Simplifying Jira Plans for Fiscal Year Planning

[Karim Mohamed]

I’m facing a challenge with Jira’s Plan feature: managing too many issues, which complicates navigation and visualization. Filters like excluding completed items or backlog issues don’t fully solve the problem, as they apply across all issue levels and types. Using complex JQL with multiple conditions feels error-prone and hard to maintain.

Use Case:

• Plan for a fiscal year (e.g., FY25).
• Include initiatives not completed before Oct 1, 2024, and exclude those created after Sep 30, 2025.
• Ensure all child issues of these initiatives are included.

One possible solution is using ScriptRunner to create advanced filters, but I want to avoid overcomplicating the setup. Another idea: create a separate “initiative overview” project for each fiscal year, carrying forward or leaving behind initiatives as needed.

Have you faced similar challenges? How have you approached them? Any insights on using ScriptRunner or the “one project per year” idea?

[Jehan Bhathena]

Hi @Karim Mohamed ,

As you maybe aware "Plans" offers multiple Issue Sources. I would suggest trying out something like:

• Create 1 board that track "initiatives not completed before Oct 1, 2024, and exclude those created after Sep 30, 2025". The JQL should be fairly simple for this eg. type = Initiative AND (resolved > "Oct 1, 2024" OR created < "Sep 30, 2025") AND resolution = Unresolved
  • NOTE: This isn't the correct JQL syntax but only the outline, also I would advice adding another threshold for the created date sot hat you don't get ALL the initiatives from when you began the project
• In the "Plan", the "Statuses" filter might be of help to you if you want to exclude more issues
• If your OPEN backlog is getting too big, you can update the earlier filter to weed out the tickets not updated in the past year or so, and choose to either move them out of the plan or reject them altogether

Overall, I understand your situation, with multiple issue sources the Plan does get out of control at time, what you need to try is set barricades as to what gets planned and what gets moved to the long term backlog in the planning phase.

Hope this helps.