Steve: Developing on the Edge - Project management with JIRA and MS Project

Steve: Developing on the Edge

Thoughts on development, Web-services, technology and mountains.

5Mar
Mon2007

Project management with JIRA and MS Project

I'm putting together the release plan for the next drop of SmartFrog; improved workflow, the database components (including mysql!) and other things go in there, as well as various core changes.

One thing that isnt that easy is to move between a planning scheduling tool (i.e. MS Project) and JIRA. I hope that MS project integrates really well with Visual Studio Team system, because it doesnt work out the box with JIRA. And Jira, wonderful that it is, is not the right tool for letting you decide what features to add to the various releases, to work back from a ship date to todo list items, check how well the workload meshes with people's calendars. etc.

Posted by steve at 11:19

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	Why JIRA Isn't The Right Tool?reply to this thread On 5 March 2007 at 21: 13 Adrian Sutton commented: Steve, I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on why you find JIRA isn't suitable for scheduling and planning releases. The project manager at work is just starting to use it and I'd like to know what problems he's likely to encounter so we can try to come up with ways to reduce them. Thanks, Adrian Sutton. On 5 March 2007 at 21: 57 Steve Loughran commented: Adrian, I will follow this up. FWIW I hate MS project, but sometimes need to get the gantt view where some events are fixed in time (conferences, release dates), so you work backwards to what can be ready. You also need to allocate work amongst people, and to schedule time on finite resources (the cluster). The scheduling is one thing we do use. The other is the (rolled up) gantt view, and highlighting the critical path (and the inevitable slippage)
	Panic From Fuzzyreply to this thread On 6 March 2007 at 07: 31 Mike Herrick commented: Wow - sick puppy you are Steve - tolerating MSFT Project? I draw the line at Excel. What else do you really need than a spreadsheet + JIRA + Confluence? I dislike Project for a couple reasons. 1. It lies really really badly. Oh you didn't level the plan? I'm sorry, disregard everything I said. Oh you leveled it? Well, I didn't update a couple things - sorry is that a problem? Also, guess what? Your development team doesn't have it - just you do. You are hoarding information Steve and that isn't nice :) And don't act like you like that green and beige HTML export. Your development team certainly doesn't. Yanking your chain a bit, but not much :)
	issue tracking and ms project integrationreply to this thread On 22 March 2007 at 06: 21 Maxim Kramarenko commented: It's a bad idea to use issue tracking system data to generate reports in ms project. It's just often impossible to use such low-level data to generate higher-level overview, like impossible to generate a software user guide using source code analysis. We have MS Project export in our issue tracking tool (TrackStudio, http://www.trackstudio.com), but it seems like the whole concept of such integration is wrong.
	GreenHopper - Project Management with Jirareply to this thread On 6 September 2007 at 06: 34 Fran??ois commented: This is a shameless plug. GreenHopper (http://www.greenpeppersoftware.com/en/products/GreenHopper/) is a management tool for Atlassian's JIRA bug tracking, issue tracking and project management. The main goals of this plugin are to provide JIRA users with the following: * An interactive and simple interface to manage their projects (AJAX-based) * Tools to increase the visibility and traceability of ongoing versions Based on card views, GreenHopper offers a Planning Board that will help you dispatch your issues by version or components, a Task Board that will help you with the workflow of your issues and a Chart Board that will help you track your progression. And much more. We have short videos online. Do not hesitate to provide feedback. The product is free for qualified open source projects and non-profits, and commercial users will benefit from an upfront and no-hassle pricing and licensing policy. Evaluation license is available for download. Cheers, ~Francois
	JIRA =! Project Managementreply to this thread On 16 April 2008 at 21: 05 Stunned commented: ACK! JIRA =! Project Management as a discipline. Study up on your IT Service Management and you will see that JIRA fits nicely for INCIDENT management and a little bit of CHANGE management that aids in the SDLC. This does not equal project management! MS Project is not the friendliest, but any certified Project Manager (IT and otherwise) WILL use MS Project to identify ALL tasks (in any IT project, there are tasks that DO NOT fit in an issue tracking system) and any certified ITSM professional will tell you the same. On 8 November 2009 at 17: 47 OneCent commented: The new Version of JIRA does a lot for Project Management. In my opinion it does a realy nice job with GreenHopper for planing and controlling. And the best is, i dont have the gap between a Tool like MS Project and issue management. I dont have to do the work twice, thats what i like. A Gant diagramm is not too complex to make and maybe theres already a plugin for that. But well, thats for me an my projects and other projects/stakeholders have other demands.
	JIRA =! Project Management ?? - Come again.reply to this thread On 2 May 2008 at 19: 06 Olivier Martin commented: Humm... Nice to see people still working by DA early 20th century's book; I learned that in this so it is DA way to do it. I am Certified in this and that so I know everything on the Topic. blah blah blah. You need to loosen up a bit and see why MS and waterfall aint working. Dude JIRA is way better then MS project unless you want to keep your employees in leash. Or maybe are you a MS sales man? My 2cents .OM.
	JIRA & MS Project integration/synchronizationreply to this thread On 7 July 2009 at 09: 18 Sergey commented: Just wanted to let you know that if you need to develop and maintain your project plan in MS project and track the respective assignments in JIRA, consider <a href="http://www.ceptah.com">Ceptah Bridge for MS Project & JIRA</a>. It's an MS Project add-in providing 2-way synchronization between the systems.
	JIRA Project Syncreply to this thread On 19 January 2010 at 19: 48 Evan Wiley commented: I prefer http://www.the-connector.com/index.aspx this toll is more robust..at least for our needs.