How to setup Jira for one Project and multiple business units

[Henrik Brinkmann]

Hi There,

we are using Jira Software Cloud for our development Team which is working on one Project (Software application)

The software application is used by the whole company in different business units (sales, finance, order management, etc.).

Currently we use Jira only for the Dev-Team (Kanban Board with Epics, Tasks, Bugs). There's only one Project (=The application).

For the planning/communication with the business units we have one key user for each unit which is reporting issues/requests to our project manager who then transfers the information to Jira.

However currently the first input, communication and priorization is done with trello (one board for each business unit).

This setup leads to a large overhead by transfering information from one system to the other and also the "big picture" is not available. Also there's currently no possibility to filter Issues in Jira per business unit.

The goal is to transfer the current Trello-Work into Jira (=Giving access to Jira for the key users of each BU). Idealy they will then be able to see the current state of development for their BU-tasks/requests. Idealy there will be some kind of a metalevel (One Request of the BU will most likely result in 1:N Tasks) on which the main communication can be realized.

The question is: How can this be realized with Jira?  I've considered:

Epics for Business Units: Don't like this idea because this epics will never finish. Also it feels like a dirty workaround/not designed for this task.

Projects for Business Units: Don't like this idea either, because like the epics they would never finish and the project manager will have to switch between projects (doesn't he?).

Custom-Field "BU" for Epics, Stories, Tasks: Could work, but would this allow a "One Click Filter" like "Show me all Epics/Tasks/Stories for Busines Unit "Finance"?Also this wouldn't create a metalevel hirarchy on which communication with the key-user could be made?

I appreciate any ideas and help; Thanks in advance!

[Timothy Chin]

Also there's currently no possibility to filter Issues in Jira per business unit.

This should be the question right? How do you filter out the issue per business unit?

Trello (for business units) and Jira (for technical work) is a good workaround when you use automation / syncs. You can checkout which one works for you:

• https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?product=jira&query=trello

If you are considering two projects, check out Automation for Jira. You could for example "create a Jira issue in Dev project when business issue enters a criteria".

• https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.codebarrel.addons.automation/cloud/overview

If you want a single project, try coming up with an elegant workflow which is can be logically understood as two halfs. One half is the business side, the other half is the dev side. You'd then have a Kanban board for the 1st half and a Scrum for the 2nd.

[Jack Brickey]

A lot of this has to do with personal preference but of course best practices come into play. I don’t see anything here overly complicated or out of the ordinary. Here is my recommendation:

1. use one project for the application
2. use either Component or a multi select custom field for the BUs. I say multi select since I assume it is possible that multiple BUs could want the same feature. Either would allow full filtered reporting on Dasboards, etc. personally I would reserve Components for the application, e.g. UI, infrastructure, etc. and opt for the custom field approach. 
3. Use epic, stories, tasks as they are intended to define the work done by Dev. Example - let’s say several BUs want fundamental changes to the UI. The PLM and Dev team may decide to rework the UI under and Epic that will consist of stories released over time.