Tricks for better project portfolio management with Jira and Gantt Charts for Structure PPM

Originally published December 29, 2020

Just about every company has its own quirks for managing workflow. Maybe you have your own special method for tracking resources or setting priorities, for example. Or maybe you calculate task duration just a bit differently.

Our Structure.Gantt solution is built with those quirks in mind — it's adaptable, so companies can adapt it to their own way of doing things. But if you want an Agile Gantt solution that fully conforms to your workflows, it helps to understand how the tool operates.

A new resource, Structure.Gantt Concepts Explained, aims to do just that.

The document is a chance to see the inner workings of Structure.Gantt. This resource demonstrates how the tool uses Jira data to construct Gantt charts, the decisions it makes about durations and placement in the chart, tips for creating customized charts, and other useful information.

With it, you can learn how to create custom work estimates for each team, set higher priorities for critical tasks, hide extraneous projects from your chart — or, just get a better idea of Gantt concepts in general. Although the resource focuses on the on-prem version of Structure.Gantt, future updates will highlight any cloud-specific considerations. Meanwhile, as the cloud version of Structure.Gantt evolves, the same guiding principles that underlie our on-prem product will inform development for that platform.

We strongly urge Structure.Gantt users and consumers to give the full article a thorough read. Here are a few examples of what the document contains so you can understand its benefits.

Highlight #1: How Structure.Gantt schedules tasks

You have several options for how you schedule tasks in Structure.Gantt: automatic, manual, or sprint-based. Which one best serves your purposes? It's easier to make the right decision if you know the ins and out of how each option works.

Let's consider Manual Scheduling. This allows you to move issues freely around the timeline, but it doesn't rely entirely on your actions either — there are elements that can help you save time while giving you manual control.

Say you enable Manual Scheduling and set a field to store manual start dates. But when you go back to your chart to move tasks around, you discover several tasks have already been moved. What’s going on? The tool looked for any pre-existing data in the field and used it to schedule tasks. Here's how Structure.Gantt determines the start date, finish date, and duration of each task

• It tries to determine task duration based on properties such as work estimate or resources assigned.

• It looks for any start and/or finish constraints.

• If it doesn’t find any start/finish constraints, it then looks for any dependencies that may affect its position.

• If it doesn't find any of those, the task is placed at the Project Start.

Highlight #2: Customizing the chart with Configuration Slices

Do your charts contain slices? Do you know what a slice is? If not, you are missing out on one of the most powerful features of Structure.Gantt — the ability to create custom configurations for specific issues.

If your chart includes items from multiple projects or teams, slices allow you to customize settings for certain projects, teams, or issues:

• Each project may use different fields to assign resources

• Some teams may use different link types

• Sprints may have different names or timelines

Using Configuration Slices, you can easily define specific settings for a subset of items, based on the type of issue or issue properties (using a JQL query). If you need to draw attention to certain issues, change their color. If you need to use a unique time tracking method or resource leveling rules, you can do that. Just create a new slice!

Highlight #3: Getting the most out of Resource Leveling

Resource Leveling makes it easy to manage overallocations, but do you know how it works? When you run Resource Leveling, Structure.Gantt looks for points of overallocation. When it finds one, it does the following:

• Identifies all the tasks affected by the overallocation

• Determines which of the tasks have to be completed earlier (based on dependencies, their leveling priorities, completeness, etc.) and keeps them in place

• Shifts other tasks forward to resolve the overallocation

• If additional overallocations remain, it repeats the process

Once you understand how leveling works, you can customize your settings to prioritize certain issues, add or exclude types of issues, and more — which will produce results more aligned with your individual needs. Or if you want to really impress management, define the leveling priority based on their preferred Weighted Shortest Jobs First metric! These are just a few of the topics covered in Structure.Gantt Concepts Explained. If you’re ready to become a Structure.Gantt pro (or you just want a better understanding of how things work), bookmark this resource and use it frequently. And as always, if you get stuck, our support team is eager to help!