Replacing MS Project with JIRA

[Sean Mahnken]

Our team has been using MS Project and JIRA, with a 3rd-party connector bridging back and forth.  The process is fraught with errors, and ends up with all sorts of updates getting lost because there's really no version tracking. 

I'd like to dump MS Project and do everything in JIRA, but I need some help identifying a detail that we can't live without.

The one feature we can't seem to locate is predicting a finish date based on estimated task time and prerequisites.  We've tried a few of the gantt chart add-ons, but they don't seem to provide this ability (or we missed it).

Surely we're not the only ones trying to do this.  What process and/or add-ons have other folks used?

[Nic Brough [Adaptavist]]

There are other add-ons in the market place (if you look for estimate or estimated date, you'll find a few), but the ones I've used that do things like this are Portfolio (Atlassian), Tempo planner (Tempo) and Cycle Control (Botron).  They all take different approaches, but they can all deliver you dates one way or another.

Edit- Bother.  I completely forgot BigPicture.  Also well worth a look.

[Ericka Samuels]

I'm pretty sure BigPicture will do that.  As long as you configure it to use the Original Estimate field from the JIRA issues.    Original Estimate becomes your 'duration' field that you'd normally have in MS Project.  If you use BigPicture's Start Date and JIRA's Original Estimate, the End Date will be derived.  ex: task starting on the 1st w/9 days of Original Estimate will end on the 9th. 

BigPicture's task links (finish to start, finish to finish, etc) work really well.

Of course, you'll have to ensure the Original Estimate field in JIRA is added to the necessary screen schemes and issue types.