those users to have a license. You would be paying for your internal users that access the projects as Service Management Agents.

For external entities to interact with Software projects requires that you grant those users a license to the product, or you allow anonymous access or anonymous issue creation. The ability of external entities to interact with those issues would be limited. Alternately you could find a third party app or design your own interface that would allow the external users to interact with the data leveraging the Jira REST API.

If you are working with Suppliers that have their own Jira Cloud instance and you want to share data, then you would need to look at third party apps that enable you to synchronize data between instances. To set such integrations up would require the cooperation of your Suppliers' Jira Cloud administrators.

For third party apps you would need to search the Atlassian Marketplace.

Lars Schou Øhrberg __ · Answer

Anyone?