Is there a downside to including multiple projects in one scrum board in Jira?

[Riaan Lourens]

Hi,

We are busy configuring our locally hosted Jira server and have come across some uncertainties.

One of the reasons we are using Jira and Greenhopper is to properly track time spent on tasks and draw an automated report for budgeting purposes.

As a software solution company we have multiple projects (basically clients) that we bill our work against per team, so in short team A has about 10 different ongoing projects (enhancements, support etc.), team B has the same 10 ongoing projects but team B does the config and solution design on the projects.

Perfect setup for us would be to include all these projects in each of the scrum boards in order to easily establish which project the hours worked should be billed against - this is kind of what I'm planning as I haven't been able to find any real negatives wrt doing this but I'm not convinced yet.

Does anyone know of any limitations regarding the functionality of Jira, Greenhopper, Confluence, or Tempo should we pursue this option?

Thanks a lot!

[Theinvisibleman · Accepted solution]

Hi Riaan,

One of the downsides that I could think of regarding that setup would be that it's possible for the backlog of your GreenHopper Plan Mode to be packed, and maybe a bit cluttered, making it hard to see and determine which issue belongs to which project.

Cheers,

Joe

[Riaan Lourens]

Hi,

Thanks Joe, that's definitely one of the limitations.

We went ahead and implemented the process in the manner described above - We have 4 scrum teams who in turn all work on about 10 different projects at the same time; these projects are basically our clients whom we provide support and expert services to on an ongoing basis. Problem is that all of the tasks created will appear on all of the scrum boards at the same time.

So the "solution" I came up with was to create different issue types for each of the teams, i.e, team 'A' has 'A - epic', 'A - Story' etc., and team 'B' will have 'B - epic' and so forth. We then just create filters that will only show the relevant issue types per board which is obviously what we wanted. The only downside that I've noted so far is the fact that some users don't pay attention to what they're doing and then create the wrong issue type, but so far even that hasn't been too much of a painful experience.

This is more of a solution to the scenario I pitched in my initial question instead of an answer to my actual question.

Thanks and cheers,

Riaan