Boards association with projects is confusing

[Michael Arndt]

So I know this is a bit of a controversial subject here but just when I thought I had wrapped my head around Jira I end up being even more confused. So bear with me here.

Boards represent a teams work, right?

Boards are located within projects. You can't assign multiple projects to one board, right?

So if people work on multiple projects but can only add issues to one board and that board only exists in one project how then do I reconcile this? Am I forced to then jump around boards? 

::confused-emjoi:::

[Sreenivasaraju P]

Hi @Michael Arndt ,

You can have issues from multiple projects in a single board. You can create multiple boards with the issue of a single project. So much difference between Board and project. You can go through more details about board. 

@https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/what-is-a-board-764477964.html

Project details @ https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/defining-a-project-938847066.html

[Michael Arndt]

I'm still a bit lost even after having read those links.

If I have an existing board and want to add projects to the board how would i go about doing that?

[Michael Arndt]

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/can-i-add-a-new-project-to-an-existing-board/qaq-p/441939

I found this page which helped. My "Leadership" board is now showing issues from multiple projects.

However, when I look at a different projects it changes to that projects board. When I switch the board back to Leadership board it moves me back to the General project which is where the Leadership board is located.

[Wade Tracy _Boise_ ID_]

Yeah, it gets a bit tricky.  When you go to a project, it remembers the board you selected last time and shows that one. 

Also, in Cloud, it asks you the where the location of the board will be so that even if the board has issues from multiple projects, it will only show up in location specified when the board was created.

So, what you end up having to do is either remember the project the board is in and go there, or use the search to go directly to boards and don't worry about the project it pulls up.  You can also 'star' the boards to make them easier to get to.

[Michael Arndt]

I mean it seems like there's really no different between a project and a board then.

[Wade Tracy _Boise_ ID_]

@Michael Arndt  - there's quite a big difference between boards and projects.  A project is where you create issues, manage permissions and set configuration such as workflows, notifications, fix versions, components, etc.  A board is just a view into a set of issues and where you manage sprints--you can even have issues of the same type on a board that have different workflows.  This is why you map statuses to columns when you configure a board.

I know it may seem unnecessarily complicated, but it isn't too bad once you get familiar and decide how your company will configure things.  At my company, for long-standing projects with a single team, there is a 1:1 ratio between project and board and the board filter is simply all issues in the project. 

For shorter term software projects that usually involve multiple teams, we have everybody in the same project but each team has their own board to manage the team's sprints.  Then we even have boards that are cross team so we can see the project's overall progress.

In still other cases, QA works with multiple teams so they have a board that pulls bugs and issues that need testing from multiple projects into a single board.

[Michael Arndt]

Is it possible to view a board which is located in Project A while you're in Project B? The issue I'm facing is whenever I pull up our Leadership board it always pushes me into the General project where it's located. Is there a way to prevent that from happening?

[Michael Arndt]

https://drive.google.com/a/advantageproservices.com/file/d/1R0R1lLPvj5TqLi9jrtC92g7N4uEkfaSF/view?usp=drivesdk

Here's a video of what I'm experiencing. Id like to use our Leadership board in whatever project I'm in. When I select the Leadership board is always takes me out of the project I'm in and forces me into the General project which is where the Leadership board is located.

[Wade Tracy _Boise_ ID_]

You can do that in Jira Server because boards are only loosely tied to projects so a board can show up in multiple projects.  Some people find this confusing, but it helps in a situation like yours. I don't think it is possible in Cloud.  I know that there is a cognitive disconnect that occurs when a different project loads, but depending on what you are trying to do, it may not impact your actual work.

There are workarounds depending on what your goals are...some people create a separate project that contains multi-project boards, but that could lead to the same issue above.  You may find Portfolio helps you manage cross project work. 

You could even change how you organize--at my company, we merged the closely related projects into a single project because we realized we were using projects to represent teams instead of actual projects.  Then we assigned teams to components and made boards that filtered based on the components.  That way all the boards were within the same project and project admin was much easier also.

It's one of those cases that's very dependent on what you feel works best for you.

[Michael Arndt]

> I know that there is a cognitive disconnect that occurs when a different project loads, but depending on what you are trying to do, it may not impact your actual work.

I get it but I know my team well enough that this will be confusing to them when/if I eventually role this out.

I see the need for multiple boards within a project but their execution seems to clash with the intended purpose of boards (tracking team work). It is very much a cognitive disconnect. 

Is there a reason Atlassian took this approach? Seems very confusing.

[Wade Tracy _Boise_ ID_]

Multiple boards within a project works just fine, it's just making a board live in multiple projects that's a problem.  This is just my personal opinion, but I think they did it because there is a lot of confusion with the other approach also--more than the confusion you're dealing with.  In the Server version, it's not always super clear which projects a board will show up in and sometimes the board will not show up in a project at all, but can only be opened from the Boards menu.

I've also had problems with somebody creating a board with a filter that they didn't realize was going to make the board show up in multiple projects.  Then a scrum master somehow opened that board and accidentally created the next sprint there instead of the board they normally use.  Before you know it, there are 6 boards showing up  in a project and people don't remember which one they were using before, sprints are all over the place...yada, yada, yada.

I think a nice middle ground would be to select which projects the board shows up in instead of having the single location that Cloud restricts you to.