Jira configuration

[Francesco Santi]

Hi,

I have a rather broad discussion here. Hope to get some good input, recommendation ideas.

I'll explain what we have today and how I plan to change it. 

1. We use Jira for software projects and BAU (business as usual) support
2. We run multiple projects at the same time
3. We have multiple teams
4. Each team member could work on multiple projects at the same time and also on BAU support
5. There are only 3 line managers and 1 PM for all the projects and teams (meaning they need both a helicopter view of all the projects and resources but also detailed when needed.
6. So far only the tech people estimate the issues and log the time
7. For some projects we have dedicated Jira projects
8. For others they are in the same Jira project where we track BAU support and we filter them using Epics
9. We use a ScrumBan approach since the scope of the sprint changes multiple times every week
10. The existing Jira WF and fields are identical across all our projects
11. The exiting WF contains several statuses and we want to have it even more fine grained but as of now we use no conditions, triggers or validations
12. We mainly use one board by assignee which contains one big project and BAU support. For all the others we jump across Jira projects

Now I'll explain the challenges we are facing and how I plan to solve them:

1. Our company wants very accurate estimations and deadlines (more waterfall than Agile in fact). They like to call them selves hybrid Waterfall/Agile. Using only one estimate fields for requirement collection, design, development, testing, ... does not give enough granularity, planning capability and see if we are on track or where do we need to take corrective actions. One idea is to create for each issue an Epic. The epic would contain at least one issue for the business analysis with its estimate and one for the development/testing part. This way we could at the epic report to get a better sense of the effort and status of the issue.
2. The current approach to have some Jira Projects completey isolated and one board which groups only 2 of them is confusing. We'd like to either have for each project a separate Jira project and create one or more dashboards to look at them or just have one huge Jira project for everything and use Epics/Labels/Components to separate every projects and BAU.
3. Currently we can jump from one WF status to another at anytime without restrictions. This is not good and people forget about estimations and to log the time. We are thinking to prevent moving from one status to another if for example the estimate has not been provided or if the time has not been logged.
4. One board with so many status and teams is getting cluttered. The idea is to build at least 2 boards: one for business analysis/planning and one for development and testing.
5. We struggle to have an overview of who is doing what and what is he/she planned for

I'd like to know if there's a different and better way to do what I have in mind.

Thank you for your feedback, ideas and reccomendation!

Francesco