How to use for managing developments which span multiple projects?

[Taber Loveless]

How to use for managing developments which span multiple projects? I MUST be missing something obvious as this is such a common situation with enterprise product development :(

Ill try to explain the scenario Id like to handle:

For example, lets say I have "ProjA", "ProjB" and a new "FeatureX" (HOSLog support reporting by status type).

ProjA has 3 components: A1, A2, A3 and 2 Versions: 1.2 and 1.4 (i.e. Web UI, WebService, Database)

ProjB has 2 components: B1, B2 and 2 versions: 3.2 and 3.4 (i.e. TPC UI, Middleware)

What I want to do is enter a Card for "FeatureX" with to track dependancies existing among separate projects:

Subtask1: "A" which relates to ProjA, A3, 1.4 (Extend Web database to use reference table for storing HOSStatus data)

Subtask2: "B" which relates to ProjA, A2, 1.4 (Extend Web WebServices to use new HOSStatus table and add web methods for searching/sorting on status by date and driver/driverGroup)

Subtask3: "C" which relates to ProjA, A2, 1.4 (Extend Web WebServices to use new HOSStatus table and add web methods for searching/sorting on status by date and driver/driverGroup)

Subtask4: "D" which relates to ProjB, B2, 3.4 (Modify TPC Middleware to insert HOS Status into HOSStatus reference table instead of HOSLogs table)

Currently, I can easily add a new Card in ProjA with Subtasks 1,2,3. I can also add a separate card in ProjB with Subtask for #4 *BUT* I want to be able to group these two cards (subtasks?) under the same "Feature" development.

I attempted setting up a single global project then creating components for ProjA and ProjB but stopped when I realized that components cannot be versioned.

How are others accomplishing this?

[Colin Goudie · Accepted solution]

The closest you probably will get to at the moment is using linked issues. If you are using greenhopper it can aggregate multiple linked issues and their subtasks up. (I.e. And epic) however, that is still only by oe project. On the near horizon though is rapid boards in greenhopper. This will be able to let you manage issues spanning projects, but I would imagine it still may feel lacking to you since the rest of JIRA doesn't.

[Colin Goudie]

The Rapid board looks awesome, once it's released, I would imagine 90% of your use in JIRA will be via that anyway :)

[Taber Loveless]

Good to know... I thought about trying out Rapid anyway. As for not working throughout Jira thats ok as long as there is one place to see everything aggregated for a high-level view.

[Igor Sereda [ALM Works]]

If you need time aggregated, then the links won't work - unless you have time aggregation based on links (probably that's what Links Hierarchy Report plugin does - have to check).

I was also asking out of curiosity if we can make our Structure plugin help in such case. With Structure you can organize issues from multiple projects in a hierarchy, and have time aggregated upwards. But our plugin is commercial and the integration with GreenHopper is limited so far -- so I'd suggest trying Rapid boards first and seeing what that feature could evolve into in the nearest future.

[Taber Loveless]

Are 'linked issues' the best practice for this in Jira?

I tested this by adding "Feature X" to 1 project then all other tasks as 'issues' in the appropriate project.
The issue I see with this approach is that the Agile Planning screens do not show/include any linked issues from other projects or thier time estimates.

Subtasks would be nice as it would be easier for planning/review but I dont see how Jira can support this without the ability for 'versioned components'.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[Igor Sereda [ALM Works]]

Do you need A B C D to be sub-tasks? What for? Can they be just separate issues linked to the Feature X?