The Initiative concept in Portfolio

[lily]

Hi Guys,

So I have watched the Portfolio webniar and learned a lot. But I am confused about the Initiative concept refered in the video, and the project type that Initiative belogs to. Based on my observation, it seems that you should create Initiative issue type in Project Management project, and manage agile boards among multiple projects in this project, is it correct?

And another question is Portfolio is not able to display all the bugs in boards, I'm really confused about that, since fixing software defect is one of the essential part in software development process.

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @lily,

Regarding your Initiatives, create a Jira project just for them. Only your initiatives, nothing else in there.

For the actual execution of your initiatives, use Jira projects just as you would do if you weren't even using Portfolio. So set up projects with around an application or a development project and include all issue types you might need, except your initiatives. Agile Boards based on one / some of these projects will help you and your teams do their daily work.

Regarding bugs, there is no reason why Portfolio could not display those. If you want them to, make sure you map the issue type bug to the Story hierarchy level of Portfolio and include them in the filter / board that you set as the issue source for your Portfolio plan:

screenshot from Portfolio / Administration / Portfolio hierarchy configuration

On a side note, make sure that you will need to estimate bugs in order to have them processed correctly in your plan schedule. If you don't have that practice, it might be better to reduce your team's capacity in accordance with the amount of time you expect to be spending on bug fixing.

[lily]

Hi @Walter Buggenhout,

First, thanks for your reply! I read your reply and I have a question for further discussion immediately.

Quote "Regarding your Initiatives, create a Jira project just for them. Only your initiatives, nothing else in there."

Since Jira offer several kinds of project type, scrum, kanban, project management and so on, which one should I choose to create Initiative within them?

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @lily,

A project often has a beginning, middle and end. This goes from idea generation, finding a funding or support mechanism, through developing and submitting a proposal, then managing the project and closing it out or some variant of this.

It might be an interesting idea to reflect those life cycle stages in the workflow of your initiative project. So this will be something you need to build yourself, as that is not available as a template.

I am telling you that because it does not matter too much what type of project you choose. Given you have to pick one anyway, a kanban project might be a good choice if you ask me. Because it will also bring you a kanban board you can use to represent all your initiatives in the lifecycle stages they are at. In other terms: one single view of all your initiatives at a glance.

[lily]

Hi @Walter Buggenhout,

Thank you very much, I will give KanBan a try!

[Jeremy Lee]

Hi @Walter Buggenhout,

Regarding your initiatives and kanban boards reply, for actual execution you recommend filtering out Initiatives so they do not show up. Do you therefore recommend using projects (instead of boards) for your source in Portfolio? Can you give me your thoughts on Portfolio sources when having multiple projects and utilizing initiatives. I want to make sure the initiatives show up in Portfolio but not for my developers. Also, is there any need for the developers to see the initiative? Currently, they can only see the parent Epic, but it seems it might be valid to climb the hierarchy in Jira.

Thanks

Jeremy