1 project with multiple boards, 1 independent sprint and sprint backlog per board

[Pedro Mata-Mouros]

Hi,

I've searched around in the forum, but I didn't find a conclusive answer to this. We have Jira 6.0.5 with Jira Agile setup. I basically have a project in there and within it multiple boards (3 so far) that correspond each to a development team.

I wanted each of these boards to have independent issues (and therefore independent sprint backlogs) and also completely independent sprints.

Right now the only way I'm seeing of solving this is creating a project for each team, but the way we're set up in the organisation is these 3 development teams developing 3 different products for the same project.

Is it a configuration problem of some sort?

Thanks for your help,

Pedro.

[Kim Poulsen · Accepted solution]

Hi Pedro

Sprints are like issues: They are objects in their own right. This means that an issue can be attached to only one (current or future) sprint at a time.

I understand that you want to have a single backlog from which you flesh out sprints for each team. This is possible if you enable parallel sprints (https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/JIRA+Agile+Labs)

However the planning view will show all of these planned sprints, so you may want to name the sprints accordingly so that each team can find theit sprints.

To my knowledge it is not possible to filter out sprints on a board, so anything coming from the same project backlog will show up.

As an alternative your idea of creating three different projects is not too bad. At least you will achieve planning views for each team which are not "polluted" by the other teams sprint planning.

Handing over issues can be done using a filter like

project in (<proj A>) or assignee in (<my list of team members>)

This way you don't have to 'move' issues between projects. It is all work towards the same goal anyway.

Actually if you are already thinking in the way that each team is developing a 'product' then the seperate project setup is definitely the way to go.

If something is unclear, do ask some more, and I'll try to elaborate some more.

Regards,

Kim

[Pedro Mata-Mouros]

Hi Kim,

Thanks for answering. Just to make it a bit clearer: in my organisation each division is a project in Jira. My division is a small one and we have it structured so that each of the 3 products we have has its own independent development team. Each product has its own backlog - so there should be 3 independent backlogs - and each team is self-contained within that product, although they are all part of our division (Jira project).

Given this, I actually really wanted to have just one single project in Jira (our division) and then have 3 boards (for each of our 3 products). Each of those boards would have its own backlog and sprints, completely independent of the other boards.

Is this possible without having to resort to having 3 different Jira projects?

Thanks so much!

Pedro.

[Kim Poulsen]

Not within a single Jira project per se. You can use "components" to split the single (JIRA) project into multiple parts filtered out on each board.

Say you have components setup like (Code, Dodumentation, Team 1, Team 2, Team 3)

Then you would filter like (I did not verify the syntax)

Board 1: project = PROJ and component in (Team 1)

Board 2 and board 3 similarily.

Now you have a single project with issues assigned by component to each team and three boards filtering only those with the correct project and component.

Sprints from the other teams should hopefully not appear this way unless an issue is assigned both Team 1 and Team 2 component or instance.

Regards, Kim

[Pedro Mata-Mouros]

Sorry the very late reply, but using your sugestion of having each board have its own component, I can then filter each of those boards and also have independent sprints (at least so far so good...). Whenever a new issue is created we need to take into account that we need to assign it a component (a board), but I can live with that.

Thank you!

[Cynthia Susairaj]

I have an additional question. I was able to do the same as what Pedro requested above. 1 project 2 board filtered by component.

I also want to ensure that Board 2 (which is a contractors only) should not be able to view the entire product backlog rather just their items in the board. How do I acheive this?

[Kim Poulsen]

The board itself will only show the issues the filter catches, so I am assuming that you mean the contractors shouldn't be allowed to use the issue search screen to find all the issues in the project?

If this is the case I think you have two options:

1) Turn on issue level security: Creating a Security Level

2) Use separate projects: one for the internal team, one for the external team. Set project permissions accordingly.

[Monira Akter Laboni]

Hello Kim,

I am facing a critical issue regarding this one. I am working for a product-based company and we follow agile methodologies. So, we work on multiple products.

Now, for a single project, I am planning to maintain the project in a way like, I would create 1 project and 2 boards (one is for the development team and another one is for the QA/Testing team).

In the development board, there will have three columns having statuses - Dev to do (I'll be adding the product backlogs items here to be developed in a single sprint), In Progress, and Done.

In the testing board, there will have seven columns having statuses like - QA To Do (freshly deployed feature from the Dev), Reopen (If the QA find any issue, it will be shifted to this column so that the Dev can fix the issue), In Progress (When the dev will work on solving any reopened issue), Deploy to stage (After fixing the issue, the dev will transfer the issue to this column), In Testing (Issues from Open/Reopen columns will appear to this column when the testing is in progress),  Hold (The issues which have less priority and decide to fixed later will be shifted here), Done (All the completed issues will be shifted here thus the UAT will be started by the Product team)

I can make these two boards separate by filtering the issue types. For the development board, the board filter is issuetype! = Bug and for the testing board, issuetype = Bug. 

But the problem is while creating each backlog for a specific board, it is not showing properly. The backlog gets created but doesn't appear on the board. Can you please help me to resolve the issue or if you have any suggestions to manage the operations in an effective way based on the above scenarios. It would be a great help. Thanks in advance. 

[Kim Poulsen]

Hi Monira.  You have probably found a solution by now.  But now I came across yout message and thought I'd give an answer anyhow.

The one project approach should work out just fine.  If you a re on cloud you probably need to have it as a "company managed" project because what you describe are two disjoint workflows based on issue types.

 I would make the states as you describe, then create a workflow for the !Bug issues, one for the Bug issues and assign these in the workflow scheme.  This way you can control allowed transitions (instead of all-to-all), and also say which states are "Open" states.

I haven't tried this scenario out, but I think the second backlog is likely to look funny because there is no state of "Open" type.  Don't confuse this with a state called "Open".  Behind the scenes the tool has three "state types": Open, In Progress and Closed.  It is then possible within a workflow to have many states which are one of these three types.

So this could be slightly tricky.  but I am not sure as I have not tried this out.

If you are on Jira cloud you could use two projects and the automation feature to simply create a new issue on the QA project for every Dev. Story closed with a reference to the closed Dev. Story.  It will allow you to use distinct QA issue types as well if wanted.  On Jira Server, there is a plugin making this automation possible as well.

[Monira Akter Laboni]

Thanks a lot for your response. I'll get back to you if I need anything else to know. 

[Marina Maklakova]

An issue can only belong to a single Active/Future Sprint as mentioned in the following documentation:

• https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwareserver0710/planning-sprints-953146578.html

An issue cannot belong to more than one sprint.

Parallel Sprint allows multiple Active Sprint in same Scrum board but that does not mean that single issue can be added to multiple Active/Future Sprint. From the usability perspective, it does not make much sense to have the single issue in different Sprint because this means that the single issue will be worked on multiple teams/assignee.

Since JIRA does not allow a single issue to be added to more than 1 Active/Future Sprint, we would recommend for you to:

1. Add the issue to a single Sprint and move it to next Sprint is it's incomplete when the existing Sprint is completed or
2. Break the issue to smaller issues and assign them to separate Sprints.

Hope this helps.

[suna]

I have one project with 3 Agile Boards and 3 sprints (one sprint in each board). How do I link the same test cycle to the sprints in the three agile boards. Currently I am getting a message saying: "The Cycle XYZ will be moved from Sprint PI3.I4 to PI3.I4-eSUB."

If I say Yes then then the Test Cycle is removed from one of the other boards. It looks like I am allowed to link the Test Cycle only to two Boards.

Can you please help with this issue? I need to link the Test Cycle to 3 sprints in three different boards. The Project is the same in all three boards.

Thanks

[Kim Poulsen]

Hi Suna

  My best advice is to post this as a new question instead of reviving a 4 year old thread. Chances are not many people will see this. I did because I answered the original question.

 When you post your question, I think you should include some more explanation about what you mean with  "Test cycle".

Kind regards,

 Kim

[Marina Maklakova]

Hi Suna! Have you found answer of your question? I have the same now...

[Ubisoft]

Hello,

We actually use this intensivly. There's 2 things you need to know

We have a production with over 25 sprint and we WANTED them to share the same sprint with 1 'global' board. So we shared 1 issues between all board.

Some other project want them separated in the same project ? Its the same thing, just be sure you have NO issues shared between board and you will be good.

So your filter of your board has to be unique between each board and each sprint will be separted.

Thanks

[Alison Lowry]

Thank you for the response Kim. We had a consultant import data from another tool (VersionOne) into Jira, and I am wondering if that caused the issue.

And yes, I meant Sprint 10- Team1, Sprint 10 -Team2, etc.

[Alison Lowry]

I have a very similar situation. I have 3 teams, each having their own agile board. All three pull stories from the same project. I started sprint 10 for TeamA, and automatically without me doing anything, sprint 10 started for TeamB and TeamC. Looks like there is no way to avoid this without having seperate projects?

I hope this doesn't impact each team's burndown and metrics. I haven't gotten that far as this is our first week using Jira.

[Kim Poulsen]

I am sure you have done something wrong then. It does work in the fashion that if you have enabled parallel sprints you can start multiple sprints at the same time - one per team. If you cannot start two sprints in parallel this is what you are missing.

The second thing that trigger me is that you say "sprint 10" for all teams. I assume you mean "Sprint 10 - team 1", "Sprint 10 - team 2" and "Sprint 10. - team 3", right? If not then this is your error.

So to get three teams working on three parallel sprints on the same project you need to plan three separate sprints, enable parallel sprints, and start all three sprints at the same time.

You cannot plan just "Sprint N" and use board filters to get at the issues interesting for each team in that (single) sprint if you really want separate sprints (and most likely you do :-) ).

So. It does work (just tested it here to be sure), you seem to have a misconfiguration issue.