Best practices for similar use cases?

Alex Tejada

I am trying to determine what's the best method to set this up for reporting and for future business growth.

All of our projects are very similar in scope, so instead of creating a separate project for each customer, I was considering the following:

- Create one board for all projects that are similar in scope
- Create each actual project as an epic within that board and have my columns matching our workflow
- Below each epic we will have the major tasks that we need to complete to have that project move along

My questions are:

1. Is there something I don't know that makes this a bad idea?

2. Can I create templates of what these epics -> tasks will be so we don't constantly recreate them for each project?

3. Does this affect reporting in any way?

 

Thanks!

Mary from Planyway

Hi @Alex Tejada 

It's Mary from Planyway for Jira: workload, roadmap, time tracking.

Your approach to managing projects in Jira Work Management by consolidating similar scope projects into a single board and organizing them using epics and tasks is quite strategic for several reasons. It can enhance visibility, streamline project management processes, and facilitate easier tracking and reporting. 

1. Potential Drawbacks to Consider

• Complexity and Clutter: Having all projects on a single board can lead to a cluttered view, especially as the number of projects (epics) and their associated tasks grow. This might make it harder for team members to quickly find and focus on their tasks.
• Performance Issues: Depending on the volume of projects and tasks, the board might experience performance issues, with slower loading times impacting user experience.
• Customization Limits: While epics can help organize different projects, there might be limitations in how much you can customize workflows, fields, or permissions at the epic level compared to having separate projects.
• Reporting Granularity: Aggregating all projects in one board can affect the granularity and specificity of reports. It might be more challenging to generate project-specific reports without additional filtering or segmentation.

2. Creating Templates for Epics and Tasks

Yes, you can create templates for epics and tasks in Jira. While Jira doesn’t have a built-in template feature specifically for this purpose, there are workarounds and add-ons available:

• Workarounds: You can create a "template project" or "template epics" within your board that contain common tasks. When you need to create a new project (epic), you can clone these templates. This manual method preserves the structure you want without needing additional tools.
• Add-ons: The Atlassian Marketplace offers several add-ons that enable template creation, such as "Project Templates for Jira" or "Issue Templates for Jira." These can streamline the process of creating new epics and tasks based on predefined templates.

3. Impact on Reporting

• Aggregated Data: Having all projects on one board means your reports will aggregate data across all projects. This setup can provide a good overview of overall workload and project statuses but might require additional steps to filter or breakdown data for project-specific insights.
• Customization and Filtering: Jira’s reporting capabilities allow for custom reports and dashboards where you can filter data based on various criteria (e.g., epics, labels, custom fields). This means you can still achieve detailed reporting per project by using the right filters.
• Consistency Benefits: Using a uniform structure for all projects can actually improve reporting consistency, making it easier to compare metrics across projects.