Tracking projects yield benefits as long as it is performed in an appropriate manner. Furthermore, for optimal results it's believed that a methodology and certain professions are strictly neccessary; a different scenario when tracking projects using Jira. Keep reading, we will tell you everything on this matter.
Traditionally, the professions usually fully devoted to track projects are Project Managers, Product Managers, Product Owners; from Jira’s point of view they would be equivalent to any person with enough knowledge, known as Project Lead, or just any other person interested in tracking project updates in Jira..
Leaving aside the conversation about the range of roles usually in charge of project tracking, we are about to define a wider scenario here, what project tracking is and how it can be done using Jira:
Project tracking is a broader concept, depending on the standpoint (needs, capacity, tasks, internal/external factors…). In this case, it's the capacity of an organization to identify the status of each project, how these evolve over time, and the capacity of determining whether they are finished or about to, or even the capacity of determining whether a project could result in an economic hazard (or not.)
When tracking projects, there are some common aspects to be followed to, such as:
There are different ways and aspects of a project which can be tracked. However, it’s desirable to centralize all the project information. This will allow an easier collaboration along with each stakeholder. Spreading the project information in more than one platform may lead to communication faults or mistakes when performing project tracking.
Imagine the chaos when having the information related to a project it’s scattered over an agenda, a spreadsheet, a Trello board, and so on… Project tracking is cursed not to be very effective.
If you already work with Jira or are aware of the solutions it provides, you know that one of the advantages this tool offers -in addition to task management- is the opportunity to add extra solutions available in Atlassian Marketplace, allowing to customize the experience in accordance to the needs of each person.
Depending on your projects’ needs and the capacity of your team and/or organization, it is critical to evaluate which of the solutions available in Atlassian Marketplace can help you to fulfill your needs and accomplish a proper project tracking.
Every project, no matter how different they are (and they are!) share some general characteristics the project responsible and stakeholders must be informed. In our case, we will divide those needs in two general aspects which are missing on Jira, at least on its native version:
In the case of following the progress of a project, the KPIs of interest for each organization will determine the needs to be fulfilled. If the needs rely on measuring economic terms, closed issues, spent resources, estimated resolution time vs reported time, apps such as eazyBI, Tempo, BigPicture, and some of the features of Projectrak (formerly Profields) –i.e. Releases View, Timesheets gadget, and Script Fields are part of the solution you are looking for.
Regarding the need of keeping those responsible for the project, stakeholders, managers, etc., up to date about the status and/or situation of the project, its context, the changes occurring over time, the project progression, and the team assigned to it, the adequate solution for you is Projectrak for Jira.
The different views available from the Project Navigator of Projectrak allows taking a step into visual project management in Jira.
Once the decision to use Jira and Projectrak (formerly Profields) is taken because they fulfill the team needs and adapt to its capacity, and has been identified which project-specific areas will be tracked down with the tool, we proceed to mention important benefits this solution will provide:
No matter whether you follow Agile practices or use a more traditional method or methodology. Performing project tracking with Jira and Projectrak is transparent to the method because it does not focus in how you do things, instead, Projectrak focuses in the collaboration among managers and teams by means of project data, so we get an answer to these questions:
→ Which is the status of a project?
→ When were the tasks last updated?
→ Which is its business objective?
Customize and rehuse project properties, and convert them in layouts within Projectrak (formerly Profields) in order to get tailored information about your projects with a simple view.
Teams using only Jira assign tasks in an individual manner, and to collaborate at issues level by adding Projectrak to the equation, it allows users to collaborate at a project level. Users will be able to manage information about their projects, and stakeholders will be kept up to date through notifications.
Keep every person involved in a project up to the date (or the people who need to be informed about) by automating email notification deliveries every time a project changes in Jira by adding Projectrak to the equation.
Let’s be honest, accessing all the information of different projects, in a single place, in a very visual way, by performing fewer clicks, it’s a win! This is available in the project sheet offered by Jira in its native version or in the Profileds’ Project Navigator, where are displayed different views: The Releases View and/or the List View (only for Server & Data Center).
The Projectrak views show the project changes: who made them, and when they were made; the History feature make possible to enable an exhaustive tracking of all of these changes.
The History feature of Projectrak shows which change was made, when, and by who.
If during the development of a project, you may have likely wondered about these questions:
→ Have we consumed more working hours than scheduled?
→ Does the project advance slower than planned?
Projectrak enables users to make an estimation of the project hours and to compare them with the sum (Σ) of reported hours of the project (Σ Time Spent). Nevertheless, this information can be shared from Projectrak as an additional gadget to a Jira dashboard:
By adding Profields gadgets to the Jira dashboards it's easier to check insights about the project progress.
The decision-making process must be data-driven and based on true real-time information. This app for Jira centralizes all the project information in a single place, in real-time. This information is updated directly by each project stakeholder, by reflecting it in the status of their tasks on Jira.
This way, the decision-making process becomes an on-demand activity, making the process much faster and more precise, given all the possible gaps between project stakeholders have been removed.
With this report is easier to check project insights and question ourselves: Should we reinforce the OpsGenie support team?
Milestone tracking can be a tough task. By using the Releases View of Projectrak (only for Server & Data Center), it is possible to centralize on a single place, the visualization of a timeline with the scheduled and past releases. This way, checking if the deadlines are being completed in time, or if they are delayed, it’s simpler by just a quick look.
A quick look is more than enough to spot the changes in your projects treated them as product releases.
When making the Project Closure with Projectrak, completing this process will be faster, which only can get better over time, and the pass of projects:
→ Perform mass changes from altering project participants, as well as to erase them when
reusing a project by using the Bulk Operations feature.
→ Automatically notify the project stakeholders when the project has been closed, it’s just one of
the many automation options possible when integrating Projectrak with Automation for Jira.
Project tracking with Jira can be a job for Project Managers or simply for Jira Administrators with this responsibility on their shoulders or with the will to gain tighter control over the projects they administer on an instance.
Anyways, the obtained benefits are the same, the methodology or the role are not requirements to achieve project control in Jira with Projectrak. When making project tracking with this app for Jira you will be finally able to abandon the duplicated information around your Excel sheets, as well as over a variety of software platforms which probably causes disinformation and confusion among teams.
The time to encourage collaborative teamwork on projects has come; generate a greater sense of collaboration and responsibility among each project stakeholder it should be a standard, the tracking of projects is not an exclusive task for those responsible for the project, project tracking is everyone’s business.
If you have more doubts about the implementation of these tricks, please don't hesitate on contacting us through our Customer Support Desk, or even better, if you are looking ways to automate the updates project data in Jira, in order to take faster data-driven decisions check the e-book we have prepared with seven use cases of Automation with Projectrak you can download by clicking the button below.
This blog post is the product of a collaboration between Leo Díaz and the support of the Marketing team.
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