Improve export/import process for Concourse delivery plans into client Jira instances

When PwC and client teams collaborate directly in the client’s Jira instance, PwC delivery teams need a more efficient and reliable way to export the Concourse delivery plan and import it into the client’s Jira environment. In such scenario, PwC team members may have limited use of the PwC Jira Cloud environment, but still need to leverage the Concourse-generated delivery plan based on PDM.

The current export/import process is highly manual and can be time-consuming. It requires significant Excel manipulation and does not fully preserve the PDM hierarchy or map work items to appropriate Jira issue types. This creates additional effort for project teams and reduces the value of using a structured PDM-based delivery plan.

Current Challenges

1. Full PDM hierarchy is not imported

The current import process only supports the bottom three levels of the delivery plan hierarchy:

• Deliverable

• Task

• Sub-task

This means the complete PDM hierarchy is not reflected in the client’s Jira instance after import. As a result, the structure and context provided by Concourse/PDM are partially lost, which undermines the purpose of using a PDM-based delivery plan.

Ideally, the export/import process should preserve the complete hierarchy.

2. Default issue type mapping may not be appropriate

The current mapping to default Jira issue types may not align with how client Jira environments are configured.

For example, a PDM sub-task may be mapped to a User Story in the client Jira instance. However, User Story is typically reserved for actual functional or business user stories. Using it for PDM sub-tasks may create confusion for product owners, scrum teams, testers, and client stakeholders.

3. Manual Excel conversion is time-consuming

The current process requires substantial manual transformation of the exported delivery plan in Excel before it can be imported into the client’s Jira instance.

This includes activities such as:

• Reformatting columns.

• Adjusting parent-child relationships.

• Updating issue type mappings.

• Preparing Jira-compatible import files.

• Validating mandatory Jira fields.

• Reworking data when the import fails.

This process is clunky, manual, and prone to errors. It adds unnecessary effort during engagement setup and may delay mobilisation.

There may be opportunities to make this more efficient through:

• Improved export formatting from Concourse.

• Jira-ready CSV export templates.

• Configurable issue type mapping.

• Jira automation support.

• Power Automate-enabled Excel transformations.

The improvement should allow teams to generate a Jira-compatible export from Concourse that can be imported into a client Jira instance with minimal manual manipulation.