Multi-Project Table view

[Bernard Eben]

Hello All, I am looking for a PM tool for 50 people divided into 6 teams. Jira seems like a good solution to me but there is a very important point that I can't find in Jira, and maybe you can help me solve it.

For convenience, I will take a fictitious example. Imagine that our organization specializes in analyzing the state of the planet. That we have 4 teams. One deals with the Earth, the other with the Sea, the 3rd with the Air, and the 4th is transversal, it does not study anything, it is just the "Publication of results" service (of the 3 other teams).

Each of the 3 analysis teams works according to the same project structure, which is repeated each year: Each team therefore starts a new project each year. Each Project has 12 columns: the months of the year (January, February, etc). And in each column, Tasks are assigned to each team member. The first member of the Earth team knows that in January 2023 he must start analyzing and creating a report on the polluted lands of Belgium and that this report must be published in March. From April to June he attacks the polluted lands of France and the report must be published in June, etc.
He will therefore create Tasks and sub-tasks to organize his work during these months, and for the end of March and the end of June he will create each time a task "Publication of the Belgium report", Publication of the "France" report.

If we reproduce this pattern for the other 2 teams, there are therefore "Publication" Tasks which are spread over the whole year, from all the teams. These tasks must be accessible in a 4th specific "Publications" table managed by the Marketing team. Each task of the "Publication" type (type of task which can be specified by a Custom Field) must therefore exist in the 3 basic tables, but be visible or duplicated in a 4th project which only includes the publications of all the 3 other projects.

This visibility for the Marketing team must be of the same Kanban diagram, namely 12 columns (each a month of the current year)

I imagined being able to create a "Kanban" view that displays (via a filter) the "Publication" Tasks of other projects. But I do not find this possibility of Kanban display through multi-projects

Maybe Workflows that automatically create tasks in the Marketing project when you create a "Publication" Task in another project? But what about synchronization? If for example we change the publication dates, do we cancel the task? Is it possible ?

Thanks for your help

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Bernard Eben 

Welcome to the Atlassian community!

In Jira the columns of a Kanban board are used to show the status of a work item; i.e. To Do, In Progress, Done. To have a Kanban board display columns based on the months of the year would require that you use the months of the year as the Status values for your work items. I would strongly advise against this.

If you know that certain work must be started at a particular date and completed by a particular date, use the Start Date and Due Date fields in each work item to note that information instead.

If I understand correctly from your example, each of the three analysis teams creates the report that will be publicized, but it is the Marketing team that actually executes the publication. Is that correct?

If that is the case, then automation could be used to create a Publication task for each report when it is completed by the analysis team, with that task being assigned to the Marketing team.

There are a variety of ways this could be structured in Jira. Each of these 4 teams  could have their own Project (container for work items) in Jira. Each team could have its own board associated with its own project. An overarching board view could be created to show the work of all four teams in one board.

Or all the work items could be contained in just one project, with an option to "tag" each work item to specify the team to which it belongs, and then use the "tag" to filter the display to only the work each team wants to see.

Some of the options that you would have available for organizing, reporting, and visualizing the work will depend on which Jira product you select; Work Management or Software. (The Service Management product doesn't sound like a good fit for your use case.)

Work Management comes with prebuilt Timeline and Calendar views that leverage the Start Date and Due Date fields to show you the time span of work items. That might be sufficient for your use case. However, it does not come with some of the more sophisticated board display filtering capabilities that are available in the Software product. But the Software product does not come with the Timeline and Calendar view built into its project templates.

So, I believe you could get what you want, but the exact implementation details will depend on the Jira product you choose and would require more information about your specific needs.

[Bernard Eben]

Hi Trudy,

Thanks for your answer. Not only is it very useful to me, but the most important thing is that it challenges my initial choice. I had no knowledge of Jira Work Management. but I just watched a few videos that explain the differences, and as I understand Jira Software allows for a lot more.

What is your opinion on the choice to be made if we take into account the few prerequisites below?

• Multi-Team
• Multi Project by Team
• Kanban View (columns)
• Task, SubTasks, Dependencies
• Agile not required but if included I can use it for Team IT
• Timeline View
• Calendar View
• board view
• Forms (for requests to the "Operations" Team)
• Automation
• Workflow
• Data Reporting
• Salesforce integration
• Google Integration
• Slack Integration
• Etc.

For the way of working (with also our Mktg team): "Each of these 4 teams  could have their own Project (container for work items) in Jira. Each team could have its own board associated with its own project. An overarching board view could be created to show the work of all four teams in one board."

In my opinion, the Jira Software is essential. What do you think ?

Thanks

[Trudy Claspill]

It is hard to answer your question based on the limited information available.

Most of the bullet items you listed can be satisfied by Jira Work management, and based on the working pattern you initially outlined. 

However, some of the items in your bullet list need more definition for us to understand what requirement they actually describe:

- Multi-team

- Multi Project by Team

- "...I can use it for Team IT" - if that is a service oriented IT organization, then that brings Jira Service Management into consideration.

- Workflow

- Data Reporting

- "Kanban view" vs. "board view"