| from Aleksandra Dimkovich

Efficient multi-project management with Jira, Trello & Tableau

Introduction

Having our data accessible is of a high importance also outside the BI world. Often, companies make big efforts to integrate data from different systems into one, to get a better overview and insights. They often end up wishing to have a few more data sources integrated in it. However, it does not always make sense to integrate any data we have into a data warehouse or a data lake, but it might be helpful to have it in our dashboards to get better insights. Tableau is a great tool to combine various data sources and it can help us in the project management area as well.

Jira Board example:

Jira Board example

 

As the IT world became more eager to leave behind the well-known waterfall method and keep up with the fast tech development using an agile method, many of us came in touch with tools like Jira and Trello promoting boards, tasks, stories, etc. The project managers and product owners can easily have the overview of the current progress within their own project, and the team can see and follow up on their tasks. Making a project status presentation or giving an overview about the resources available, the budget, etc. would still be doable in a short time, but being responsible for multiple projects in parallel is definitely a challenge. This thought inspired me to integrate the Jira data with other systems data in Tableau and make project management more efficient.

Getting data in Tableau is easier thanks to the possibility to build and host a customized Web Data Connector. Connecting to a Web Data Connector in Tableau is straightforward and the customized Web Data Connector I developed makes it possible for any Jira site and user to connect and get the Jira data they are authorized to see.

WDC and other components:

WDC and other components

Connecting with the Jira WDC:

Connecting with the Jira WDC



As soon as I got our Jira data in Tableau, I integrated it with planning, staffing and budgeting data. The end product was a project management dashboard, which would reduce the time project managers, as well as program managers need to monitor the overall situation in project(s), especially budget, staffing, workload and timeline altogether.

Tableau dashboard:

Tableau dashboard

 

Creating a dashboard based on your company’s needs could be of great value. Additionally, there is a possibility to even save data, e.g. planning data directly from the Tableau dashboard in a database or even Jira. For this example, I used the Jira API as a data source, but the Web Data Connector is not limited only to APIs. Everything a web server can access can be translated into the hyper language Tableau understands. For example, this could be a database Tableau doesn’t have a predefined connector for, or it could be any structured web-based endpoint.

There are many benefits from creating a customized overview for the project management in Tableau. With the overview of the projects progress, budget remaining, and the time needed to finish the tasks gives more insights to make better and faster decisions. Furthermore, the workload between the team members and their skillset can promote cost-effective planning and better staffing. The time saving potential is even greater in a multi-project environment.

Are you interested in further details and advice?

Or do you have a data source in mind that you’d like to analyze with Tableau? Please let us know - we’re happy to help!

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About the author

Aleksandra’s main topic as a Tableau Expert is creating dashboards, visual analytics, and data modelling. Although her focus is data discovery & reporting, she has designed and developed web-based components. After completion of the applied information technologies studies at the faculty of computer science and engineering in Skopje, Macedonia, she has worked on many projects in the fields of pharmacy, finance, insurance, and project management.

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