Parallel Sprint support with multi project board

[Dan Spearing]

Good day!

We have multiple Departments (Software, Hardware, Mechanical, QA, etc.) and multiple Products. Currently, each department has its own Jira Project that contains tasking for all of the Products and each Department only runs one (1) Sprint at a time that contains the tasking for all of the Products. The Department Sprints each have their own Sprint start/end dates and they also have different durations as we don't want to all of the Department's Sprint planning to have to happen at the same time. This makes it easier for planning but completely cuts off cross-Department collaboration. It also makes it difficult for the different Program Managers to get Product information. We tried to use Components but it got really out of hand to a point of uselessness and was very prone to error.

What I want to do is create separate Jira projects for each Product with all the team members of all the Departments. Team members would be differentiated by a Team dropdown field for easy board configuration and management. This would make it easy to filter by Team (Department) to give us a board exactly like we have now.

Overall, what I think my idea means is that each Product Jira Project will be running parallel sprints (one per Department/Team) that are not running at the same time. The only examples of parallel Sprints that I have seen have all the Sprints starting/ending at the same time, We don't want to do this because it's just too much effort to plan for all the Departments at the same time.

1. Can a Jira project run parallel Sprints with different Start/End/Durations?

2. Any issues with creating a Scrum board to manage Sprints this way?

3. Is there a better and/or more stable way to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance!

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Dan Spearing 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Have the teams been using Team Managed Projects or Company Managed Projects?

Do you need to "migrate" existing issues into the new projects you will create?

Will the new projects be Team Managed projects or Company Managed projects?

1. Yes, you can run parallel Sprints where the sprints have different dates and durations.

2. Would you use just one board that spans all Jira Projects and Teams, or would you use Saved Filters to create a board for each team?

[Dan Spearing]

Hi Trudy!

Currently Company Managed Projects

Possibly migrate. However, I may have to move them manually because the different Departments already have duplicated tasks and they aren't currently using the Team field so I'm a little scared to Migrate.

New projects will be Company Managed Projects, unless there is something that makes Team Managed projects better/easier. In either case, I would really like to create a Product Jira Project Template that I can use to easily add additional Product Projects without having to recreate them from scratch. Company Managed Projects scare me because there are a lot of other departments that are sharing the same screens. schemes, workflows and that makes me REALLY nervous about such a significant change like I am considering.

Great that the Sprints can have different durations. I wish I could find some examples of this so please feel to point me to docs if you know of any.

Initial thought was that I would most likely have to use multiple boards with multiple Quick Filters to provide Management an easy way to see what they want and plan by department.

I look forward to learning more!

Thanks!

[Trudy Claspill]

New projects will be Company Managed Projects, unless there is something that makes Team Managed projects better/easier.

I do not recommend changing to TM projects for this scenario. TM projects can be customized by the users assigned to the Administrator role in the project. You can end up with divergent workflows and custom fields, making cross-project (in your case Product) reporting difficult.

In either case, I would really like to create a Product Jira Project Template that I can use to easily add additional Product Projects without having to recreate them from scratch.

It would be important to define what it means to you when you say Project Template.

With Company Managed projects you can create a project with the Schemes that configure that project as you want all the projects configured. When you create a new Product's project you can elect to Share the configuration of an existing project, and you would specify the "template" project you created and configured previously.

(This is disabled in my screen because I am using a Free subscription.)

That creates the new project associated to use the existing schemes. It does not configure the Board, Backlog, List view, Timeline, etc. Those would have to be configured in each project.

If the teams are already sharing some Schemes but not others you would need to carefully plan the transition to determine how to handle that. Will you give the teams unique Issue Types so that they can have, where possible, issue type specific configurations? Or do you want all teams to start working with shared schemes for workflow, fields, screens, etc?

Great that the Sprints can have different durations. I wish I could find some examples of this so please feel to point me to docs if you know of any.

The Parallel Sprints setting has to be enabled for the Jira product. That is done from the gear icon > Products > Jira Configuration.

As for the dates and durations of specific Sprints, you simply set those as you create and start the sprints.

Initial thought was that I would most likely have to use multiple boards with multiple Quick Filters to provide Management an easy way to see what they want and plan by department.

I can't really offer advice about using multiple boards based on custom filters or a single board that uses Quick Filters without knowing more about how your teams work and how management works and what they need to be able to see in their views.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Dan Spearing 

Were you able to come up with a solution based on the responses I provided, or do you have additional questions on this topic?

[Dan Spearing]

The answers you provided were what I need to take me to the next phase. Thank you!

[Dan Spearing]

See below.