Bridging the gap: how to break down silos and create a single source of truth for project data

Teams launching high-quality products, at scale, have been suffering from a recurrent problem: the fragmentation of data in task management tools. Throughout the lifecycle of a feature or initiative, teams work in silos and manage their day-to-day in different tools: 

• Engineers might be working on a set of tasks in Jira, while product managers might be tracking the overall progress between sheets / docs and Jira. 
• Marketing might be using Asana, while Sales uses Salesforce to track leads. 

At scale, this fragmentation becomes costly and leads to multiple problems, mainly: 

• Reduced visibility and alignment → difficult to get the full picture of projects and overall progress.
• Increased risks and costs → problems arise such as missed deadlines, budget overruns and quality issues. This leads to costly rework and reputation damage. 
• Difficulty reporting and analytics → tedious to collect the siloed data to generate reports, identify trends, etc. 

At Luna, we commit to bring teams together and eliminate silos, without asking teams to change their day-to-day or their existing workflows. We integrate with your current tools, understand your data and processes and create a common project language on top of your task management and communication tools. This common language is comprehensible and actionable for all stakeholders, fostering engaged collaboration horizontally and vertically. We also leverage this common language to proactively generate reports and insights to the right decision makers, drastically saving product managers (PMs) and program managers (PgM) from “busy work”. 

Here are guidelines and examples of how we create our common language in practice:

‍Create your launches from templates and your existing tools

Begin by importing your launches from your task and project management tools, including Jira, Asana, ClickUp, CSV, or spreadsheet files. Luna automatically extracts critical project-level details, such as titles, owners, launch dates, stages, statuses, and labels. You can refer to our comprehensive mapping (Jira, Asana, ClickUp) for further details.

Note: During the import process, you have the option to link launches to a predefined template. This way, Luna extracts launch information from your tools and aligns it with the parameters defined in the template.

‍FAQ: What level of detail represents a launch?

→ We recommend importing the launches (projects or initiatives) that you want to provide visibility on to other stakeholders. Typically, the highest level of information, such as epics in Jira, is preferred, but you can also import and sync an important bug, if you seek to bring communication around it. Note that you can also import a collection of epics as milestones to a launch you create (see below).

Stay in sync with your teams’ data

Your launches in Luna remain synchronized with your task management tools. Any changes to high-level parameters, such as launch dates, are automatically reflected in Luna, saving your teams from any duplication of effort.

Access instant visibility in the All launches table and Reporting tab

The "All launches” table serves as your central hub for all past and ongoing launches, eliminating the need to switch between different tools or request information from your teams or colleagues. Now, you have real-time access to your company's launch statuses and progress. For example, Marketing and Sales have access to the important features their campaigns or clients depend on, without having to chase PMs and ask for data, updated roadmaps, and so on.

Launches can also be visualised in saved filtered views, a timeline view or a calendar view.

‍Manage your launches around milestones

Luna structures and centralizes each launch around milestones, which illustrates the phases and checkpoints all the teams have to go through (we do not care about tasks!).

Similar to launches, milestones can be imported from task management tools where teams execute their work. For instance, you can import and sync your milestones with the relevant projects and issues in tools such as Jira, ClickUp and Asana.

Given that milestones serve as a true measure of progress (in contrast to tasks, which represent units of work), Luna streamlines your launches by:

• Aligning all stakeholders on key phases and checkpoints, preventing missed deadlines and last-minute rushes.
• Providing real-time progress of launches.
• Offering granular insights through "milestone details" cards.
• Visualizing team dependencies, identifying potential blockers, and optimizing workloads.
• Fostering accountability and action through automated and personalised follow-ups, eg. approval flows.

Key takeaways

At scale, siloed task management and communication tools can lead to costly losses in productivity, increased reporting overhead, and lower launch quality. Luna is a deeply integrated launch success platform that aligns stakeholders around a common project language throughout the project lifecycle. With Luna, product and project managers spend drastically less time on alignment and reporting, freeing up more time for high-leverage activities. Decision-makers and stakeholders, such as executives, sales and marketing, have access to the right data at the right time, empowering them to be proactive and contribute positively to launches.

‍