Can I use jira for a construction project with massive repetition of tasks?

[Alex Wrobel]

Hi, I am a civil engineer, and I wondered if Jira can be used for construction projects with massive repetition of tasks. It’s a project of 398 identical houses divided by blocks, for example, 28 houses in block 539, 32 houses in block 518, 27 houses in block 485, etc. All the houses are the same, with the same tasks and sub-tasks. What is the best way to use Jira? The best idea that I had was to create issues like FOUNDATION as Tasks and issues like CONCRETE IN FOUNDATION as subtasks connected to the issue FOUNDATION, after that I thought about cloning the issue FOUNDATION for each house, that are the EPICS of the project, and finally, each block is a different project. But that is not very productive. Can anyone help me?

[Airbus Driver · Accepted solution]

Hey Alex,

I love seeing Jira being considered outside of IT! Here are my 2 cents;

• Each block would be a project (Block_539, Block_518, etc)
• Inside every block (project), you would have an Epic (to track the completion of the entire block) OR each house could be an Epic.
• Each house could be a Story (if it's not an Epic) which is tied to the Epic
• You can create your own customized issue-types for the sub-tasks or you can just use the existing 'sub-task' template
• Create a Jira Automation Rule with the following (consider if we are creating a House as a Story);
  • Whenever a new Story is created, create the subsequent sub-tasks for each one of them (this way, you don't have to create the subtasks yourself everytime you create a new 'House')

[Alex Wrobel]

Hey my friend,

Thank you so much for the help, that's exactly what I needed!!!

I will create each block as an Epic and each house of each block will be a Story, inside each Story I will have all the sub-tasks that are required to complete the construction of the house, the % will be based on the amount of money that each sub-task represents on the certificate, that way I will be able to visualize the % of advance in each house. That's amazing!

I have a question about the sprints with this configuration:

In the construction of the houses, I will have different sub-tasks, of different houses on different blocks every week, sometimes I will have different sub-tasks on the same house, etc. How do I sprint the sub-tasks? In the future, I want to be able to dictate which sub-tasks of which house will have to be done every week to complete the block on time.

[Airbus Driver]

The problem is that you can't have individual sub-tasks assigned to sprints by themselves. A sprint usually consists of story or tasks. So, if you need to allocate sub-tasks into a sprint, their parent (task or story) will need to be added to the sprint as well.

You can create multiple sprints and you can schedule them to start at a future date. Does that help?

[Alex Wrobel]

Perfect, that will work!! The most important thing now is to be able to visualize the % of advancement in each house. Tell me something my friend, is it possible to give different % value to the sub-tasks? I realized that each sub-task has the same % value of progress on the parent task, and my plan is to put different amounts of % value on each sub-task based on the amount of money that each sub-task pays on the certificate, for example concrete foundation 5%, brick wall 2%, etc. That way I will be able to generate the certificate with JIRA.

[Airbus Driver]

There isn't a particular % weighing system by default but there is a concept of "Story Points" that you can assign to stories and tasks. This works on a relative-effort basis and not necessarily on a 0-100 scale.

More about Story Points - What is a story point in Agile 

Helpful Community post on how to add "Story Points" to tasks other than Stories - Adding and showing story points for tasks 

I'm sure there might be a way to weigh tasks using % but this will probably be through a paid add-on.

Before you get started with the actual project, sign up for a free plan and have a look around and try to configure some of the stuff that you'll end up doing just so you know the limitations before-hand :)