Project Management Best Practices for JIRA Core

[Patrick Mast]

What are best practices for JIRA Core, to use it as a normal Project Management tool, like MS Project or so? Almost everything I can find is related to managing software projects, but I'm especially interested in managing non-software projects with JIRA Core if it could match approx. 80% of the functionality of MS Project.

Things I'm missing in JIRA Core and looking for a solution:

• Gantt Charts
• Hierarchy with subtotals
• Resource Management
• Easily reporting of Time (Original Estimates, Remaining Estimates) for a group of tasks

Who is using JIRA Core that way and could share some experience? 

[Peter T · Accepted solution]

Hi Patrick,

that is a good list, here are some questions, people overall are trying some new approaches different than MS Project which does not fit in Agile well:

• by resource management you mean the individuals involved in the work or it goes beyond just the people and includes other assets?
• Hierarchy with subtotals - you can use add-on Structure
• Easily reporting of Time (Original Estimates, Remaining Estimates) for a group of tasks - again Structure will show the aggregated time for the tasks displayed in the Hierarchy

I would recommend one more - Cycle Control - its a project/program tracking tool which includes custom lifecycle, milestones, checklist, gates and very powerful metrics module.

Cheers,
Peter T

[Patrick Mast]

Thanks for the feedback!

Unfortunately these add-ons do not work with Atlassian Cloud, which is the direction we would like to move to...

Also got feedback on BigPicture, but that ons is also not available for the Cloud

[Peter T]

Yes there are much smaller number of add-ons for JIRA Cloud due to technical limitations.

A lot of customers are moving to private clouds using Google or Amazon infrastructure so that they can get the benefits of both worlds.

Let me know if this is something you are interested.

Cheers,
Peter T

[Patrick Mast]

I'm interested into using JIRA for "real" Project Management using methods like PRINCE2. I'm much less interested in running JIRA Server, so would like to move to the Cloud, as that's what is also only supported by the Atlassian Mobile Apps.

[Colin Cattanach]

Also interested in this thread. The Core app is very configurable but each add-on increases licensing costs and understanding how best to use it to get max value but 'Keep It Simple Stupid' (also important)

[Marcin Geb _SoftwarePlant_]

BigPicture actually targets this classic, non-software, MS Project-like approach. The app has all four:

• Gantt Charts
• Hierarchy with subtotals
• Resource Management
• Easily reporting of Time

and all the agile stuff, too. It's been available for Cloud since 2017.

Please have a look at this all-in-one screen capture of the Gantt chart module in BigPicture 7. You've also got standalone Resources and Scope (hierarchy) modules, as well as Risks - popular in non-software industries.

BigPicture version 8, new in 2020, adds a prettier, more responsive Gantt chart.

This is not to say that BP does not cover agile. We do - check Roadmap, Board, Teams modules.