Jira and BigPicture: The Perfect Combo for Resource Management
Our team often gets questions about resource management capabilities within the Atlassian ecosystem and the Jira platform. Jira doesn’t have built-in resource management features beyond time tracking and task estimation. While that may be enough for some, those who want to track workload and remaining capacity per resource or employee will find these features lacking. That’s why we use BigPicture – a plugin designed for project and portfolio management.
What is the BigPicture plugin?
BigPicture is one of the most powerful plugins for Atlassian Jira, built to enhance and simplify resource management within projects. With BigPicture, Jira users can efficiently plan, track, and analyse all aspects of their projects – from time and resources to tasks and objectives. Its integration with Jira enables organisations to leverage the full potential of agile project management while ensuring accurate resource tracking and improving overall team productivity.
BigPicture stands out with its ability to centralise all project-related data into a single, user-friendly interface, making it easier to make informed decisions. Whether it’s task scheduling, resource allocation, or performance analysis, BigPicture offers a comprehensive toolkit that supports both day-to-day operations and long-term strategic planning. With BigPicture, Jira becomes an even more powerful project management solution, helping teams achieve their goals more efficiently and effectively.
What prerequisites does Jira require?
When it comes to resource management, there are two “sides” that need to be configured, maintained, and monitored. The first consists of Jira’s native features and fields. To use resource management effectively, each Jira issue should include the following:
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Original estimate – the time estimation for task completion
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Start and end dates – to define the task’s timeline
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Assignee – the person responsible for completing the task
Estimate is usually tracked through the “Original estimate” field, which represents the predicted time required to complete a task. Date fields define when the task starts and when it is expected to be finished. Finally, each task should be assigned to one person. The assignee doesn’t necessarily need to be set far in advance—it can be assigned later depending on resource availability.
Adding resources and assigning them to workload plans
Before configuring views, you need to add resources in BigPicture. Resources are users for whom you want to define workload and holiday plans.
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A workload plan defines precise working hours (e.g. Monday to Friday from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM).
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Holiday plans allow you to mark non-working days (such as vacation or public holidays).
You can create and assign multiple different workload and holiday plans, depending on your team’s location and working habits.
Tracking resources at the project and company-wide level
Resource management needs vary depending on the manager’s perspective—whether they need to see the “big picture” across the company or focus on specific projects or teams.
For example:
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A project manager may want to track a particular project and assign tasks to project team members based on their availability.
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A team lead might need to monitor their team’s capacity, even if members are working across multiple projects simultaneously.
To configure these perspectives in BigPicture, start by creating two (or more) separate Boxes.
Boxes are essentially containers that display a defined scope of tasks. For example:
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One Box can show tasks from a single Jira project.
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Another Box can display all tasks assigned to members of a particular team or group.
The scope of a Box is typically defined during setup but can be edited later as needed.
Within each Box, you can enable or disable specific modules.
Modules are different views and functionalities within BigPicture, such as Gantt, Objectives, Calendar, etc.
When it comes to resource management, the focus is typically on two core modules:
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Teams
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Resources
These two modules provide the essential tools for managing team structure and workload capacity, allowing you to monitor resource allocation, detect overloads, and optimise project planning based on availability.
In the “Teams” module, you can create or assign teams, and for each team you add, you can:
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Assign users
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Set their start date
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Define their availability (as a percentage)
This availability value takes into account the user’s workload plan, applying the defined percentage to each working day to determine their daily capacity.
For example:
If a user works 8 hours per day, Monday through Friday, and their availability is set to 50%, their capacity in the BigPicture plan will be 4 hours per day.
After setting up your teams and team members, you can switch to the Resources module — which might look a bit overwhelming at first. By default, you’ll see lots of colours and numbers flying around.
However, everything can be enabled or disabled according to your preferences. For example:
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You can set a three-month period with monthly aggregation,
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Or view resources based on a monthly period with daily aggregation.
This flexibility allows you to tailor the view to what’s most useful for your planning and reporting needs.
Colours and numbers represent each user’s workload, remaining capacity, and total capacity for the selected time period.
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In short:
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Red = the resource is overloaded
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Green = the resource is available for more tasks
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Most of these visual cues can be customised, including how colours are applied to time ranges.
If a team or department lead wants to monitor their team members, they can create a separate box for that purpose. By organising users into Atlassian groups (which act as teams), you can create filters that only show tasks assigned to members of a specific group/team.
Once you have such a filter, set the scope of your BigPicture box to that filter. This way, you’ll see tasks assigned to that team’s members and easily monitor their capacity — even if they’re working across multiple projects.
Jira and BigPicture – a perfect match for resource management
Et voilà! Now your project managers and team leads can monitor and manage their resources across the organisation.
Additionally, if you want to scale your processes to the level of enterprise-wide planning and monitoring, you might want to take a look at Jira Align – a solution for Enterprise Agile Planning designed to scale agile practices.
Jira and BigPicture – a match made in heaven!
BigPicture is an essential tool for any team using Jira that wants to manage resources efficiently. While Jira on its own offers basic features for tracking time and tasks, BigPicture enhances these capabilities by enabling detailed planning, monitoring, and resource analysis. This plugin centralises all project data in one place, making it easier to make informed decisions and boost team productivity.
By combining the Jira platform with the BigPicture plugin, organisations can take full advantage of agile project management while precisely tracking available resources. BigPicture allows managers and teams to effectively manage workload, holiday plans, and resource capacity – ensuring tasks are delivered on time and within available resource limits.
In this way, Jira and BigPicture make the perfect combination for any business aiming to optimise resource management and increase operational efficiency.
Also, if you found this blog useful, be sure to check out how to sync issues between two Jira Cloud instances. For any additional quest
