Project Prioratization

[Jeffi Sannapu]

Hello - I believe JIRA can be used for Project Prioritization Process with the following capabilities. Please confirm whether this is feasible and what specific version of JIRA or Confluence combinations I need to use? For example, Can JIRA Desktop be used for this? or JIRA Project Portfolio, JIRA Agile etc. product suites I need to accomplish this activity?

Prioritization Process

• Ability to define Project Task with custom properties such as Project#,Description, Created By, Created Date, Proposed by, Business Unit, Description, Sponsor, status, system Impacts etc.
• Ability to List Projects and also Group project based on Business Unit
• Ability to click Project Number and then see the actual project Description
• Create a Dashboard and allow these projects to be prioritized in Kanban

Thank you

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

JIRA alone covers the first three, but there's no such thing as "project prioritisation in Kanban" - prioritisation is for issues (a project is a collection of issues with something significant in common - like a product, a team or a process).  You can inlcude one, many or all projects in a Kanban board.  You'll need JIRA Agile for that.

Portfolio will add a layer of functions and reports that will allow you to do sweeping overviews, planning based on resources and cross-project planning

Versions - use the latest available.

I have no idea what you might mean by "JIRA Desktop" - could be all sorts of things.

[Jeffi Sannapu]

Nic - Thanks for the update. I meant Projects in a Kanban board. So it seems like if I get JIRA portfolio then I am covered?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You still can't do Kanban with projects - your Kanban boards will only show issues. But yes, I suspect Portfolio will be a good tool to help you with your project planning and prioritisations.

[Jeffi Sannapu]

Ok. So is there any JIRA suite that allows me to create a dashboard with Projects. So all projects are listed and we are able to see them all at a glance and filter and Group them....and then drill down to get to details? If I model an Issue as Project and define custom fields than I should be able to do this?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

JIRA allows you to create dashboards, to which you add "gadgets". Most of these are reports based on either project or filters, and, of course, you can use filters like "show me all issues that are in projects X, Y and Z", so you can construct all sorts of clever dashboards. Most reporting gadgets are a good jumping-off point for drilling down into more detail. But I think you need to stop thinking of projects as being the focus. In reality, it's the issues that represent things that you need to do or track, and the projects are more about logical grouping (mostly into what a project manager would describe as a "project"). It's no good doing a load of project planning if you're not thinking about getting the issues dealt with. I've worked in places that created loads of projects and never really got anything done because they looked too hard at a project level and never really got on to doing the actual work. Anyway, for the question about "model an issue as project" - that's a really good question. It is certainly something I have done in the past - created a Jira-project that contained a list of actual projects listed as issues. You can do really clever things with fields and sub-tasks with such a meta-project. However, for the last year, I only do that when I've got some pretty sneaky reporting that needs doing, or the client does not have "Portfolio". I'd strongly recommend looking at Jira+Portfolio before trying to do some form of meta-project.

[Jeffi Sannapu]

Nick- thanks for the response. I understand the difference between Projects and Issues in JIRA. The goal of this entire discussion is to be able to use JIRA as a tool to prioritize Projects for a LOB. If JIRA Portfolio does not support custom fields for project definition that nullifies the usage of JIRA Portfolio for us. Out of the box it seems JIRA Portfolio definition of a project seem to support very few elements at the project level. There is no way, I'll be able to convince our leadership and the teams to change their ways or process. The tool should be flexible to accommodate a LOB process and not other way around for it to be adopted broadly for that particular process. If custom fields are supported at the project level in JIRA Portfolio, much like how an issue supports them than we would not be having this discussion. I just wanted to confirm whether or not that is possible. It seems to be that is not possible. So my only alternative is to model an issue as Project (with custom fields) or look for something else. Other plug-ins from market place seemed very limited. I for me cannot understand why Atlassian did not add custom fields for Project. That does not make sense at all for "Portfolio Management suite". I hope I am explaining the issue in a way it is understandable....

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Very much so. Most people don't seem to need project level fields. For the handful that do, plain JIRA has an addon called "pro fields" which does add some functionality on them, although it might not be what you need, I think it's worth a look before you go into setting up a "project metadata" project. I quite like the "project metadata" idea in some cases. I've done it more than once, but not because I needed project fields, it was more about number crunching I suspect Portfolio isn't quite what you need because it's the newest addition to the Atlassian line and they've been working mostly on fully integrating it (it's an acquistion) with the other big things you can add to JIRA.

[Jeffi Sannapu]

I looked at pro fields last night and it looked promising-until I read reviews. There was another plug-in that would add custom fields at project level. The fields I am looking are basic to any project definition such as Sponsor, Business Area initiating, Sizing Estimate, systems impacted, Release code etc. This is purely for prioritization effort and as you mentioned it is easy endeavor to create a Project of Prioritization as a collection of "Issues", where each issue will have these definitions". that would solve for the problem. But I am not sure how scalable this approach will be. the same can be done with JIRA desktop (I believe) but I am trying to promote something that can be sustained on long term. thank you for all your help on this topic

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I still don't know what you mean by Jira desktop, but if pro-fields won't work, I'd still be tempted to go with the project-metadata. Not sure how you can really prioritise projects though. If you've got one team, then it's easy - you just work on one project until it's done, you don't care about the others. If you have multiple teams, the concept of prioritising projects becomes irrelevant to you.