JIRA Capabilities

[jalaj gupta]

We are evaluating JIRA Project Management for a client purpose (whether it can generate portfolio level reports, track resources, timelines and budget etc.)

Key requirements are -

• Creating baseline project plan (once committed, this should not be allowed to change)
• Generating alerts if any dates change from baseline plan (maintain versions of baselines)
• Tracking timelines at portfolio level
• Allocate resources and create a resource utilization view across the portfolio
• Allocate budget and maintain planned v/s actual numbers (both need to be inputted manually for now)

Looking for some help if this can be done in JIRA?

[Mark Segall · Accepted solution]

Hi @jalaj gupta and welcome to the community!

Short answer is that yes.  This can be done in Jira, but there's a bit of initial configuration overhead to get there...

• Creating baseline project plan (once committed, this should not be allowed to change)

  • You can create custom fields like Baseline Start/Baseline End.  As far as not being able to change, you could make use of a transition screen on a workflow and make that transition conditional so that only x individuals have ability to transition the screen.  Then leave the field on the issue VIEW screen, but remove from Create/Edit screens.  

• Generating alerts if any dates change from baseline plan (maintain versions of baselines)

  • You would track actuals using fields like Target Start/End which comes with Advanced Roadmaps.  Then leverage automation to trigger when the Baseline Start/End are set to automatically set the Target Start/End.  You could then use another automation rule to alert if someone changes the Target Start/End.

• Tracking timelines at portfolio level

  • Advanced Roadmaps (Jira Cloud Premium feature) can cover this. 

• Allocate resources and create a resource utilization view across the portfolio

  • If your intent is to track individuals, you're out of luck natively and would need to look for a marketplace app.  Jira is designed for Agile which is all about teams.  You can use different Advanced Roadmap views to group by objective/project or group by team. 

• Allocate budget and maintain planned v/s actual numbers (both need to be inputted manually for now)

  • If you're cool with managing manually, you could simply create custom fields for tracking planned v actual.  Anything more dynamic would require a 3rd party app and/or integration with your ERP

Note - If you're dealing with a sizable team working at scale, you could also explore Jira Align.  However, BIG CAVEAT is that it is pricy and designed for teams that have reached a level of agile at scale maturity and truly understands their objectives/OKRs.  Costs can start at $200-400k/year and ramp up quickly, but it does offer more features.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, Jira can do all of that, apart from the budgeting (it's not intended to be a financial tracking system, just an issue tracker).  You can add apps to it that enable financial features, or automate your own if you want.