Set up for a small business - multiple short jobs

Question

Sorry for such a long post.

We have a small team of less than 10 people that deal with software and art based projects that are focused on delivery deadlines.
We are trying to find the best way to keep track of our projects and have been put on to Jira.

I've had a search for a great deal of things and I've not really found what I'm looking for.

There are several things that we require that I, as yet, have been unable to effectively implement.
Essentially, we need to be able to quickly enter a Client, Project, list of major tasks, list of minor tasks, assign tasks to multiple users, estimate times, track time and track costs.

The things we're trying to get out of Jira include:
Grouping Projects into client folders for tidiness. Or archiving completed projects. From what I've read the best Jira can offer is assigning a category, is this correct?

A calendar showing all of the assigned tasks to all staff across all projects - to help identify overload on individuals and teams.

A calendar showing all project time frames - to assist senior staff in their scheduling duties.

Currently unable to set a Due Date value on any issue. I have checked the permissions, set to all users, still unable to alter it. Appears that a lot of additional plugins, such as calendars require this info to display correctly.

Gantt charts for each project. We are currently testing BigGantt. It seems useful, but I was wondering if there is a way to automatically incorporate start and end dates into this automatically based on information input elsewhere in jira.

We are also looking at using Tempo for time sheets and Hawkbudget to calculate costs. Is there a way within Hawkbudget to calculate the costs of the project, broken down into each user, task etc. Or is there a better way of going about this task?

Is there a way to assign one issue to multiple users? Occasionally our tasks are quite long, and require more than one person working on them. But the over all project is over too short a tie span to warrant creating sub tasks for every element.

Is there a way to get the time estimations to feed all the way up? I've added the Epic Sum Up, and it seems to help a little bit, but the fact that this is an add on seems unusual to me. I've also noticed that stories (and epics) can't have their value set to nothing if something has been entered into their estimate field. Which means that the sub tasks don't display a total estimate in their respective stories/epics.

Thanks for your time.

Ericka Samuels · Answer

i forgot, if you're using Tempo timesheets, the Remaining Estimate field will burn down as time is logged against the issue.  BigGantt then has a time tracking progress meter you can display.  For rolling it up, I'd check in the Perspective , the aggregation setting for the Original Estimate field. You can probably sum it up.

Ericka Samuels · Answer

1. define a custom field called 'Client' and add it to your Issue scheme

That way you can group/search by all the projects for a client

2. Use the Epic field as the specific project for a Client. So if you have sequential projects for a Client over time, you have their name in the Client field and the project in the Epic field.

3. Name the Epic 'xxxx-xx-xx Client Name' where xx are the implementation date.

4. to Archive projects: set the Epic status to 'Done'. Make sure your Dashboards and JQLs filter for status <> Done

5. Use the BigPicture plug in (additional cost but TOTALLY worth it)
- it does Gantt charts and time based views
- it has a Resource model so you can see over-allocations

6. Create a project (using an Epic for the project and then Stories for the tasks). assign your people to the tasks. Use the Original Estimate field to set the work load on each task.

7. Export that epic to an Excel workbook. That is now your template.

8. Whenever you need to load up a new project, use the Importer and import that excel (it has to be saved as a CSV first). I usually edit the Excel first and adjust assignments and dates etc. then import it. (make sure you create the Epic first)

9. Your due date problem: not sure, I'd need more info on that. But BigGantt uses it's own Start and End date fields, so you don't have to use Due Date.

10. for BigGantt to work you'll have to add their Start and End dates to your issue schemes. Then set them in your Excel and they'll import just fine.

11. to assign an issue to > 1 user, you'll have to add other fields to your issue scheme. Or use sub tasks , one for each person. Or duplicate the issue, one for each person. That is probably your best bet.

I would not use Portfolio unless you are truly in an agile sprint driven team.

BigPicture works better for traditional sequential task driven projects.

hope this helps!

louisdj · Answer

Hi @Andrew Mabey

Essentially, we need to be able to quickly enter a Client, Project, list of major tasks, list of minor tasks, assign tasks to multiple users, estimate times, track time and track costs.

You can create a project from the top menu under projects, you could create a template with all basic settings for your projects, so you don't have to change much settings of the project. For assigning tasks, you can give the bulk change rights to users, so they are able to select multiple tickets and do an action (like assign to) on those tickets.

It is also possible to import tickets from csv, but I would recommend to create your backlog directly in Jira. Time tracking and costs tacking can be done on each ticket, I can recommend Tempo Timesheets if you want to get more out of that.

Grouping Projects into client folders for tidiness. Or archiving completed projects. From what I've read the best Jira can offer is assigning a category, is this correct?

Archiving is indeed not a function, you can use categories, we use a category for each client, but you can use this the way you want. For archiving we created a permission scheme where only administrators can see the project, so for other users it will look like the project is archived.

A calendar showing all of the assigned tasks to all staff across all projects - to help identify overload on individuals and teams.

I suggest you take a look into Jira Portfolio or Tempo Planner

Currently unable to set a Due Date value on any issue. I have checked the permissions, set to all users, still unable to alter it. Appears that a lot of additional plugins, such as calendars require this info to display correctly.

You can see the field on the ticket, or is the field missing?

Is there a way to assign one issue to multiple users? Occasionally our tasks are quite long, and require more than one person working on them. But the over all project is over too short a tie span to warrant creating sub tasks for every element.

As far as I know, this is not possible as this is not the idea of how you should work in an agile environment... You should break up those tickets in multiple tasks/stories/... or if the tasks can't be done simultaneously, you can assign them to the next person (even mapped to a new ticket flow)