Use initiatives and other issue types across projects

[Martina Brakow]

Hi, 
I am a newby in the field of advanced roadmaps. My aim is to use them for product portfolio management and define initiatives and a another issue type on a hierarchy level above epics ACROSS projects. So I can build a plan (advanced roadmap) with inititatives as parent of a few epics from various different projects. 
So far I don't understand how it works. It looks like initiatives have to be added to every project. Even in the "getting started with advanced roadmap" training the plan that is set up seems to consist only of one single project - so no explanation there.

Wherever I tried to create issues or issue types (and new hierarchies) I have to select the project first. Can anybody help? I thought it was the idea of plans and initiatives to be cross-project entities.

Thanks in advance.

[Sara Hekmat]

Hi Martina,

As Dave mentioned you can extend your Jira instance and benefit from the awesome Marketplace apps.

But, if prefer to work with Jira itself, that also should give you enough features. In your case, you can create a new CMP Jira project to include the cross-project initiatives and link the epics from different projects to it. Then add all your projects plus the new project as issue sources to your Advanced Roadmaps plan.

Hope it helps,

Sara

[Martina Brakow]

Hi Sara, thanks. I will try it like you mentioned. Does it mean the epics are only connected via link and don't have a parent/child relation to the inititiatives? If so the story points and other values or start and end dates won't accumulate to the top of the hierarchy, right?

Anyhow, thanks a lot for your suggestion. I assume some marketplace apps would then cover that last problem too?

Martina

[Dave Rosenlund _Tempo_]

Welcome to the community, @Martina Brakow  👋

Generally speaking, Jira (and Jira Advanced Roadmaps) is a project management platform opotimized first and foremost around individual  projects, and project teams.

So, the simple answer is, you can choose to work with Jira and AR "as is" and get used to the idea that they are not ideally suited to project portfolio management (PPM), OR you can consider extending Jira and AR with a PPM-oriented app from the Atlassian Marketplace.

Hope this helps,

-dave

P.S.  Full disclosure, I work for the company that make the Structure products.

[Martina Brakow]

Thanks for your recommendation, Dave. I was hoping it would be possible without purchasing an extra app...

[Dave Rosenlund _Tempo_]

To be clear, you can do many "PPM things" in Jira + AR natively.

It just might not be the way you'd like to do them—you'll have to find another way to address your use cases.

Only you can decide if that's suitable, or if an add-on app will make your life easier.

You may want to consider working with an Atlassian Solution Partner and leverage their experience in this area.

Best of luck to you.

[Martina Brakow]

Thanks Dave