BigPicture and NewStatusColorsPRO for Project Management in JIRA

BigPicture, as many of you know, is one of the best plugins for Jira to do:

• Roadmaps
• Resources Tracking (and planning)
• Risk Management
• Project Portfolio Management (PPM) (and track/manage cross-project work)
• SAFe compliant roadmaps.

If we combine BigPicture with New Status Colors (FREE) and/or New Status Colors PRO plugin we have the perfect team to manage/track/plan the entire company.

To start with BigPicture we can create a new Program, and it’s very easy!

Just click in “Add new program” button. After this, follow the wizard instructions to select existent issues in projects/filter tickets or boards. Then BigPicture will import the data and will be synced.

Once created the Program, we can try to configure, for example, the TEAM involved (Just go to the Teams section and create a new Team and add the members).

We can also identify the “Risk” tickets and add to the “Risk” section. Is very easy!

We can go now to the “Gantt” section and start sorting tasks, group tasks, etc. We can group tasks using drag’n’drop. For example we can group by Epic and by Stories. As you can see with the plugin “New Status Colors” or “New Status Colors Pro” installed we can see new colors in statuses!

As you can see in the previous picture, we can add “Artifical tasks” (out of the usual Jira tickets). In this example we have created one for “Meetings”.

Now we can try to move the tasks (and enlarge) like in Ms Project using the Gantt section

Remember to activate the system Jira field “Time Tracking” in all projects to put the Original Estimation in all tasks that you want to plan.

If you or your team log work in the tickets, we usually will see this in Jira:

Once synced the tickets with BigPicture we will see this info in an easy way!

As you can see the ticket KAN-9 (with summary SUBTASK 3) is assigned to “MrAddon” member of the Team and we have logged 5h and planned 2h… then we can see “MrAddon” member busy (only the first day)

In other side “Monic” has assigned the ticket KAN-7 with 1 day of Estimation (usually 8h/day). Then “Monic” will be busy 3hours/day because there are only 3 days available (because two days are the weekend) and the task will finish in 5 natural days.

Is fantastic to see the “tree” of dependencies inside the tickets, and the possibility to add “skills” to the ticket. Amazing!

Now we can try to add dependencies using some “special” links!

For example, in ticket KAN-3 we can add a link type “has to be done before” KAN-2 ticket. We will see in the Gantt the effects of this dependency in a clear way.

Now we have the Scope defined of our Program and we can see in a Global view all programs and dates ( using Roadmaps). Very cool!

In the Roadmap of the program “Kanban” we can add the Goals of each iteration. Also we can add “Points” in the Timeline to set “limits” (and with colors!). We can also change the statuses of the Iterations.

Now we can try to use the “beta” BOARD section of BigGant, we can drag’n’drop the tasks and add them to the iterations.

And.. we can try to set a “Capacity planning” for the team (learn more about capacity planning here)

Example of the capacity planning for MrAddon team in the 3 iterations of the Program

Finally, we can try to track the Resources, automatically we will see the “Skills” tracked in the tickets.

Here a fantastic post of “How to manage Skills in Jira“. Highly recommended.

“In conclusion, BigPicture is a must in big Jira’s.”

Continuation of the post: BigPicture with BigTemplate super fusion for Jira

By MrAddon