How can I use Versions to do release planning across multiple projects?

[Yoni Degani]

We have multiple stakeholders that each create issues within their own dedicated projects but all issues ultimately funnel through one development team.  That said, we have sprints that are comprised of issues from multiple projects.  

I want to use versions to better plan which issues will be included in targeted release dates.  But it seems Jira currently limits use of Versions to just one project only.  Are there any suggestions how I can get around this?

[Glenn Bieger]

Another options would be to create a separate JIRA project dedicated to releases. Within this project each ticket/issue represents a release. You can then link the tickets from multiple projects to a "Release" ticket. Doing it this way, using JIRA out-of the-box functionality, will also allow you to:

• set up a specific release workflow, including CAB approval and potentially even deployment steps
• you can add custom fields to it to capture additional information per release
• you can use JIRA's powerful search engine to search through releases
• you can create a custom field 'Release Date' and use that to map/view all releases on a calendar widget

[Yarden Cohen]

@Yoni Degani  Could you share the solution you went with?
5 years later and i'm having the same issue but atlassian still havn't tackled it.

[Marlene Kegel - codefortynine]

Hi @Yarden Cohen ,

If it is an option for you to use a Marketplace app, you can try out our Jira cloud app Version Sync for Jira.

Don't hesitate to get in touch with our support, if you have questions or missing any features.

[Arthur Gonçalves]

Hello Yoni,

You can consider using the add-on Version Sync for JIRA, which allows you to Share versions between projects and many other functionalities.

Regards,

Arthur Gonçalves

[Yoni Degani]

Thanks Arthur. Unfortunately, I believe we are running a JIRA on demand instance so this add-on won't work. Any other suggestions? What I am considering is migrating all the various projects into ONE project in order to use Versions the way Atlassian limits their use. In order to do this, I plan to: 1. Assign Components to all the issues within a project, per project. 2. Create the same Components in the unified project. 3. Migrate all the issues to the unified project via bulk change operation a. This should confirm a mapping of existing Components to matching Components in the new project. 4. I will then create Boards with filters by Component to give each stakeholder group an unsullied view of their issues. 5. One of the Boards will include all issues, allowing the planning / dev / QA team to reconcile and plan the full breadth of work by release in a single view. 6. (optional) Delete other projects. I'd like to avoid this rigor if possible so if you have a better idea...? Thanks.

[Tim Northam]

I'd advise for you to combine the JIRA projects to utilise the JIRA version control. Components and EPICS enable you to split the workload between teams.

[Lily]

We enabled cross-project releases functionality in our app [Swanly release timeline for Jira Cloud. https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1219470/swanly-release-timeline-for-jira?hosting=cloud&tab=overview
You can create and update cross-project releases in Swanly and your changes will synchronise with Jira versions.

There is much more features available eg. Visualisation of releases on Timeline, Adding custom stages to releases, creating releases for Next gen projects…
(I'm the product owner of the app)