How can you use different workflows for functional teams in the same project?

[Mathias Mohrs]

Hello, I have a question:

I am testing Jira because my company might want to buy it and I have created a project: "Dev". I can now create all epics and user stories there. I have also created a custom dropdown with "Team" and there are "Team 1" and "Team 2". I used this custom dropdown to create two boards and filter the tickets by team. So I currently have 3 boards in the project:

1. general dev board, where all tickets from all teams are displayed
2. team 1 board, where only the tickets are filtered/displayed where the tickets also have the entry "Team 1" selected in the dropdown
3. team 2 board, where only the tickets are filtered/displayed where the tickets have also selected the entry "Team 2" in the dropdown

So far - so good. But: Each team would like to use different statuses and workflows. For example:

• Team 1 would like to have 5 statuses: New / Ready For Development / In Development / In Review / Done
• Team 2 wants 3 statuses: Bugs / Waiting / Done

How can I ensure that I can have a different layout or different statuses for each team, even though the two team boards are in the same "Dev" project? So far I have only seen that I can set a general layout for the project or add all statuses there. But then team 2, for example, has the status "In Review", although the status should only be used by team 1.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Best regards

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Mathias Mohrs 

Based on your description I believe you are working with a Company Managed Software project. Can you please confirm that by looking at the Type column for your project on the View all projects page under the Projects menu?

In a Company Managed project a Workflow Scheme is used to associate 1..n Workflows to issue types. Each Issue Type can use only one Workflow.

In order for your teams to be in one project and have different workflows (statuses) they will have to use different issue types.

The other alternative is to create two projects. A single issue type can have a different associated workflow in different projects, by creating separate Workflow Schemes.

[Mathias Mohrs]

Thank you @Trudy Claspill ! That's right - it's a business project managed by the company.

What would be your suggestion or which variant would you recommend?

My goal is: 2 projects in total:

Project 1:

1. The first project for development, where you create all the development tickets and also the epics.
   1. On the corresponding board, the timeline should be able to show when which epic should be finished
   2. The two different development teams should each have a board where they can only see the tickets that are assigned to their team and not to the other team
   3. As already mentioned, each team should be able to use its own statuses

Project 2:

1. A second project for marketing
   1. There should be several boards here, which are created according to topics, e.g. "SEO", "Website", "Social Media" etc.

It is important that the same epics and tickets can be found across all projects and boards and that they can be linked and displayed accordingly.

What is the best option here?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Mathias Mohrs 

First, your response said the project type is "business". A Business project (a.k.a. Work Management) provides different functionality than a Software project.

A Business/Work Management project will show only one board associated with the project, and that board will show only the contents of that one project.

If you have the Jira Software product you can create additional boards from Saved Filters, and those filters can encompass the Business project, but the boards created in that situation will not appear in the presentation screen for the Business project.

Second, let's clear up some terminology.

"Epics" and "tickets" are types of issues. Issues are contained in Jira Projects. An issue exists in one and only one Project at a time. (Issues can be relocated from one Project to another Project.)

Boards are a way to display and manipulate issues, but the issues are not "in" the boards; rather the issues are "in" the Projects.

Issues can be displayed in multiple Boards simultaneously if your instance includes the Jira Software product. Jira Software provides the functionality for creating boards from saved filters. Using saved filters you can create any number of filters where the same issue is within the results of multiple filters.

Given that, "the same epics and tickets" can be found across multiple "Projects" is not supported. But showing the same Epics and tickets across multiple Boards is supported.

You mentioned needing to "link and display" all issues "accordingly". What exactly does that mean to you?

With Company Managed project you can make an issue in one project a Child of an Epic in another project. That is a special type of link that is separate from the generic issue linking capability, such as linking two issues to indicate one is a duplicate of another. What type of "linking" are you wanting?

And what type of "display" are you expecting? Is that the display within a board view, a timeline view, or something else?

You mentioned that for "Project 1" you want to have two teams working with different statuses/workflows. If you want the issues for those two teams contained in one Project, the only way for them to have different workflows is to use different issue types, as I previously mentioned.

Are these teams going to be leveraging the agile methodology of Scrum or Kanban?

There are other factors to consider also between selecting a Business/Work Management project vs. a Software project. The two types of project offer different "built-in" functionality when it comes to Boards, Backlogs, and display options.

So the best choice depends on defining the requirements of the teams.

[Mathias Mohrs]

Thanks for the answer! It is really awesome that you take that time for me @Trudy Claspill  ! I really appreciate that :-)

Unfortunately i'm really new to the configuration!

It's not Jira Work Management, but Jira Software that we use. I have three projects:

1. I would like to have a developer project with all user stories and bugs for development.
2. A marketing project containing all user stories for marketing.
3. Then I would like to have a general theme project where I only create epics. I would then like to link the user stories and bugs from the other two projects to these epics.

The background to this idea is that we want to create individual features as epics. And since both development and marketing will be working on the individual features and the user stories will therefore each be linked to the same epic, I wanted to keep everything separate with own project only for epics - so that we can use the time line there to see progress etc - one place, where everything comes together.

I then create individual boards within the projects for the development project and the marketing project.

Another problem is that I can't define the workflows as i need it. Example:

There should be two boards in the developer project - for team 1 and team 2, but the two teams work with different workflows - one team has a "Bugs" status, for example, while the other does not. But both have "Ready For Development", "Done" etc. So some statuses are used by both teams, but some are different. And the way I see it, I can only create one workflow for the entire developer project. I then have to create "Bugs" there in the workflow config, for example - although the status is not needed by the other team and is always displayed when I move it to another status.

We really want to buy Jira but we cannot set it up the way we need it right now. Hopefully we will figure it out soon ;)

[Trudy Claspill]

Okay, now we're getting somewhere! ;-)

Regarding the workflows, you most definitely can create multiple workflows to be used in a single project. 

A project gets an associated Workflow Scheme.

In that Workflow Scheme, individual Workflows (describing various To Do > In Progress > Done status transitions paths) get mapped to Issue Types.

An Issue Type can be mapped to only one Workflow in a given Workflow Scheme.

So your two development teams would have to work on issues of different Issue Types in order to have different Workflows for their work. I assure you that what you want is possible but does require that your two development teams use different Issue Types for their respective work.

But before we dive more deeply into that, let us first address the topic of separate projects and the Timeline functionality.

With the Free and Standard subscriptions the Timeline feature you will find in the panel on the left (when you are viewing a board/backlog) has two limitations:

1. It can be used to display only the contents of that one board which is currently being viewed.

2. It can be used to display information from ONLY ONE PROJECT.

So, if you want to use that native Timeline feature you CANNOT have the Epics, the developer stories and the marketing stories in separate Jira projects. You must have them all in the same project.

And if you want to show both the developer stories and the marketing stories under the Epics in a Timeline you will have to have at least one board where all the Epics and stories of both teams are included. You can also have separate boards for the development team and the marketing team that shows just their stories, but you need a board that includes all the stories and epics in order to see that on a Timeline.

To be able to combine information from separate Project into a single timeline type view you would need to either:

1. Buy the Premium Subscription for Jira which would give you the Advanced Roadmaps feature and access to more complex configurations of timelines within that feature.

OR

2. Look at getting a third party app that provides more complex timeline construction capabilities leveraging the data in Jira.

So, given the above limitations to the Timeline feature, is you company willing to consider

1. a Premium subscription for Jira, or

2. a third party app for the timeline functionality, or

3. putting all the work into a single project?