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How should we configure JIRA for two Boards with different Workflows that need to work together?

Jeff A September 30, 2021

We have two dev teams that will be working out of one project, They are two very different teams, so they have their own Issue Types and Workflows, each team getting their own Board.

Initially, I had planned to filter by Issue Type, but my manager had intended to filter by Component in order to break out the Boards by the high-level projects that each works on. The problem raised by my manager was that "occasionally" there could be a time where both teams need to collaborate on one Issue, so they wanted the Issue card to appear on the Board of both teams (this has never happened, but I respect the possibility that it could, so it's better to factor that in from the beginning).

I thought about it for a bit and collaborated with a buddy to think of a few different possible solutions, and I was hoping to get input from the community at large or see if there was an additional idea I had overlooked.

Third Board

If we made a third Board on the project, we could map all of the Statuses in both teams' Workflows to a few generic columns and show all cross-functional Issues in one place. We could probably have a filter that looks for just Issues with two Components and see them there. We could probably quick filter the hell out of it to make it easily navigable.

One Workflow

If we just sat both teams down and made them take a sledgehammer to their current Workflows in order to hammer out one consistent Workflow, we would be able to share everything. The difficult part of this plan is that they are two very, very different teams. One has to go through some multiple steps of approval on their work with different departments while the other basically just has two Backlog columns (one long term and one short term), an In Progress column, and a Done column. Making a Workflow that would satisfy both would be either a straight All transition between everything or take a total reworking of the way both currently work.

Joint Work Column

While the opposing team’s Statuses do not currently exist on each teams' Board, they could. If I was to create a “Joint Work” column on each of the Boards, I could map the other team’s Statuses to that column. In the event that they have an Issue from the other team which has a Component that is meant to be on their Board, it would appear in this column. The downside is that unless they are doing joint work, this column would be empty and taking up space.

Best Matching Status Assignment

Similar to the Joint Work Column idea, I could map the opposing team’s Statuses to the closest matching columns on their board. This presents some potential for a “square peg, round hole” situation. Example: I could map Team A’s “In Progress” Status to Team B's Board under “In Progress.” But it cannot move through the other Statuses on Team B's board like the various review stages. It could only live in that one place.

Filter By Issue Type

If we were to give each team their own specific Issue Types, they can keep their own Workflows and specific Issue Types. The goal of moving to JIRA was cross-visibility, so I think both teams should be able to see the other's Board, but I guess this would mean they need to be able to edit the other's content too.

Filter the F*ck Out Of Boards

I could go the route of making a filter capable of showing any issue matching all of the possible combinations of Components so that the relevant Components show on a Board, but also any Issue with two Components show on both Boards.

 

Not sure if anyone's come across this kind of conundrum and tried to allow teams this much latitude in their structure (ie. mandating one workflow across an entire company seems pretty reasonable right now), but I would love to hear how something like this has been resolved.

 

1 answer

0 votes
Fabian Lim
Community Champion
December 22, 2021

Hi @Jeff A

The filters will work in your situation. 

Regards

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