Please advise if there is a limitation to the number of Programs or Jira Projects associated

Samantha Michael

We have gone for a different to standard set up with Jira Align where we have each of our Domains as Programs. We are now seeing the benefit of being able to link more teams into Jira Align. However, the more teams we integrate at program level, the more programs I am creating and the more Jira Projects will therefore need to be linked into Jira Align. I want to be sure that as a Process Owner I am not overlooking some unknown Jira Align limitations in supporting this route.

 

Please can you advise

* Maximum number of programs in one portfolio/ one Jira Align organisation?
* Maximum number of Jira Projects associated to one company's Jira Align?

* Can we have more than one program feed into just one Jira Project (there is a specific use case for this one for one group of programs)?

 

Thank you

Steve Sauser

@Samantha Michael This are good questions, I think the below should answer your questions (a bit lengthy, but I wanted to be sure you had the right information).  

Maximum number of programs in one portfolio/ one Jira Align organisation?

• There is not a defined technical limit to this
  • That does not mean it is 100% limitless because the larger each Program/Portfolio is the longer a given page will take to load (based upon the issue counts), however one should consider Dunbar's Number when creating large amounts of Teams in a Program, Programs in a Portfolio.  
• Dubar's Number - The idea that humans can only maintain stable relationships with around 150 people at a time.
  • Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 250, with a commonly used value of 150.
  • Example:  
    • Program Level
      • Teams in a Program = 15
      • Team Size (including PO/SM) = 10
      • Program Leadership (per program) = 3
        • This would factor out to 153 relationships, hits the limit with a small variance, but as each set of numbers increases the relationships increase and interactions begin to fail. 
    • Portfolio Level
      • Programs in a Portfolio = 25
      • Program Leadership (per program) = 3
      • Portfolio Leadership = 8
        • This would factor out to 158 relationships, hits the limit with a small variance, but as each set of numbers (in both Program and Portfolio) increases the relationships increase and interactions begin to fail. 
    • Math:
      • Program level (Team Size * Teams) + Program Leadership = Program Relationships
      • Portfolio Level (Programs * Program Leadership) + (Programs * Program Leadership) + Portfolio Leadership = Portfolio Relationships
      • Because the Program Leadership has relationships with the Portfolio those relationships add to the Portfolio relationships. 

 

Maximum number of Jira Projects associated to one company's Jira Align?

• This is essentially limitless in Jira Align, you will hit a performance issue in Jira with the number of Jira Projects, issues, and concurrent users long before you hit a limitation in Jira Align. 
• In these cases multiple Jira Instances can be connected to a given Jira Align instance.  We have customers who have more than 10 instances of Jira connected to a single instance of Jira Align. 
  • This represents upwards of 10,000 teams (related Programs and Portfolios) and hundreds of millions of issues (stories, features, epics, etc..) with the single instance of Jira Align.  

 

Can we have more than one program feed into just one Jira Project (there is a specific use case for this one for one group of programs)?

• Simple answer here is no.  See Solution Layer below for additional options.
• The relationship from Team to Program is N:1 (many teams to a single Program, but the inverse is not true, a Team cannot belong to more than 1 Program).
  • In Jira Align, each Program can have multiple Jira Projects associated to the Program, however each Program is a singular record and duplicates are prevented systemically.  
• The relationship from Program to Portfolio is N:1 (many Programs to a single Portfolio, but the inverse is not true, a Program cannot belong to more than 1 Portfolio). 
  • In Jira Align this is systemically enforced.

 

If the Solution Layer is introduced then you can create a collection of Programs into a single Solution.  

• We highly caution against embarking on the enablement of the Solution Layer without an Advisory Services engagement, there are many considerations that should be evaluated and the vast majority of enterprises (even very large ones) tend to underestimate the efforts, ways of working, leadership layers, etc...and over-estimate the potential benefits.  
  • Side note, this also impacts the relationships that can be formed by humans (see Dunbar's Number). 
• Please work with your Sales counterparts inside Atlassian to explore an Advisory Services engagement before undertaking the Solution Layer.   

 

If these do not answer your questions please respond back so that we can advise further.