Can I management a software development project in waterfall model?

[Naveed Ahmed]

Hello team,

I'm new to waterfall project management. I'm really struggling to track project progress.
There are a couple of questions I need to ask:

1. Can I manage software progress following the waterfall methodology in Jira?
2. How can I track project progress in terms of deliverables or developers? 
3. How can I show progress to management?
4. how can I show the complete project timeline?

There are a couple of other questions as well but If you can answer me ones above will be great. 

Thanks,

-Naveed

[Jack Brickey]

Great input here already but I wanted to share something a bit different and how I have previously done some waterfall projects. Hopefully these ideas will be useful to you. 

1. I set up my workflow to represent the milestones of my waterfall methodology. For instance I might have high-level design complete, design complete, implementation complete, unit tested, system tested and then done.
2. I created Kanban board with columns the line with my milestones.
3. Are use Epics to represent features or major components of work and then I use swim Lights by Epics.
4. when Epics are complete, i.e. all issues are in the done category for that epic then I can release that epic if I’m ready to move to production.
5. finally I create a dashboard and set up an array of gadgets that help upper management and product managers visualize the progress

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

1. Yes
2. Yes, there's lots of reporting built into Jira, and even more available in the marketplace
3. Share the reports and dashboards with them
4. There are some basic timeline stuff built into Jira, but it is aimed more at supporting Agile practices.  Again you'll probably want to look to the marketplace for more clever reporting

[Adam _SoftwarePlant_]

Hi @Naveed Ahmed 

Although Jira has somewhat limited options when it comes to reporting and showing the complete timeline of your project, with the help of the plugins available on the Marketplace - you can easily achieve your goal. I strongly recommend checking out BigPicture - Project Management & PPM.

With its Gantt module you can:

- easily organize your Jira project tasks into a customized WBS

- show the whole project on the timeline

- as well as present the task progress 

Other modules included in the app - such as Resources/Board/Reports - can also come in handy while managing your projects!

Have a good day and best regards,

Adam

[Dave Rosenlund _Trundl_]

Hi, @Naveed Ahmed. Welcome to the community. I second @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-'s simple answer. And while @Adam _SoftwarePlant_ did a good job touting his company's product, BigPicture is one of many Atlassian Marketplace apps that add additional project management capabilities to Jira.

Some things you should consider when trying to decide whether Jira can do what you need as is and/or adding apps.

1. Is Waterfall your only methodology, or is (will) there (be) a mix of methodologies?
2. Will you be doing cross-project reporting in Jira or will all of your work be in a single Jira project?
3. What sorts of reports is management used to seeing? Are you going to try to give them what they are used to, or train them to digest a different sort of report?
4. How do you expect to see the timeline? In a Gantt chart? A roadmap of some sort?

In other words, the answers to your questions depend greatly on your needs. 

My suggestion is that you elaborate your requirements so you have better criteria you can use to chart your course.  And, that you learn how to search the Atlassian Marketplace effectively.  For example, this search:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/addons/app/jira/top-rated?category=Project%20management&hosting=cloud

shows you the top-rate Jira apps for advanced project management on the cloud platform.

Full disclosure, my company's product is one of them — Structure — but as you can see there are many more. 

First, you have to decide whether or not you even need an add-on app. :)

Hope this helps, 

-dave [ALM Works]