What do you use projects for?

[Al Gresto]

This might seem like an odd question, but what are you using the project function in Jira for? I'd like to see what the rest of the community is doing.

Currently, my company is using the project function as a department. For example, we have a Jira "project" for Operations, IT, Finance, etc. Inside of these Jira "projects" we add actual projects we are working on and their requirements. To continue my example, we have a "Payment Hold" epic (inside of the Jira "project" IT) and all the user stories (requirements) within that epic. To put it another way, we are not creating a new Jira "project" for every project we work on, but rather adding an epic to the IT Jira "project." This style has its limitations. At the same time, it seems cumbersome to add a new Jira "project" for every project we work on.

Our current set up:

Jira project: IT

Epic: Payment Hold

Requirements: User story 1, user story 2, etc.

Should we be creating a separate Jira "project" for every project we work on? Or should we have a Jira "project" for each department (as mentioned above)?

Example setup:

Jira Project: Payment Hold

Epic: Hold the payment for orders not in stock.

Requirements: Requirements: User story 1, user story 2, etc.

I'm asking this question because I am evaluating ALM software. We are looking to add to Jira (e.g. Bamboo server) OR move over to Microsoft TFS. Any advice, tips, insight you share is much appreciated!

Thank you,

Al

[Mesut Yilmazyildirim]

Actually we are also using JIRA same as your company. Every project in JIRA is representing an Agile Squad.

Jira Project: Squad_1

Epic: Project_1

Requirements: User story 1, user story 2, etc.

But, we also have some big projects which will be handled by different squads. In this scenario we also create another JIRA project to follow up the tasks. And each squad members creates a new task for their own squad board and link it to project board.

Jira Project: Project_1

Epic: Epic_in_Project

Requirements: User story 1, user story 2, etc.

[Al Gresto]

Thank you for your response! I like your style of mixing the two (squads and projects). It seems like a good idea to add a complete separate project for big projects as you mentioned. I'll have to look into doing this.