Best Setup for a project of projects; how to import tasks from other projects?

[Robert Coyne]

Thanks in advance.

I am managing a 2 year project of multiple projects across different business silos ranging from communications to IT.

I've created one master project then seperate projects for each business area since the issues are very different.  I'm new to Jira Work Mgmt clout but am familiar with Trello and slightly familiar with Jira Software.  I felt this was best way to organize since each business area will need its own epics.  I'm not certain this is best way for a project of this nature so that's my first question to community.

Second question which assumes this is a good way to build, becomes how do I import cards (issues/epics) from multiple project into the master project.

Cheers

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Hi @Robert Coyne , why do you need. A project of projects? Projects in Jira contain issues not projects. I wonder if you simply need a master Board that captures the necessary issues from your various projects? What exactly are your goals?

[Robert Coyne]

Hi @Jack Brickey Thanks for clarification and details.

Great avatar btw

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

I would not "import" cards from multiple projects, I'm not sure it would work for you.

There are three ways you could import

• move the issues into the master project - this would remove them from their current project, which is probably not going to work for the people in those projects
• clone the issues and move the copies into the master project - this would mean your tracking diverges, as you've got two issues to update, and it's rare that people would remember to duplicate all their changes in both.  
• There is a third option - you could do the cloning and then automate a synchronisation between the two ends of a clone (cloned issues can be automatically linked back to their source issues, so it's not hard to use that link in an automation or script), or you could use one of the synchronisation apps in the marketplace to keep the two issues mostly in-line with each other.

But with the clone options, issues can only have one epic link, so you'd need to decide which one is the master epic, the other would become redundant. 

However, if your master project is for holding the various Epics (and maybe master-project specific stories) moving existing Epics from their current projects is not going to cause you problems - Epics do not have to be in the same project as the stories linked to them, they're specifically designed to be used cross-project. 

But if it is just for Epics, I would be tempted to not have a master project, instead use Jira software's boards to view and manage the project - create a board based on "Issuetype = Epic" and work from that.  If you have a premium subscription, Advanced Roadmaps can give you a holistic overview based on that as well.