JIRA in PMO team

Dimitrios Skouras
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October 4, 2024

Hi all,

I want to setup a PMO. Software development teams in the company already use JIRA.

My main goals are the below:

1) The PMO leader needs to have an overview of the teams' projects (status, size, start-end date, Project Manager etc.)

2) Each Project Manager will be responsible for 4-5 projects, so for each of them they should to be able to have a project plan, board, timeline etc (completely separated from the other running projects). It is very important to be able to have unlimited levels of subtasking (some plans may be very detailed and with deep structure) - which I think is a limitation (only tasks and 1 level of subtasks can be added).

3) Some tasks / subtasks for each project have to be assigned to software development teams, so they have to somehow be linked with the tasks added to software backlogs.

How this can be implemented with JIRA (work management)?

Should I open a new project in JIRA for each PMO project or all of them should be considered Epics, within the same JIRA folder?

Thank you in advance

3 answers

5 votes
Walter Buggenhout
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October 4, 2024

Hi @Dimitrios Skouras and welcome to the Community!

I'm afraid your question goes quite a bit beyond a simple Q&A out here. I can very much recommend you to reach out to a Solution Partner near you to help you work out the details. Doing this on a daily basis, I have a decent idea on the many steps it takes to design your processes, map them to proper configuration of your tools and getting your people on board as well.

Just in short, you seem to have a Premium cloud plan already, which is quite nice. You should first of all get the basics right: get a good view of the different teams in your company, set up Jira projects aligned to things that make sense for your organization (they may be projects, but equally so products, customers, processes, internal stuff, ...). Give each team a single board to surface all its work and think about how you connect that to projects, changes and service related activities. Bring these boards into advanced roadmaps plans to create an overview of cross-team / cross project work.

Hope this helps!

Dimitrios Skouras
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October 20, 2024

Dear Walter,

Could you please provide some help on 'Plans' (former advanced roadmaps)?

As you say, we are in a Premium Cloud plan, but I do not have this option on my top menu. Is there a configuration that has to be done by my account's admin? Could you provide guidelines on that?

Also, is 'Plans' included free of charge within Premium? Or there is extra cost depending on the number of our account's users?

Thank you in advance

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Dick
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October 21, 2024

"Plans" comes with your Jira. Your admin can give you permission to use it (either as a viewer or editor). 

Dick

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Dick
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October 4, 2024

Hi @Dimitrios Skouras, Welcome to the Atlassian Community

you are best served by starting a plan (used to be called roadmap). 

In this plan you can gather all the data of more than one project and have a Gantt-chart to see a proper timeline. 

Individual sections of a project (ie. epics) can be selected, their statuses and estimates visible to help you communicate with the project leaders about projected KPI's.

 

Hope this helps,

Dick

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KALOS
Contributor
October 4, 2024

@Dimitrios Skouras  ciao!

With my 10 years of experience as a Jira consultant and 25+ years in project management, having worked with more than 200 clients, I can provide you with a more comprehensive suggestion for implementing your PMO with Jira.

1. Overview for the PMO Leader:
To give the PMO leader a clear and detailed overview, Jira allows you to create custom dashboards with gadgets like **Issues in Progress**, **Burndown Charts**, and **Filter Results**. However, tools like **BigPicture** or **Structure for Jira** offer more advanced management options. While BigPicture is a comprehensive tool for managing timelines and dependencies, **Structure** has recently improved its graphical interface, making task and sub-task relationships much clearer compared to BigPicture, which has lagged a bit behind in the last 5-6 years.

2. Managing Sub-Tasks:
By default, Jira allows only one level of sub-tasks, but in many complex projects, I have recommended using **Structure** or **BigPicture** to manage deeper hierarchies. Structure stands out for its visual clarity in representing task relationships, while BigPicture remains a powerful tool for a broader view of project portfolios and timelines.

3. Linking PMO Tasks to Software Backlogs:
You can link PMO tasks with development team backlogs using issue relations, such as "is blocked by" or "is related to," to maintain clear traceability. Another option is to create an **Epic** in the software project and directly link PMO tasks to backlog activities.

Organizing Projects in Jira:
If your projects are large and complex, it may be beneficial to create a separate Jira project for each PMO project. Alternatively, you can manage projects as **Epics** within a single Jira project if they are smaller and more interconnected.

Tools for Reporting:
For tracking work hours, I recommend **Tempo Timesheets**, which is excellent for monitoring time spent. For reporting, **eazyBI** is one of the best tools for advanced analysis and custom reporting. These tools, combined with BigPicture or Structure, work much more efficiently in the Jira Cloud version. If you're considering a Jira Cloud solution, you will get better performance and enhanced integration between these plugins.

post scriptum:

Structure, on the other hand, is part of Tempo and is already well-integrated, for example, to give you resource management. Meanwhile, the team at BigPicture still operates with a mindset from 5 or 6 years ago, forcing you to buy a duplicate version of BigPicture just to sync with Tempo Timesheets — a waste of money, in my opinion, unless they realize it's better to change course and make everything compatible with a single version of BigPicture. So, if you're starting from scratch, go with **Structure for Jira**."

 

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