PI Integration for Jira: A User Story

Project Insight provides enterprise quality Resource Allocation and Portfolio Reporting across your organization. Jira provides team member task lists and velocity charts for technology teams. Don't ask your software or technology teams to switch! Integrate Jira data into Project Insight for the most complete Project Management information.

With our "Work Where You're At" strategy, both Jira team members and Project Insight project managers and executives alike can stay in the solution that meets their needs automatically.

BUT ... and there's a big "but" Jira offers so many configuration options many of our competitors have chosen to give up on their integrations with Jira. "There are just too many variables," one competitor's sales person told us. We've thought about that too:

1. Just bring over the entire Jira project into a Project Insight project - This one to one relationship is the easiest to maintain
2. Many teams only have one "project" in their Jira workspace that just grows and grows and grows. These teams separate the work they do for individual features/clients/sprints/you-name-it by Epics in Jira.
3. Some teams go wild within Jira where multiple Jira projects cross over into each other's epics or Sprints are the only container holding all their disparate Jira work together. We've got a plan for those Jira users too!
4. But wait, there's more! There are some who want Project Insight to be the source of the tasks and build the Jira team's work packages in Project Insight first - this is rare, but it deserves honorable mention

One Jira to One Project Insight project

All Project Insight teams using this integration want Jira issues to roll-up into Project Insight reports for visibility and communication between PMs and tech teams. The simplest version is to sync the Jira project into a Project Insight project one to one. When a change happens in Jira, you'll see it in the Project Insight project and/or vice versa.

It's up to you who is the "system of record": Project Insight informs Jira or Jira informs PI or whenever a change is made in either they both update.

Teams who use the One to One method are syncing all the Jira tasks over for the purposes of Resource Allocation (how busy is my tech team?) or reports (when is this deliverable scheduled to finish?). Some teams create Cross Project Dependencies to show their project cannot continue until one of these Jira issues is complete, but most just use it for visibility into the Jira team's lists.

One Jira to Many PI projects

It is common for Jira teams to only have one or two "projects" in their Jira workspace, and those teams just add to these projects forever and ever. For those teams, you can sync individual Jira Epics to their own Project Insight project.

Similar to the One to One method, you select the Jira Project you are pulling from, but then you also select the Jira Epic you wish to sync. Syncing works the same where Project Insight can inform Jira or Jira can inform PI or whenever a change is made in either they both update.

This method is used when the PM wants to manage each Jira Epic like it is its own project in Project Insight - start date, end date, set of deliverables coming from Jira, etc. 

Go Wild - Multiple Jira projects linking across many Project Insight projects

It's not as crazy as it sounds. Since Jira is sooooooooooo configurable, you can set parent items in Jira that aren't even in the same Jira project! That's wacky to us, but we're ultra-organized project management types of people.

Therefore, we want to bring order to that chaos.

This method allows your Project Managers to add tasks to their Project Insight project without any boundaries of Jira "Project" or "Epic." Instead, once configured for the project, you can "Add Task from Jira" in the Project Add Menu:

And select the Jira project to narrow down your choices. This doesn't restrict you to only select from this project in the future. It only makes the list of Issues easier to navigate.

From there select the name of the Epic, User Story, Task, Subtask, or Bug you want to sync into your project. Please note: Anything underneath that work item you choose will come over as part of the hierarchy. 

This way, you can select any number of items from within the Jira project, add that to your project, and repeat this process as many times as you need to complete your Project Insight project.

PI as the "source of Tasks"

If you plan to build your project plan in Project Insight first, then you will need a "shell" of a project in Jira to sync. The Jira project will not have any Issues in it at first, but syncing to an empty Jira project will populate the Jira project with all the PI tasks you've created.

Coming Soon: You will be able to set if the PI task is a Jira Epic, User Story, Task, Subtask, or Bug.

Summary

If you are still unsure which of these methods your team should use, we're happy to help! Our RealPMs are happy to walk through your Jira setup with you and determine which settings are best for you. Reach out to us at the channel of your choice to get started!