Hi community,
I am a Project Office Supervisor at a medium-sized computer software company.
I want to implement Jira, but I have some concerns about projects that are a mix of waterfall and agile.
In some of my company projects, we need to follow mixed projects. Some parts are integrated with agile and other parts with waterfall. I need the best solution that can do both.
Thank you for your help.
I’m glad you’re interested in using Jira for your project management needs. Jira is a powerful and flexible tool that can support any agile methodology, be it scrum, kanban, or your own unique flavor1. Jira also allows you to combine agile and waterfall approaches in a single project, depending on your needs and preferences.
There are several ways to implement a mixed project in Jira, but one of the most common and effective methods is to use the BigPicture app2. BigPicture is an add-on for Jira that enhances its functionality and provides features such as Gantt charts, roadmaps, portfolios, resources, risks, and more. With BigPicture, you can easily plan, track, and manage your mixed project from a single view.
Here are some of the benefits of using BigPicture for your mixed project:
You can have story points (agile) and time tracking (waterfall) in the same view, so you can measure both the value and the effort of your work items2.
You can create different views for different stakeholders, such as a timeline view for executives, a board view for developers, and a risk matrix view for managers2.
You can group your work items by projects, teams, components, or any other criteria you want, and see the progress and status of each group2.
You can link your work items to dependencies, milestones, deliverables, and other elements that are important for your project success2.
You can adjust your plan dynamically with drag-and-drop functionality and automatic scheduling2.
If you want to learn more about how to use BigPicture for your mixed project, you can check out this step-by-step tutorial2 that shows you how to launch and run a mixed agile-waterfall project in Jira and BigPicture. You can also watch this video that demonstrates how BigPicture works with Jira.
I hope this information helps you with your project management needs. If you have any other questions or feedback, please let me know.
Yes, absolutely
Hi Ivonne,
You can do it with Jira, but in my point of view, Jira is not the right tool for waterfall projects. The main capabilities of Jira are in the area of ticketing, sprint planning, and kanban. There might be a possibility to construct a kind of waterfall project using Jira Roadmaps or a plug-in. The problem starts by entering a planned start and end date for an activity, there are simply no fields in Jira for that. So you can do it, but you have to spend time, effort and additional money to get it to work. The better way would be to use a tool that can integrate Jira as the agile component of a hybrid project structure.