Integration of Demand and Project Portfolio Management in Jira

catworkx was also able to demonstrate the great flexibility of Jira in the area of demand management in a customer project and show that relevant business data and influencing factors can be optimally channeled and evaluated in this way. On the basis of Jira, catworkx developed a customized demand management system with rating functionality for a major international company in Hamburg and integrated it into the company's existing project portfolio management. Requirements and project proposals can thus be recorded via a Jira process and can be easily evaluated and managed by those responsible with the help of a scorecard.

One of Germany's largest international consumer goods and retail companies, based in Hamburg, uses the Atlassian tool Jira for project portfolio management. Project plans are modeled as activities with a special workflow for application and approval. Before a request or project even makes it onto the project candidate list, it is the task of upstream demand management to channel business requirements, bundle them across departments and evaluate them in terms of their business value and feasibility.

The company turned to catworkx with the task of implementing a demand management system that was also based on Jira. The system was to offer a range of qualification options for demands in the form of a scorecard. It was also to be integrated with the existing portfolio management system in order to ensure a seamless transfer of data, comments, etc.

catworkx developed the demand management according to the company's requirements and integrated it into the existing project portfolio management. The respective processes are now very closely interlinked. Requirements and project proposals are initially recorded via a process of the type “Demand”. With the support of the demand manager, the specialist departments can use this to formulate their wishes, ideas and needs. The demand manager collects all the key data and influencing factors and then evaluates them using a scorecard. The resulting rating is used to decide whether the requirement should be treated as a change request or a project. With the decision to pursue it as a project, a project process is then automatically created during the project application process and linked to the demand process. Data and status changes made to both the demand and the associated project are synchronized in both directions in a controlled manner based on a field mapping table.