Advice- best way to manage projects with one release/sprint timeline

Question

Hi,

I am working at a small software company who is currently using individual team managed projects to track the work on different teams (which are developing different parts of the software).

This is not a great solution for us since we want to start looking at the software as one project with one release schedule, sprint schedule, and one backlog of items to be done.

The problem is that the backlog will become very large if we merge the projects, and harder to track the individual progress on the different parts of the software.

I've been looking into different ways to manage this and came up with-

Set up one company managed project with all the backlog items. Add a field on the issues for "initiative" or something that labels which project this is a part of. Plan the sprints on a shared board- and create individual boards within the project that filters by "initiative type." This way you have one project with one schedule and release version is shared easily but can also filter the backlog and see individual "sprints" and backlogs per project. We can also set up dashboard gadgets based on the same filter to see progress on individual projects.

I know there are many features jira offers (advanced timelines, cross project releases, different ways to set up company managed boards), so I wanted to hear others input on this v.s other solutions.

Thanks in advance!

Tzipora Gutmann · Answer

Gotcha, thanks so much for your help @Mike Maurer!

Mike Maurer · Answer

@Tzipora Gutmann Yes, when using components instead of a custom field, you would still create separate boards for the different teams by using filters based on the component value.

project = "YourProjectKey" AND component = "TeamA"

Multiple projects could be better in this cases:

* Permissions can be more granular (e.g., some team members might only need access to their own project).
* Teams can customize their workflows to suit their processes without conflicting with other teams.

Yes, the disadvantages are:

* You’ll need tools like Advanced Roadmaps or Apps like Release Managment for Jira to aggregate data across projects (e.g., to get a unified view of work in progress or releases).
* Or you have to manually align the releases.
* Teams need to ensure dependencies between projects are properly linked.

I think it depends how many people and team your are or how many issues you have. And you fast you want to grow. :)

Tzipora Gutmann · Answer

@Mike Maurer Thanks for the valuable reply.

For the first tip you mentioned- using components instead of a custom field, just confirming that I would still create the boards based on a filter for the different teams- the filter being on the component value?

For the second option you mentioned-

What would be the benefit of setting up multiple company managed projects? I see you can still generate sprint reports based on boards within a shared project.

Also- is there a way to easily share a release fix version across multiple company managed projects?