How do you enter a customer in Jira Portfolio?

[Jo]

How do you enter a customer in Jira Portfolio?

I get that an epic or an initiative will be a project.. 

stories will be parts of projects or smaller work

how do I put in the customer in Portfolio ?

[Martin Suntinger · Accepted solution]

Next to the approach of creating customers as an Initiative, which is a good idea, other implementations I've seen used one release stream per customer. This is a natural fit if for each customer you have dedicated milestones/commitments (releases), and it allows to tag the backlog by customer by assigning them to the according stream and release. 

Below are some screenshots from an example data set modelled with this approach: Every customer is a release stream entry, with customer-specific milestones. The backlog items are assigned to these streams/releases. 

The timeline can then be broken down by these streams to see what is scheduled, per customer. 

That said, it really depends on the process and the definition of a customer, whether there are independent releases per customer etc. 

image2015-2-6 12:26:51.png

image2015-2-6 12:29:24.png

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Gets my vote!

[Jo]

Thank you both, this helps a lot.. So basically we could map like this : A. customer = initiative project = epic and then if you want to put a release for a customer, how do you "translate" it in Portfolio terms? also - if you want to work a schedule/roadmap/release for a product or internal app - would you consider that an epic in an internal initiative? B, customer = release stream . same questions as for point A - how would you "translate" product releases ( which can apply to more than one customer), What if you want to create a release schedule specific for the customer? Also - could you give me an example on how you define the themes you use?

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

If you want to work a schedule/roadmap/release for a product or internal app or a customer, It would suggest creating a JIRA project for it. And create those releases in the JIRA project. You can then pull those releases in to Portfolio streams. Streams can be created - one for each project - or for something bigger, depending on how you model them. We usually use themes for different business areas - products, services, R&D etc but that is just one way of doing it. You set the expectations on themes and so it will be the top most level.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Portfolio doesn't have a metadata called Customer. But it depends on the process really. For our services team, we usually create a customer as an initiative and the major pieces of work goes as Epics under that.

Note that the "Protfolio Epic" doesn't necessarily have to be "JIRA Agile Epic"!