JIRA vs PPM - The right work in the right place

Can it make sense to manage key data in two places and still keep a single truth?

Perhaps in some perfect world, every person involved in a project has the same perspective of whats important and how it should all be done. But the reality is that development teams have to form their own process and structures to achieve their goals, that may have little in common with a Project Managers or IT directors perspective of progress and predictability of delivery. It may be inevitable that we wish multiple but consistent perspectives of the same events.

Is this possible?

Is this wise ?

With the latest wave of PPM toolsets it is more possible than ever to complement operational JIRA activities with a PPM overlay. See blog : https://www.gabluca.com/post/leveraging-your-jira-investment-to-enable-ppm.

But is it wise to endorse multiple viewpoints?

In a pure Agile self contained team structure, perhaps this would not be necessary, a team might work for a singular project with unambiguous priorities. But often Agile principles are endorsed in a hybrid environment so then most of the resources do not have the simplicity of only one project / one goal. They are multitasking as directed, and do not have the luxury of being involved in the the big picture, but at best can manage their work and, hopefully, associated dependencies. Their natural organisation may revolve around skill sets, hand offs, components, and burning down the sprints. There may actually be little or no perception of "Project Delivery".

Correspondingly, the project managers, directors, have a crucial need for their viewpoint, without always being overloaded with the detail. Alternate viewpoints may be OK, if one can guarantee that everything leads to a single truth. Integration to PPM can offer that if architected accordingly. That PPM perspective may focus on the Project Delivery and scope, and, the respect of the budgets at all levels. More than that, also tracking the indicative pipeline of future work.

With current operational products, the tension of these competing viewpoints becomes increasingly difficult to manage in a single system as the sophistication of requirements grows.

Effective resource planning can be one indication requiring a solution beyond a JIRA only approach. While some companies will explore efforts with Excel and other utilities for such ad-on functionality, the hidden cost of managing such unstructured processes over time is very high and becomes more of a constraint than an enabler.

So, where the demand of further functionality on top of JIRA structures is beyond question, A PPM tool can help alleviate the competing pressures of development vs management needs, so long as sufficient integration effort ensures only one version of the truth remains.

Julian Banasiewicz

E: GablucaLtd@outlook.com

W: www.Gabluca.com