Jira Agile and several teams in a project

Question

I have a project with 4 teams handling different parts of a fairly large web based system. What would be the best way of handling this in Jira and Jira Agile?

One project and board per team or is there another way of organizing this in Jira Agile?

Read about using components but since I'm fairly new to Jira Agile I don't know how to do that.

Answer 1

If many team are working on different part of the same system, I suggest you create only one project. From my experience there is a lot of chance you will want to move 'items' from one team to another or link two items that are related but not handle by the same team.

Like previous posts mentioned, GreenHopper is just an (agile) plugin that help you manage items in JIRA, allowing to display and manage them in different ways. The plugins is especially useful if your are following a development process like Scrum.

With the last version of the tools I was able to easily share a single 'backlog' of work to do between multiple teams and then 'assign' items to a specific team when it's time to work on it. When planning for the next Sprint, for example.

Of course having a clear view of your process is key.

Answer 2

I think you are confused about a few things, which is understandable for somebody new to the tool.

Jira is the software you are using and Greenhopper is an external company that produces plugins for it, mainly the Agile plugin. Components are within Jira and they are simply a way you can categorize your issues. I suggest you find a tutorial video on jira to introduce you better to the tool.

Now, again, these are just tools. They don't dictate how you should work. Jira is very flexible that way so you can do Agile, Scrum, Kanban or whatever methodology you want within it.

You need to first decide what methodology/process you will adopt. Basically, how will you guys work?

Are all the teams working in sprints? Do they have the same deadlines? Are the stories-issues parts of a whole or can each team deliver a full feature on it's own?

For example, if one team is infrastructure, one is UI and one is DB, their parts will likely come together to make a "whole" feature, that is complete and tested. Another example is if team A is doing a Reporting Module and team B is doing a Login module, their features aren't usually related and they can work separately.

So basically, you can't ask anybody here to give you the straight answer. Stop focusing on the tool and understand how you will work and what makes sense for you.

And remember: agile is trial and error. Try something and if it doesn't work, adapt.