Import error when pulling in epics into Portfolio 2.0

[Johann Batt]

This is quite a unique scenario.  

The company decide to create boards to display all epics for multiple JIRA team projects with the same Product Owner/"Manager".  The intent was to create grid block of teams where dependencies can be managed easier and makes it easier to track what work is in progress across all teams.  This is a great idea to scale agile, however this broke every plan in portfolio. 

The epics that are displaying on these newly created board, shared across teams disappeared from the portfolio plan.  I tried to import the newly created board into portfolio hoping that the epics can be pulled back into the plan.

This Error occured :

Unknown exception

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: (no message)

  Stack trace removed due to detial constraint - exceeds 20000 characters

more detailed description :

• Each team in a grid has it's own Jira team project with a KANBAN\Scrum board, all their user stories or tasks are linked to an epic.  
• Each Grid has it's own Team Project with a KANBAN board. On this board the shared filter pulls all the epics created from the JIRA team project into a KANBAN board to show the grid manager which work is IN PROGRESS and that the co-located teams are aligned with the priority set in each grid.
• Here is where the problem starts since the epics from a Team level is shared across boards and projects the epics disappear from the team boards.
• When editing sources in Portfolio, I had to pull in the newly created "grid" KANBAN board. 
• The error occured when I selected the epics that I need to make up the plan.

This got me thinking if there's a workaround to create grid KANBAN boards that mirror multiple JIRA Team projects and not "remove" the epics from Team Boards ?

My question is there a way to "mirror" team projects epics in a shared team project in JIRA ?

[Thomas · Accepted solution]

Hi @Johann Batt,

First and foremost, I would strongly suggest opening a support ticket to try to understand why this error is happening. It obviously does not seem expected.

On your question, would creating a JQL filter including the desired issues (e.g. Only epic issue type) and basing a board and plan out of that filter work for you?

Cheers,

Thomas

[Johann Batt]

Hi @Thomas

Thank you for the prompt reply. will log the ticket asap with some more detial - thanks for the suggestion. 

more detailed description :

• Each team in a grid has it's own Jira team project with a KANBAN\Scrum board, all their user stories or tasks are linked to an epic.  
• Each Grid has it's own Team Project with a KANBAN board. On this board the shared filter pulls all the epics created from the JIRA team project into a KANBAN board to show the grid manager which work is IN PROGRESS and that the co-located teams are aligned with the priority set in each grid.
• Here is where the problem starts since the epics from a Team level is shared across boards and projects the epics disappear from the team boards.
• When editing sources in Portfolio, I had to pull in the newly created "grid" KANBAN board. 
• The error occured when I selected the epics that I need to make up the plan.

This got me thinking if there's a workaround to create these grid KANBAN boards that mirror multiple JIRA Team projects and not "remove" the epics from Team Boards ?

[Thomas]

Let me try to visualize that to be sure I'm understanding correctly.

• Team 1 uses Board 1 with filter Project = "Project 1"
• Team 2 uses Board 2 with filter Project = "Project 2"
• ... (With as many teams as needed)

Then 

• Grid A uses Board A with filter Project IN ("Project 1", "Project 2") AND issuetype = Epic
• ... (With as many grids as needed)

If this is the case then epics shouldn't disappear from any team board.

You can then use one Portfolio Plan per Grid with all the grid team's board as issue sources.

And a Portfolio Program (Still in beta currently) to aggregate all the grids together.

Finally, and this is more of a "Portfolio point of view": you can consider using a new hierarchy level above epic to better track work across multiple projects (as epics tend to be too low level to be "cross plan"). For that, see How to add the initiative level cross-project

Hope that helps and/or give you some ideas!

[Johann Batt]

Hi Thomas

Thanks once again for your reply, we've managed to fix the issue.

We updated the filter on the team projects and epics was visible and I was able to pull it into the Portfolio plan.

Thank you once again 

Regards

Johann

[Thomas]

Awesome!