Best way to timeframe issues from multiple projects

Question

Would love your advice …

Me and my colleagues work as a specialists in a large organization. We regularly gets assigned different issues from different teams who track their work in different projects with different scrum sprints.

Me and my colleagues would like to be able to create a JIRA board where we can track the different tasks that needs to be done for different projects, as well as our own tasks that may need to accompany the tasks for other teams.

We can create a board with a filter that tracks all of our stories from different projects. The thing we’re struggling with is to find a concept to timespan different stories belonging to the same theme.

What we would like to accomplish:

Theme A needs to be done by mid June.
3 stories from project A
2 stories from project C
5 stories from our own project

Theme B needs to be done by mid august
5 stories from project C
1 storie from project 1
…

We’ve tried to set up our own sprints, but stories from other projects already belong to a sprint.

We tried to set up our own release cykles, but versions and releases can’t be shared between projects (so we cant tag the stories from other projects with our versions).

We tried to track via epics, but stories can only be linked to one epic at the time.

Components doesn’t have the concept of time.

We would rather not use labels since those are shared globally, and we already have like a million of them.

Thankful for any hints or best practices!

Rachel Wright_8016wm · Answer

No worries at all!  :)   You are correct:  Components are project-specific.  But you can have project-level admins add "your" component to any project that work for your team might be in.  Issues can be associated with multiple Components.  (It's possible to restrict that, but not common.)  A long the same lines, you can add the same Versions to multiple projects.  (Just don't add the same Sprints - I've had a lot of trouble when multiple projects use the same sprint name.)

After that, I think all that's left then is a custom field to hold some unique piece of data you can query for.

So, something like:  yourcustomfield = "mid june"

I'll keep thinking.  I sometimes come up with other ideas at 4:00 AM.  :)   In the mean time, maybe someone else from the community can reply as well...

Erik Lundgren · Answer

Hi Rachel!

Sorry for being vague. It’s always hard when you don’t know what to ask :)

I do think Components are project specific? So I cant assign an issue from another project to my component. Or can I? Can't test right now.

Also I don’t want to keep track of due dates for individual issues, but rather assign multiple issues to some “bucket” that holds the deadline.

Having project shared releases would have been ideal. Or being able to track stories under multiple epics.

Rachel Wright · Answer

Hi @Erik Lundgren, I read your question a couple times and I think I understand.  :)   It sure sounds like you need a way to represent both "Theme A/Theme B" and a date for "mid June/mid August."

So, something like:  component = "Theme A" and due = "2018-06-15"

And of course, if you can't use existing fields like "Component/s" and "Due Date" you could add custom fields.  But always add custom fields sparingly and only when you're sure they will used for reporting - like in this case.

Would two values in your query get you what you need?

Hope this helps,

Rachel Wright
Author, Jira Strategy Admin Workbook