This article explains how the Skills filter works in the BigPicture Resources module, why users may still see team members they expected to hide, and which configuration approaches work best when you want to separate groups such as BAU and Delivery while still keeping unassigned work visible.

In the discussed scenario, a team was split into two working groups:

• BAU team members

• Delivery team members

Each project manager had a single skill assigned in BigPicture, and the goal was to create a view that showed:

• work assigned to people with the Delivery skill

• unassigned work items

• but not work associated with BAU team members

At first glance, it seems that selecting Delivery together with Skill unassigned should produce exactly that result. However, the filter logic works differently.

In BigPicture Resources, the Skills filter does not behave like a simple people-group selector. It is tied to the relationship between:

• the skills assigned to individuals

• the skills required by tasks or work items

If a work item has no skill requirement defined, it falls into the Skill unassigned category.

Skill unassigned

This is why BAU team members may still appear in the view even when the BAU skill itself is not selected.

In the case discussed, no tasks had skills assigned at the task level. Skills were being used only to classify people.

That creates an important limitation:

• the filter can identify people who have the Delivery skill

• but once Skill unassigned is added, BigPicture also includes work items without skill requirements

• those work items may be associated with BAU individuals as well

As a result, the combined filter does not mean “Delivery people plus unassigned work only.” Instead, it means “show Delivery-related content and also content where no skill requirement exists,” which can broaden the result set.

If your tasks have explicit required skills, then the Skills filter can be useful for capacity and assignment analysis. In that setup, skill-based views are more precise because both people and work items participate in the same skill model.

This option is best when:

• skills are maintained on people

• skills are also defined on tasks or demand items

• you want to match demand to qualified resources

If your goal is simply to see selected people and keep unassigned work visible, the Individuals filter is the fastest workaround.

With this approach, you manually choose only the Delivery team members. This keeps the board focused on the relevant group without relying on task-level skill logic.

This option is best when:

• the team split is known and stable

• you do not assign skills to tasks

• you need a quick solution without redesigning your setup

This was the recommended long-term approach in the case. Instead of using skills to simulate organizational grouping, create separate BigPicture teams such as:

• BAU Team

• Delivery Team

Then use the Teams filter to show only the relevant team.

This option is best when:

• BAU and Delivery are operationally distinct groups

• team leads need clean filtering and planning ownership

• the setup needs to scale as more people are added

An additional challenge in the case was that requesters used a simple front-end form with a single role choice such as Project Manager. They were not expected to know whether the request belonged to BAU or Delivery. That distinction was managed later by team leads.

In this type of process, exposing separate options like Project Manager (BAU) and Project Manager (Delivery) may create unnecessary complexity for requesters. Two practical design patterns were discussed.

Keep one shared team structure and one role value on the request form, but create different BigPicture views for different managers.

• one view filtered for BAU members

• one view filtered for Delivery members

This keeps the request experience simple while allowing team leads to work in separate operational views.

Maintain a single user-facing role such as Project Manager, but route the request behind the scenes after submission. This can be done through Jira automation or with a supporting field that helps assign work to the correct team.

This approach is useful when:

• the requester should not choose the destination team

• team leads want internal control over classification

• the process needs to remain simple for end users

If you are using skills only to label people, and your tasks do not have skill requirements, avoid relying on the Skills filter to separate BAU and Delivery while also showing unassigned work.

Instead, use the following decision guide:

• Need a quick operational view: use the Individuals filter

• Need a scalable team structure: create separate BigPicture teams

• Need true skill-based planning: assign skills to both people and work items

Imagine the following setup:

• Alice has skill Delivery

• Ben has skill BAU

• several work items have no skill requirement

If you select Delivery only, BigPicture focuses on Delivery-related results.

If you select Delivery and Skill unassigned, BigPicture also includes items with no required skill. Because unassigned-skill work is broader than just the Delivery group, users such as Ben may still appear in the view.

This is expected behavior based on how the filter interprets missing skill requirements.