How to link epics from multiple projects to create a dashboard to reflect their combined Progress ?

[James Jacob]

I have this specific  requirement :

We are into software product development. Work is in progress on several products at any point of time. -  some on  the fresh product development, some on the  enhancement of Products already installed in field. All these products are  included as  separate  projects in our Jira Cloud.

Most of our  orders include several  components from  one or more of the above products, which may have to be modified or customized, for  delivering the order. That means execution of an order involves changes in several, already existing products. We usually define the  respective changes in  these products as  new Epics under them.

How can we configure each order as a separate entity in Jira and  link to the  relevant epics in the constituent  projects , so that the  business  team can see the progress of  each order at a dashboard?

For example , 

ProjectXY [ for which we have received a work order form a customer ] consists of Epic5 of product AA and Epic3 of Product BB, which are already  present in Jira.  

We need to define the ProjectXY as a project [ or a dashboard ]  in Jira , which is linked to these Epics [ Epic5 of AA and Epic3 of  BB ], so that the progress  of these 2 epics should automatically  indicate the status of  ProjectXY. When these two epics are completed, the ProjectXY should be shown as completed. 

How can we configure the ProjectXY in Jira and Establish the  required Linkages, so that ProjectXY  acts as an automatic dashboard  reflecting the progress of its components ? 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @James Jacob 

First a disclaimer, that I do not work for Atlassian or any marketplace vendors.  I am just another Jira user offering some ideas.

If I understand what you are asking, I believe this is possible using saved filters to contain the relevant epics, such as for your example of ProjectXY.

First though, I recommend you pause to consider what do you mean by "indicate the status of ProjectXY".  Perhaps draft what what reporting would look like, and what questions your stakeholders want to answer.

Then try creating a Jira dashboard with the saved filter for ProjectXY, and build your reporting.  If the built-in gadgets cannot show what you want, investigate the Atlassian Marketplace for some addon gadgets to see what might help: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/

Another possible route is using Jira Product Discovery, which is made for taking ideas from concept to delivery, road mapping the progress rolled up from the delivery team projects.  Please look here to learn more about that: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discovery

Kind regards,
Bill

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

Hi @James Jacob

my first reaction is that you may want to track your orders as issues - probably of a new issue type that you can create, like Order - and then link the relevant epics to these issues, so that an order becomes a parent issue to the epics.

Jira does allow additional issue hierarchy levels above epic as part of Jira Software Premium. You can then view the orders in Advanced Roadmaps, which also aggregates progress up the issue hierarchy.

If you don't want to move to Jira Software Premium, you can still establish issue links between the epics and your order issues, however Jira doesn't have a good, built-in way of displaying and aggregating across issue-link-based hierarchies. You'll need an app from the Atlassian Marketplace for that; I'll provide more information below. 

Alternatively, you could simply track the order via some issue field (e.g., a custom field, or even just the standard labels field), and set the respective order value on the epics. Again, Jira doesn't have a good, built-in way of displaying and aggregating across such issue groups, but again, the Marketplace can help with this.

Hope this helps,

Best,

Hannes

[Hannes Obweger - JXL for Jira]

... and just to expand on the Atlassian Marketplace. As said above, there are multiple apps available that can help with the above. I can only speak for the app that my team and I are working on - JXL for Jira - but here, your use case would be trivial to solve, like so:

For context, JXL is a full-fledged spreadsheet/table view for your issues that allows viewing, inline-editing, sorting, and filtering by all your issue fields, much like you’d do in e.g. Excel or Google Sheets. It also comes with a number of advanced features, including support for configurable issue hierarchies (based on Jira's built-in issue hierarchy and/or issue links) as well as sum-ups. With these, you can build a report like the one above in just a couple of clicks.

If you prefer to model your orders via issue fields on the epics (e.g., labels), you can do that too, using JXL's issue grouping capabilities.

As said above, there may be other apps that can help with this, too. You may already know that you can trial any app for free for 1 month, and depending on the size of your size, it may be free forever. So if an app is an option for your, perhaps try a few and see which works best for you.

Best,

Hannes