Tracking just a single project can be difficult, especially when it involves multiple teams and complex requirements. Tracking multiple such projects is another challenge entirely and, at the worst of times, can feel like steering a creaky ship through a crippling storm.
Enter: portfolio management.
If this is something you’re struggling with, we invite you to read on as we’ll be covering the 101s of what it’s about, its best practices, and how Jira should be used to facilitate it.
What Is Portfolio Management and Tracking?
Portfolio management, unlike project tracking, involves overseeing and managing multiple projects simultaneously. This requires vigilant monitoring, effective communication with stakeholders, and constant alignment with your organization’s overall strategic objectives, necessitating a broader, more holistic perspective than needed to manage a single project.
What this means is that heightened emphasis is placed on aspects such as risk management, resource allocation, strong leadership, clear communication, and, above all else, a deep understanding of how projects relate to each other and can potentially impact one another. An issue affecting one project could very well cause even more issues in countless others.
4 Portfolio Management and Tracking Best Practices
Before diving into the specifics of using Jira for portfolio management and tracking, it’s essential to understand the best practices of portfolio management:
#1 Effective Communication Strategies
Having a clear communication strategy that involves everyone is essential to ensure everyone is informed and updated about relevant matters, from changes to blockers to milestones. The last thing you’d want is misunderstandings and miscommunication, which can derail everything you’ve worked so hard to organize and plan for.
#2 Regular Check-ins and Progress Reviews
The execution of your portfolio of projects will rarely go according to plan. Goalposts will shift, and unexpected problems will emerge. This is why having regular check-ins and review sessions is key to addressing and identifying these problems, realigning objectives if needed, and proactively ensuring the path ahead is smooth.
#3 Centralized Documentation
How well your teams execute your projects depends entirely on the knowledge they have at their disposal. Documentation tools like Confluence should be used to make key information easily accessible, transparent, and located in one single, easy-to-access location.
#4 Use Project Tracking Tools
Not leveraging project management tools to manage and organize your portfolios of projects is just begging to be left behind. Jira helps immensely in this aspect by not only making it easy for you to keep a bird’s-eye view of all your ongoing projects but also allowing you to collaborate and manage your teams through its range of features.
How to Use Jira to Manage and Track Project Portfolios
But while we’ve touched on why you should use Jira, let’s now dive into the hows:
Keep Things Organized with Filters and Labels
When you have to juggle countless different projects as part of your portfolio, you’ll quickly realize that your number one enemy isn’t missed deadlines or meager budgets. It’s actually disorganization.
You need to use Jira’s Filters and Labels to sift through your tasks as efficiently as possible to help with this. Filters can help you quickly find what you need (e.g., specific issues), while labels can be used to categorize your project’s tasks by various criteria, such as by project phases, feature scope, and so on.
Take Full Advantage of Dashboards
Jira’s Dashboards are one of its standout features because they are intuitive to use and easily customizable based on your specific needs and preferences. They allow you to select which key metrics and other data points you want to monitor at a glance.
That said, beyond allowing you to monitor your projects, dashboards can also help others, such as external stakeholders, stay informed about how your projects are developing. This can contribute positively to project transparency and accountability.
Address Native Jira’s Gaps with External Apps
While Jira is a fantastic tool for managing and tracking portfolios of projects, it can sometimes feel lacking in certain areas. However, this isn’t a dealbreaker with the help of external, third-party apps such as:
- WBS Gantt-Chart for Jira: While Jira’s Timeline does provide basic features for project visualization, it doesn’t support portfolio-level planning unless you’re subscribing to the Premium plan with Advance Roadmaps. WBS Gantt-Chart can accommodate complex portfolio management by providing a much more detailed visual that’s not only easy to use with its drag-and-drop interface but also offers several useful features, including critical path views, baseline plan tracking, and project completion percentages.
- Excel-like Bulk Issue Editor for Jira: Bulk editing issues in Jira is straightforward but a highly inefficient process that can take a long time when dealing with issues from multiple projects. Excel-like Issue Bulk Editor helps with this by allowing you to filter and group issues easily based on conditions (e.g. assignees or priorities), edit issues in bulk, and more. This can both reduce your chances of making errors and allow you to spend your time more efficiently in other areas.
Mastering Portfolio Management and Tracking with Ricksoft
Managing multiple projects as part of your portfolio can sometimes feel like the most difficult job ever, but it isn’t impossible. When you’re equipped with the right knowledge, tools, and tactics, everything will fall into place, which is where we step in.
Visit our Atlassian Marketplace listing today to better understand and experience firsthand how Ricksoft’s solutions can benefit you.
