Setting up a multi-team, multi-project JIRA environment

[Gijs Schuringa]

Hi All,

My organization has 2 SCRUM teams working on a large portfolio of websites, and we are currently evaluating how to set up our JIRA environment. I have some questions about setting this up and hope someone from the community could provide me with some thoughts:

• We are planning to have 2 scrum teams working on multiple sites from 1 backlog. This would mean that we want to have 2 sprints running simultaneously. Is this possible?
  • If so, would this mean that all stories in active sprints will be merged into 1 list in the Active Sprints tab, or can these be split up?
• We want to assign stories for various websites into 1 sprint. Is it possible to create reports based on websites (e.g. by using labels) instead of sprints, so that we can create a clear overview of the website progress rather than the sprint progress? Or filter a sprint report to focus on specific stories within that sprint?
  • Someone recommended me that the Portfolio add-on might be helpful in this situation, is this correct? Based on the information I found, I am not sure how this would contribute to achieve these goals.

Thanks in advance!

[Phill Fox]

Hi Gijs Schuringa

There are a number of different options open to you in how to handle this scenario. 

The simplest is to use quick filters to select the work allocated to each Scrum team and then you can share a common backlog, sprint cadence and reporting. 

A more complex option is to use 2 Scrum boards pulling from the same set of projects but with different content in each sprint. This would allow each team to work with their own cadence. By careful construction of the filter for each Scrum board you can include a common backlog.

A further option is to use the parallel sprints option. Which is available from Atlassian Labs.

All of the above can easily cope with your requirement to include stories from different websites. I assume these are reported in different JIRA projects. If you are not using Epics within your Scrum methodology you could map the epics to the different websites for reporting purposes. Although this will not work if a story applies to more than one website. 

Without more detail of what you are trying to achieve in terms of reporting I am unclear as well as to what value Portfolio would add.

Hope this helps

Phill

[Gijs Schuringa]

Hi Phill,

Thank you for your help! I was thinking about using Atlassian Labs' parallel sprints option, as this seems most easy to manage two sprints at the same time. I believe the quick filters option is too broad for our reporting means, as this would mean there is only 1 sprint running.

I will try to explain what I am hoping to achieve in terms of reporting:

Instead of having reports built on the back of a certain sprint, we want to be able to create reports for each website. So let's say we have website A, B and C. Scrum team 1 has a sprint backlog including a number of stories for website A and B, and Scrum team 2 has a sprint backlog including stories for website B and C. Instead of having a report of how Scrum team 1 performed overall, we want to be able to see the overall progress of website B. So instead of reporting on a sprint, we want to narrow the reporting down to a specific website.

I hope you understand what I mean

Gijs