Jira Product Discovery – Project Linking Question

[John Voita]

I’m currently in the process of implementing Jira Product Discovery within our agency to help consolidate and manage our numerous siloed backlogs and in-flight projects. We support a variety of delivery methods, including Kanban, Scrum, and Jira Service Management projects — each team maintaining its own backlog and tracking work independently. Jira Product Discovery offers us a centralized space to capture and organize these ideas and initiatives across the agency.

One challenge I’m encountering is with transitioning ideas into active projects. When I create a new Jira project (whether JSM, Kanban, or Scrum), Jira Product Discovery only allows me to link a ‘Delivery’ item to a specific Epic or issue, rather than directly to the project itself. The complication is that not every project uses epics, and some projects have multiple, making it less effective for maintaining a clear, high-level view of in-flight initiatives.

Is there a way within Jira Product Discovery to link directly to a project rather than an issue type within it? This capability would greatly improve our ability to track projects at a portfolio level and maintain visibility across active work without having to tie it to a specific issue.

I appreciate any insight you might have on this — thank you in advance for your help.

[Rich Nacinovich]

Why limit product discovery ideas from being linked to a project? I get Bill's response, "Linking to an entire project would effectively mean the Idea is unlimited scope (as work items could be added continually to the project)." But for an organization using discovery as a project backlog and prioritization dashboard, there's no harm in providing the option to link an idea to a top level project. Let it be flexible. Why not?

[Jordan Dowdy]

Hey Rich, the purpose of linking over to Jira is to track the progress and delivery of an idea. See the link I shared above. If you link to a project instead, the progress on the idea isn't measurable like it is when associated to a work item. 

[Rich Nacinovich]

I'm just saying a future project is an idea, and progress rollup is progress rollup. I think Atlassian is thinking of this myopically through the lens of an application's enhancement evolution. 

With the flexibility I'm suggesting, the tool becomes much more useful for everybody.

Thanks

[Jordan Dowdy]

Hey John, 

I understand the logic behind your use case to broadly link an idea to a Jira project rather than specifying an issue. This would be useful for representing a big project, and sounds like it may often fall above the level of an epic. 

Unfortunately, there is no way to link an idea directly to a project itself as this feature is designed to track alongside a specific delivery work item. here is a link to the JPD feature overview as well:  Introduction to delivery tickets in Jira Product Discovery | Atlassian

I would suggest having a dedicated epic in applicable projects to link and track delivery. For those projects which don't have epics, try to parent the work item under an appropriate epic elsewhere. If the delivery of an idea is truly being tracked at the story level, it should have a parent that ties its contribution towards a larger company objective.  

I hope this helps!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @John Voita 

Short answer: no, that is not possible.

As with any work item, a JPD Idea is likely constrained to a specific scope / goal, and so would map (through delivery work items) to one-to-many other work items.  Linking to an entire project would effectively mean the Idea is unlimited scope (as work items could be added continually to the project).

Regarding your note about some teams not using Epics, any non-JPD work item may be linked as a "delivery work item" to a JPD Idea.

As a workaround (which I have not tried), I suspect one could create a global, project-selection field, add that to the JPD project, and then use automation rules for any coordinating / tracking updates.

Kind regards,
Bill