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 tracking projects are Project Managers, Product Managers, and Product Owners; from Jira’s point of view, they would be equivalent to any person with enough knowledge, known as a 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 to determine whether they are finished or about to, or even the capacity to determine whether a project could result in an economic hazard (or not.)
When tracking projects, there are some common aspects to be followed, such as:
There are different ways and aspects of a project that can be tracked. However, it’s desirable to centralize all the project information. This will allow easier collaboration with each stakeholder. Spreading the project information on 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 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 you to customize the experience according to each person's needs.
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 fulfill your needs and accomplish proper project tracking.
No matter how different they are (and they are!), every project shares some general characteristics the project is responsible for, and stakeholders must be informed. In our case, we will divide those needs into two general aspects that are missing in Jira, at least in 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.
Learn more about the Script Fields that will enhance your project reporting >>
Regarding the need to keep those responsible for the project, stakeholders, managers, etc., up to date about the project's status and/or situation, 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 allow you to 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 which project-specific areas will be tracked down with the tool, we proceed to mention the 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 on how you do things, instead, Projectrak focuses on the collaboration among managers and teams by means of project data, so we get an answer to these questions:
→ What is the status of a project?
→ When were the tasks last updated?
→ What is its business objective?
Customize and reuse project properties and convert them into layouts within Projectrak (formerly Profields) to get tailored information about your projects with a simple view.
Teams using only Jira assign tasks individually. To collaborate at the issue level adding Projectrak to the equation allows users to collaborate at a project level. Users will be able to manage information about their projects, and stakeholders will be updated through notifications.
Keep every person involved in a project up to date (or the people who need to be informed about it) by automating email notification deliveries every time a project changes in Jira by adding Projectrak to the equation.
Learn more about Project Communication >>
Let’s be honest: Accessing all the information of different projects in a single place, in a very visual way, with 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 different views are displayed: 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; the History feature enables exhaustive tracking of all of these changes.
The History feature of Projectrak shows which change was made, when, and by whom.
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 estimate the project hours and 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:
Adding Projectrak's gadgets to the Jira dashboards makes checking insights about the project's progress easier.
The decision-making process must be data-driven and based on true real-time information. This app for Jira centralizes all project information in a single place, in real-time. Each project stakeholder updates this information directly 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.
This report makes it easier to check project insights and ask 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, in 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 is simpler with just a quick look.
When making the Project Closure with Projectrak, completing this process will be faster, which only can get better over time and the passing of projects:
→ Perform mass changes by altering project participants, as well as erasing 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.
Anyway, the obtained benefits are the same, and the methodology or role are not requirements to achieve project control in Jira with Projectrak. When tracking projects with this app for Jira, you will finally be able to abandon the duplicated information in your Excel sheets and across a variety of software platforms, which probably causes disinformation and confusion among teams.
The time has come to encourage collaborative teamwork on projects. Generating a greater sense of collaboration and responsibility among each project stakeholder should be a standard. Project tracking is not an exclusive task for those responsible for the project; it is everyone’s business.
If you have more doubts about implementing these tricks, please don't hesitate to contact us through our Customer Support Desk. Even better, if you are looking for ways to automate the updates of project data in Jira to make faster data-driven decisions, check the e-book we have prepared with seven use cases of Automation with Projectrak, which you can download by clicking the button below.
This blog post is the product of a collaboration between Leo Díaz and the Marketing team's support.
