Project Manager

With Structure, you can easily create a visual overview of your projects – and visualize all the data you need to track on a single screen.

Step 1: Build Your Structure

To create a new structure:

• Open the Structure Selector menu and select Create New Structure
• Use the +Add menu to add issues and build your hierarchy:
  • Use Presets to use one of Structure's preconfigured hierarchies
  • Or configuring your own hierarchy using +Add | Insert | Basic Insert, +Add | Group, and +Add | Extend

Step 2: Add Data

Next, add the data you need to track by clicking the + button at the top-right corner of the structure. You can add as many columns as you need, including:

• Jira fields, such as status, assignee, sprint, or remaining estimate
• Progress - track status based on issue progress, percent completion, or resolution
• Formulas - create your own formulas to compare fields or create a visual report

• Tempo Work Logged - track how long your team is spending on each issue

Once you've added your columns, you can aggregate the data up the structure. To do so, open the column you want to aggregate and select Sum over sub-items.

Looking to visualize your structure data as a chart or other report? Our integration with Custom Charts for Jira makes it easy to build customizable charts from your structure data. Learn more

With Structure, you can easily organize issues into an advanced Agile hierarchy (Epics > Issues > Sub-tasks) AND identify any issues that aren't attached to epics.

Step 1: Create a New Structure

Open the Structure Selector menu and select Create New Structure.

Step 2: Add Two Flex items

Open the +Add menu and select Flex item. Add two Flex items, named:

• "Agile Hierarchy"

• "Issues without Epics"

Step 3: Insert Epics

Select the Agile Hierarchy Flex item, so that its row is highlighted, and add a JQL Query Insert Generator:

1. Go to +Add | Insert | JQL Query

2. Enter the following JQL query: issuetype = Epic

   • To limit the epics to specific projects or other variables, add additional specifications (Example: AND project = "My Epics")

3. Change the Place the generators on selection to Level below - this will add the epics under the Agile Hierarchy Flex item

4. Click Create

All your epics should now be placed beneath the Agile Hierarchy Flex item.

If the epics did not appear beneath the Agile Hierarchy Flex item, your generator was probably placed at the top of the structure, instead of beneath the Flex item. Select the "Insert issues: issuetype = Epic" row and drag it to beneath the Agile Hierarchy Flex item (see the picture above).

Step 4: Insert Issues and Sub-tasks

Make sure the "Insert issues: issuetype = Epic" row is selected, and return to the +Add menu. This time, select Extend | Child issues. Under Add, select Issues below epics and Sub-tasks.

Step 5: Insert Issues without Epics

Next, we need to make sure we don't lose track of any issues that aren't linked to epics yet. That's what our second Flex item is for:

1. Select  the "Issues without Epics" Flex item

2. Go to: +Add | Insert | JQL Query

3. Enter the following JQL query: issuetype != Epic AND issuetype in standardIssueTypes() AND "Epic Link" is empty

   • If you narrowed your query to specific projects, etc. for your epics, do the same here

4. Change the Place the generators on selection to Level below - this will add our issues under the Flex item

5. Click Create

Any issues that are not assigned to epics should now appear beneath the second Flex item.

If no issues appear under the Issues without Epics Flex item, make sure the Insert Generator is located in the right location - if not, drag the generator to beneath the Issues without Epics Flex item (see the picture above).

Step 6: Assign Issues to Epics / Reassign Issues

Now that you have all your issues organized and in one place, you can assign issues from the second Flex item to epics, or even reassign issues that already have epics.

Assigning Issues to Epics

To assign issues in the second Flex item to an epic:

• Drag the issues to the epic you want to assigned them to.

• While dragging, hold down the ctrl key - this copies the issue to the new location in the structure. Once the issue is copied to the new location, it should disappear from beneath the second Flex item (because now it's assigned to an epic). 

Don't worry: copying an item in Structure does not make a copy in Jira.

Reassigning Issues to New Epics

To reassign issues from one epic to another, simply drag them from beneath their current epic to the new epic.

With Structure, you can track all the issues for upcoming releases – even if they're from different projects – and visualize all the data you need to track on a single screen.

Step 1: Build a Release Management Structure

To create a structure for release management: 

1. Open the Structure Selector menu and select Create New Structure
2. Add the issues you want to track – you can add them manually or automatically using +Add | Insert | Basic Insert
3. Group issues by fix version: +Add | Group | Field | select "Fix Version/s"

Want to include epics and stories?

1. When inserting issues, add epics: +Add | Insert | Basic Insert | open the Issue Types dropdown and select Epic

2. Add your stories: +Add | Insert | Child Issues | under Add, select Issues under epics and (optional) Sub-tasks.

Step 2: Add Data

Next, add the data you need to track by clicking the + button at the top-right corner of the structure. You can add as many columns as you need, including:

• Jira fields, such as status, assignee, sprint, or remaining estimate
• Progress - track status based on issue progress, percent completion, or resolution
• Formulas - create your own formulas to compare fields or create a visual report

• Tempo Work Logged - track how long your team is spending on each issue

Once you've added your columns, you can aggregate the data up the structure. To do so, open the column you want to aggregate and select Sum over sub-items.

Looking to manage resources for your next project? Planner makes it easy to plan resources and capacity for your team.

Tempo's Strategic Portfolio Management solution is a modular approach to help organizations focus their priorities, people, and spend across their portfolio of products and services.

1. Plan and manage your work in Structure.

2. Convert your plans into boardroom-ready roadmaps in Strategic Roadmaps.

3. Monitor the financial health of your portfolio using Financial Manager and Structure.

4. Manage resources and resource allocation with Capacity Planner and Gantt Charts for Structure.

5. Build custom reports to monitor your portfolio with Custom Charts.

The following products are part of Tempo's Strategic Portfolio Management solution. Pick the ones that are right for your teams, or try them all - you can download free trials using the links below.

• Strategic Roadmaps

• Structure

• Gantt Charts for Structure

• Timesheets and Financial Manager

• Capacity Planner

• Custom Charts for Jira

Strategic Portfolio Management with Tempo Apps

When you're working across multiple projects and teams, chances are there are some inconsistencies between the link types being used. 

The following guide will show you how to quickly update all your links to a single, consistent link type using Structure.

The examples below demonstrate how to update link types for an initiative, but the same process can be used for other link types as well.

Step 1: Build a Simple Structure

1. Create a new, blank structure and add 2 flex items: "Original Link Type" and "New Link Type". 

2. Manually add your parent initiative to both flex items. Note: this should be the same initiative for both.

Step 2: Add Epics

1. Highlight the Original Link Type flex item and add a Linked Issue generator: +Add | Extend | Linked Items | select the inconsistent link type

2. Highlight the New Link Type flex item and add a Linked Issue generator: +Add | Extend | Linked Items | select the desired link type

Make sure the Moving items in the struture will update links option is checked for both generators.

Step 3: Update Link Types

Select all the issues under the generator added to the first flex item, and drag them to the second flex item, as children of the same initiative.

Structure will automatically replace all the old links with the new link type.

Need to keep the original links too? When dragging the items, hold down the "ctrl" key (Option key on Mac) to copy the items to the new iniative.

Additional Use Cases

You can also use this same method to:

• Update other link types - just edit your Extend | Link generators and the original item added to each flex item

• Remove links - include an empty flex item (no Extend generator) and drag your linked issues to the empty flex item - the original link will be removed without adding a new link

Use Structure to identify:

1. Overdue tasks

2. Number of overdue tasks per epic, initiative, or other larger grouping

Step 1: Build Your Structure

In this guide, we're going to show you how to track overdue tasks at the epic level. To track overdue tasks for initiatives or any other large groupings, simply reconfigure the structure hierarchy - this can be done using a Preset or Insert, Extend, and Group generators.

To create a new structure using a Preset:

1. Open the Structure Selector menu and select Create New Structure

2. Automatically build an Epic > Story > Sub-task hierarchy: +Add | Preset | Agile Hierarchy

To create a new structure using Insert, Extend, and Group generators:

1. Open the Structure Selector menu and select Create New Structure

2. Add epics: +Add | Insert | Basic Insert | open the Issue Type dropdown and select Epic

   • To limit the epics to specific projects, use the Projects dropdown

3. Add stories and sub-tasks: +Add | Insert | Child Issues | under Add, select Issues under epics and Sub-tasks.

Step 2: Mark Overdue Tasks

Once you have your structure in place, the next step is to identify all the overdue items. To do this, we need to add a formula column. Click the + button to the right of the column headers, and select Formula.

Give the column an appropriate name and enter the following into the Formula section: IF(due_date < today(); "overdue")

If you used "due_date" in your formula, the variable will automatically be mapped to the Due Date attribute. If you used another name for that variable (for example, “due”), you will need to define the variable by pointing it to the appropriate Due Date attribute.

Variations

This is just one way to mark overdue items. You could also:

• Create a more visual warning that highlights not only overdue items, but also items coming due. You can read how to do this in Markdown in Formula Columns.

• Create a formula that relies on another due date.  For example, you may want to flag issues that aren't completed by the due date of their parent epic. In this case, change the formula to: IF(type = "Story" and status != "Done" and parent{due_date} < today(); "overdue")

Step 3: Aggregate Overdue Items for Epics, Initiatives, etc.

In the previous example we were simply returning the string “overdue”, but if we give that "overdue" flag a numeric value ("1"), we can use the Sum over sub-items option to aggregate those values up the hierarchy. To accomplish this:

1. In place of the formula we created in step 1, enter the following: IF(type = "Story" and status != "Done" and due_date < today(); 1)

2. Check the Sum over sub-items box

In this example, we limited our scope to only stories that are not yet "Done" - depending on your situation, you may want to adjust this to include other issue types, add additional qualifications, etc.