Jira dashboard organization - jira

I am doing automation on over ten products. In jira I am using Kanban style workflow where there is no sprint and work sits in a Kanban board. I want to make dashboards for the different projects. The first problem I am running into is that I have lots of different breakdowns I would like to look at and I am running out of room on my dashboard. It says I can't use any more gadgets on my dashboard. I would like to make several different dashboards for a project for different categories and I would like to group them together. Then I want to do this across over ten projects.

Jira is not a data visualization tool so don't expect too much out of it, My suggestions is to not overcomplicate, are all this gadgets really that useful?, if yes the simple approach would be to at least organize them using a naming rule, for example Project-Strategic-week-performance.
Maybe a plugin like this one can help you with the organization: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1217625/dashboard-folders-for-jira?hosting=server&tab=overview
But overall try no to force a tool for what it wasn't made for because you are going to need a lot of effort and not getting the best results.

Related

Can you move issues between Jira Projects

Trying to figure out best way to setup Jira for cross-organizational project. We have a Continuous Delivery Program that will split off into separate backlogs to be worked by different teams based on Themes.
Wondering if we should setup one project to manage the overall high level project, and then different projects per theme of work that will be managed by the individual teams.
Are there ways multiple teams can work out of the same project but track their work separately (including if their work is Kan-Ban, Scrum-Ban or Sprint based?)
Regarding the question in the title. It's possible to move issues in JIRA from project to project. This feature is quite handy and you even can do bulk operations. See Moving an issue for more details.
Regarding structuring your projects. Out of the box there is no feature in JIRA to create such a workflow with projects and sub projects you have described.
A possible workaround could be using components as sub projects.
In this case you would create a project which act as your high level project and divide this project into several components. For components you can add a lead, do versioning but you can not set security permissions based on components for example. So this is not a perfect solution and have indeed some limitations since components are not projects. But you have to evaluate this approach by yourself if it is sufficient for you.
Another option would be to use a plugin e.g. Structure. I am pretty sure there are even more out there which promising to solve your problem. From my experience also using a plugin may be not the silver bullet you are expect. You have to evaluate it first if it really suits your workflow.
For the scenario you describe, the issues that you start from are probably more high-level than the actual work that has to picked up in the separate teams.
What I find to work well, is to keep 1 project (ie. Opportunity Backlog) for the high level issue (ie. an Opportunity) and when an opportunity gets detailed out, just create issues in the projects of the teams that will work on them. You can still link those issues to the opportunity so people who look at it can see what is happening in each team.
Another option is to keep everything in 1 project, but to make the relevant issues show up on the board for the team that has to work on them. A board can list issues of multiple projects. You just need to update the JQL query for the board accordingly. For more details, check the documentation. Note that working with sprints can get cumbersome if the same issues are listed on boards of multiple teams though. Best to configure things such that an issue is only displayed on the board of 1 team.
I wouldn't bother with moving issues too much. It's not a very user friendly action.

JIRA - Adding custom workflows

We have the full Atlassian product range and I am looking at how to make best use of it
We are using Stash to manage our Git 1000+ repositories all of which contain tags pointing to their versions.
I need to be able to define how our software versions depend on each other
For example:
System_x.y.z in production consists of
group_of_components_a_x.y.x consists of
component_a_x.y.z
component_b_x.y.z
...
System_x.y.z is release candidate_a consists of
....
System_x.y.z is in regression test
...
System_x.y.z is in performance test
...
System_x.y.z development is being tracked by Issue#
...
etc etc
I have been using ClearQuest to achieve this but would like to move to a pure Atlassian solution if it exists
I would also like to define a name for group_of_components so that I can attach owners to it as well as to components so we can use them elsewhere in the workflow.
can notify them when versions change.
In Issues so I can see when different teams are working in the same areas
I would also like to be able to use the System_x.y.z, group_of_components_x.y.z and component_a_x.y.z
In Defects so I can see where the error was found (System_x.y.z, group_of_components_x.y.z)
In Defects so I can see where the error was fixed (component_a_x.y.z)
Is any of this possible?
Is any of this possible?
The short answer is yes. It's all possible.
Jira has the following hierarchy:
Project
../ Epic
../../ Task
../../../ Sub-task
If you need to track version numbers as part of a product roadmap you need to use Projects for that feature. There are probably other hacky ways to use labels or components to do something like this but you will spend endless hours extending these hacks throughout Jira. Not a fun exercise IMO.
I need to be able to define how our software versions depend on each other
Dependencies can easily be added at the Epic/Task/Sub-task levels but I'm not aware of an easy way to do this at the version level. I'm only really aware of the Agile Cloud solutions. If you install this locally I'm fairly sure you could find a way to do this if it is truly needed.
I would also like to define a name for group_of_components so that I can attach owners to it as well as to components so we can use them elsewhere in the workflow.
It's very easy to name all issue types and projects. Projects have an owner. All issue types can be assigned to any user (with access rights). Additionally you can add users to the "watch-list" of every issue.
can notify them when versions change.
The watch-list will notify all watchers by email. Additionally you can set up workflows to reassign or marshal each record through a custom workflow.
In Issues so I can see when different teams are working in the same areas
You can add users to teams in any combination (users can be on multiple teams) but I'm not sure I fully understand what "areas" means. You can search, filter and report on all issues by team(s) if that's what you mean.
I would also like to be able to use the System_x.y.z, group_of_components_x.y.z and component_a_x.y.z
In Defects so I can see where the error was found (System_x.y.z, group_of_components_x.y.z)
In Defects so I can see where the error was fixed (component_a_x.y.z)
Each bug you define:
can be organized into an Epic
can be associated to any number of tasks (Blocks task 1 or is blocked by task 2, etc.)
has one or many "affects versions" to track where the bug occurred
has one or many "fix versions" to track when the bug was fixed

Using JIRA Agile for Scrum (from a Rally user background)

I have been using Rally for Project Management in my previous organization, and now I have to use Jira Agile for the same job in the new organization. I am having hard time understanding the way JIRA Agile works, and could not get a hang of the tool after a week of struggle. I am sorting expert help for what I would like to achieve. I have been using JIRA for many years as a bug logging tool but not as project management software.
All I want is to create an Epics and Stories, schedule it into a particular release or sprint. On Rally this is straight forward. Few images attached here.
I could also see the burn-down once I do the above setup, and the developers/qa start burning down or burning up the hours.
I could not achieve the same on JIRA. It asks me to create a scrum board, but I don't have a clue on how to add the child tasks to a story without creating a new child task (which I don't prefer as the tasks were already created and few started progressing).
The scrum board is also not the way it is on Rally, as it does not list the stories but directly shows the tasks which I am unable to correlate with the story. Can any one point me to a proper tutorial or assist me based on your experience in JIRA? Thank you in advance.
I can recommend two things that might make it a bit more easier for you to transition from how you structured your projects before: the Jira plugin "Structure" and using epics, stories and sub-tasks in a defined and controlled manner.
About the plugin: Structure allows you to define a structure, a container that may even span multiple projects, and lets you put issues in. Secondly, and more important, it allows to create any number of sub-task levels. You can use the structure view to show and hide sub-levels, or if you use the agile boards you can just apply a quick filter to the board.
The same goes for using epics, stories and sub-tasks, just make sure everyone able to enter issues follows the same criteria and then add some filters.
Hope this helps a bit
You may want to look at https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AGILE/JIRA+Agile+101 - it should cover most of the basics to get you going.

Is there a big picture view of what developers are working on across many projects in Jira?

There are currently many projects within Jira. Some developers might have tasks or issues across those projects. Is there a big picture view with Jira or Grasshopper which shows all developers and what they are working on?
Alternatively, is there a way to see all projects along with the number of tasks being worked on for each of them? We are currently using Jira and Grasshopper.
There is a gadget - 'Issues in Progress' which shows all issues with 'In Progress' status along all projects. But it does not sort data by developer.
You may find a better use out of 'Two Dimensional Filter Statistics' gadget with 'All Issues in Progress' filter (which you need to create if you don't have one already) and use Assignee/Project as Axis data.
You can also use 'Activity stream' for all projects to see latest activity.

work-item tracking tools with drag-n-drop stack-ranking?

I'm looking for a work-item-tracking/bug-tracking system (or JIRA plugin, or TFS plugin, or...) which makes it easy to stack-rank work items without having to manually assign priority values to each work item.
Instead, our team wants to be able to see a list of open work items and be able to drag-n-drop one or a multiple selection of work items until the order matches the team's prioritization. This would be much easier than arguing about priority numbers and dealing with ties (e.g. "which of the 5 bugs marked priority=2 should I work on today?").
Our team is considering switching work-item-trackers (we use Gemini now) and availability of a good drag-n-drop prioritizer is high on our requirements list.
I realize drag-n-drop ranking is non-trivial because no team will stack rank all work items. Instead, we'll want to take a subset (e.g. work items for one sprint sprint or iteration, or bugs assigned to one developer) and stackrank those, then later look at a different subset and stackrank those, etc. And I'm sure we'll sometimes need to mix and match different stacks, so there'd need to be heuristics (ideally configurable) about how to show a stack of items previously stacked separately.
Pivotal Tracker is close to the drag-n-drop UI I'm thinking of from a UI perspective, but Pivotal's model of separating user stories from the underlying work items (plus a few other issues) doesn't match how we want to work. We don't want to have to deal with different artifacts (stories vs. JIRA/BugZilla work items)-- instead we just want a drag-n-drop UI to automatically fill out a "priority" field in the issue tracker, and which we can use later when sorting and filtering. And we wouldn't want to use Pivotal as our only work item tracker, because it seems to lack common features like bulk editing which are critical for large projects.
Anyone know of a tool like what I describe above?
Urban turtle is the best TFS add-on, making ranking/prioritizing a sane activity. Priority by number is a disaster so don't think you're alone there.
http://urbanturtle.com/
Urban Turtle is updated every month and used by quite a few teams including a number of my teams.
Eylean Board has what you are looking for. They offer a task board where the tasks are prioritized by moving them around, the priority tasks being on top. Interface is nice and clean and they offer other features such as integration with TFS, reports, etc.
The greenhopper plugin for JIRA has this feature. It's worked well for me ...though I'm not a big fan of JIRA in general.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/tour/backlog-management.jsp
Previous to this, I just used excel.
One of the best (and fastest) web UI's I've seen is on AgileZen, which supports something similar to this. Last I knew it did not have built-in integration with TFS, but it does have a REST API. It's basically a web-based, shareable Kanban board.

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