Concept of a box

What is a box?

The concept of boxes makes project and project portfolio management as easy as possible. With boxes, you can group all your projects, products, teams, or portfolios just like you would organize your photos into various collections. In combination with advanced filtering options, this approach will provide you with unprecedented clarity and control over every undertaking you're responsible for, even if you manage thousands.

You can use boxes to organize tasks in Jira and other connected platforms. Two basic principles apply to boxes:

• There is no limit to the number of boxes that can be maintained using the app.

• There is no limit on the number of objects (tasks, projects, versions, etc.) a box can hold. The scope of the box can include any set of Jira issues.

With boxes, you can manage the following areas:

• Scope (Box configuration and App administration)

• Dependencies between tasks (Board and Gantt modules)

• Allocated resources (Resources and Gantt modules) 

• Key deadlines/milestones (markers) 

• Goals and objectives (Objectives module)

• Risks (Risks module)

Box within a box

The brand new concept of boxes within boxes lets you easily, with a single click, narrow down the scope of your work to the desired granularity level without losing any features offered by different modules.

Open

Manage boxes and box types

Agile, Waterfall, or Hybrid? Regardless of the methodology, the App is designed to comply with the organization's chosen framework or any combination of frameworks. Be it a SAFe® program, a LeSS product, a Prince2® project, an ART,
 a Program Increment (PI), an iteration, a phase, you name it — each of these frameworks now has a default template available in the App, already preconfigured to be consistent with it.

Thanks to box type, you will save a lot of time as you configure a box type only once. When the preconfigured setting of a given box type fails to match
 an unusual or more complex business scenario, you can customize it freely or create a new one from scratch.

You can use the following predefined box types:

• Agile project - A built-in type that is recommended for projects run in Agile methodology

• Classic project - A built-in type that is recommended for classic (waterfall) projects

• Hybrid project - A built-in type suitable for hybrid projects involving Agile and classic approaches

• Hybrid stage - A built-in type that helps to organize a hybrid project schedule into stages

• Iteration - A built-in type that helps to schedule work iteratively

• LeSS Requirement Area - A built-in type designed for multiple teams working together on one product.

• Portfolio - A built-in type that stores Agile, classic, and hybrid types of projects

• Program - Basic Box type that lets you divide the work into lower levels, such as Iterations, Stages, or Program Increments

• Program Increment - A built-in type that allows for grouping iterations into increments (recommended for SAFe® adopters)

• SAFe Art - A built-in type to represent an Agile Release Train (recommended for SAFe® adopters)

• Sprint - A built-in type that helps to schedule work iteratively

• Stage - A built-in type that helps to organize classic project scope into stages

Create a box

There are several ways to create a box in BigPicture. You can also create one in Jira.

Explore all box creation methods:

• Create box in the Overview module

• Play with sample data

• Create box from Jira space (project)

• Create box in the App widget