Sharing Epics across Multiple Scrum Boards

[chadsmom]

Is it possible to share an epic across multiple scrum boards without assigning a team to that Epic?  Here is what I'm trying to do... 

I currently have 5 teams working from the same backlog and the same board, but I'm trying to utilize JIRA portfolio so that it will pull the individual velocity for each team.  In order to do this, I created some separate boards for each team strictly to track their velocity.  Portfolio is then pulling the data from these boards to develop a roadmap for all of the epics in the project.  

However, Portfolio is not assigning these teams to the Epics for the project because the Epics are not in each team's new scrum board.  Is there a non-hacky way to get epics to show up in each scrum board?  Here are some "hacks" I thought up to get around it, but this creates a lot more overheard:

• Use the component field and add this to each scrum board's query so that it pulls all epics with that component
• Manually add every epic number to the team's scrum board query

Does anybody know a clean way to do this?  If this doesn't make sense, I'm happy to provide more context.  

[Petter Gonçalves · Accepted solution]

Hello Lee,

Analyzing the scenario you provided, I think that you can use labels to share the Epic across multiple projects, naming the labels with the related board to better identify in a fast view which boards it is added to.

For more information about this field, check the documentation below:

Use Labels to organize your content

Please, let me know if this option is what you are looking for.

[chadsmom]

Hi Petterson,

Thanks for your response.  If possible, I'm trying to avoid the need to add labels or components to every epic that's created for the year in order to get it to show up in the new boards.  There are going to be 3 scrum masters managing this, and I want to minimize the amount of risk where Epics could fall through the cracks.  

Is there a simpler way to share these, or is the only way to accomplish this is by adding labels, components, etc. to each Epic to get them to show up across boards?

[Petter Gonçalves]

Hello Lee,

In fact, you will need to have any field with a determined value to match the criteria in the JQL query of the board. That's the only way to share the epic with multiple projects.

You could use even a custom field to accomplish that, like a select list, for exemple. I suggested the Labels field because it's easier to see in the issue view and can be created in simple steps.

Can you please ellaborate a little bit more on why you are trying to avoid the use of labels? Maybe we can suggest you another field.

[chadsmom]

I was just trying to make it easier moving forward so that our Scrum Masters wouldn't need to make sure to add a label each time they created a new Epic just to make sure it was included in our Portfolio roadmap. 

With that said, I added a label to all of the Epics we currently have.  Could you provide some guidance on how to make sure our boards will include these epics?  I want them to include any cards that are assigned to that team, as well as all of the Epics with this specific label.  

Thank you again for your help!

[Petter Gonçalves]

You are welcome, Lee!

In order to include all issues with a specific label to a board, you just need not perform the following steps:

- Navigate to your board > Click on the three dots icon > Board Settings > General > Click to Edit filter query

- Add the label to the query:

Labels = "XYZ"

Please, let me know if you have any other questions.

[chadsmom]

I can do that, but it then removes all of the stories that were assigned to that team...  Maybe I should break it down a little more why I'm trying to use these multiple boards... 

Really the only thing I'm trying to get out of this is to automatically pull the velocity into Portfolio so that it can calculate the potential release dates for all of our Epics.  Here are the boards we currently use:

1. Main Board - this includes all 3 teams and is the main board used to track items. This currently has all of our Epics included in it
2. Fake Board 1 - this is filtered so it only pulls the first team into it.  This is strictly to get velocity for that team in Portfolio.
3. Fake Board 2 - this is filtered so it only pulls the 2nd team into it.  This is strictly to get velocity for that team in Portfolio.
4. Fake Board 3 - this is filtered so it only pulls the 3rd team into it.  This is strictly to get velocity for that team in Portfolio.

I have all 3 teams set up in Portfolio, and the "source" they are using are the Fake Boards noted above.  This is to pull the velocity for that specific team.  The issue I'm running into is that Portfolio is not assigning the teams to any of the Epics because they aren't in any of these "Fake Boards" that I created. 

I need all of the Epics to show up so that Portfolio can correctly calculate how much work is left and assign any team to any epic using the velocity from their Fake Boards.  

Does that make sense?  

[Ron Becker]

Hi Lee, did you find an answer for the question above? What is the problem when you add the main board also as a source in portfolio for Jira?

[chadsmom]

Hi Ron - unfortunately I did not.  We actually ended up scrapping Portfolio altogether since it was just too frustrating to work with and not valuable for our needs.  Hopefully you will have better luck than I did!