Multiple Teams Working on Multiple Projects

[Rabih Kraidli]

We have 3 small teams that are split according to their expertise: Mobile, web and Backend. We have multiple products some mobile and some web. Both requiring APIs from the backend. Now I understand that in Jira, boards are created under a specific project. This tells me that a team running the sprint in that board is working on that specific product it is created under. My case is I have multiple products. And at any time a team is working on stories from multiple projects in a single sprint. My question is that is there anything like a “sprint backlog” that has stories from multiple product backlogs, and independent from any particular project? Also, do I design my sprints as “team sprints” or “product sprints”? How do I set up Jira to handle this ?

[Ganesh Babu · Accepted solution]

Hi @Rabih Kraidli 

See what you can do is create components in your project where in the components would be the different products that your team is working on.

So with the help of the components you can track the amount of work done using the jql query.

And you can manage the backlogs in single project.

If required we can create different boards for every release version of the project.

[Rabih Kraidli]

Hi Ganesh,

Thank you for taking the time to answer. Let me rephrase my question. In Jira, sprints are "attached" to a project. So assume that I have Product A, B, and C. I also have Team 1, 2, 3.

Sprint "T1-1" (sprint 1 of Team 1), could have Product A and Product C. Do I start 2 sprints in PA and PC in parallel? How does Team 1 view his sprint Backlog that has PA and PC items? On the other hand another parallel sprint could be going on in T2 - Sprint "T2-1" that also has items from PA and PB for example. How does Team 2 view their sprint backlog?

[Ganesh Babu]

Hi @Rabih Kraidli 

It´s absolutely possible.

Define a new scrum board that includes the issues you want in the sprint and create the sprint from that board. When you create the board, Jira asks you if it will be for an existing project or for an existing saved filter.

You have to select the second (first you have to create a saved filter that includes all projects you want to managed together, the simplest is project in (PRJ1, PRJ2, PRJ3)) and then the board, both backlog and active sprint views, will include issues from several projects.

[Rabih Kraidli]

Hi Ganesh, the boards in Jira are created under a specific project, I am assuming you cannot create a board (or a sprint) outside of a specific project. My issue is that I need a board (or sprint) that spans projects. I understand that you can pull in work from other projects with filters, but it's weird to create a sprint or board under a specific project when that sprint is not really completely related to the project and has items from other projects. 

Sorry for the repeated re-explanation, but I'm new to Jira and trying to set it up properly. 

[Kirstin Seidel-Gebert]

I am assuming you cannot create a board (or a sprint) outside of a specific project.

Yes, you can. Boards are based on Jira filters, and you can define a filter that is based on multiple projects - something like project in (A, B, C).

In our company, we have such (KANBAN) boards that collect issues throughout multiple projects.

Cheers,

Kirstin

[Rabih Kraidli]

Hi @Kirstin Seidel-Gebert 

Thanks for the tip. Now in Jira, we have created one Jira project per product.The teams I have now need to work on multiple projects in their sprint at the same time. Let me give you an example:

Project A has a separate backlog of Android Stories and Web Stories

Project B has a separate backlog of Android Stories and Web Stories 

Team A, the android team, in Sprint TA-1, needs to work on Android Stories from Project A and Project B

TeamB, the  web team, in Sprint TB-1, needs to work on the web stories from Project A and Project B.

My main questions is that where do I create the sprints and boards for Team A and Team B? Do I create them in Project A or Project B or do I create a dummy project that has 2 boards one for TA and another for TB? Overall any advice on how to structure Jira in such situations is greatly appreciated. Thanks! 

Sorry for the repetitive questions but I am trying to get the hang of Jira 

[Rabih Kraidli]

So I think what we will end up doing is setting up a "team" project, with an aggregated project board for that team housed there from all the other actual project backlogs we have from various properties and customers. Since our sprint teams are working on multiple projects at a time, from multiple customers, this seems to be the only way to accomplish it unless I am missing something. It feels wrong to have to associate a team to a single project in order to run a sprint, but this is what we ended up with. Is there any other solution?

S what we are doing is we have a separate project for each project. Each has its own board where we still track the stories, etc. However, we then create a different project for each sprint team. The sprint team board is set up to query the projects needed to create the sprint backlog. The sprint is then started and managed on this sprint team board.

You can still create epics in the individual project board, but if you are tracking versions/releases we will keep these on the sprint team board. It's a little counter-intuitive with the way JIRA is actually setup. 

What do you think?

[Kirstin Seidel-Gebert]

Rabih, you don't need to setup an additional dummy project. Just created the board in one of the projects. Use a filter that collects issues from other projects, and the board will automatically be available in all of the projects from the filter.