How to Use Product Roadmap in Jira: Full Guide

[#1]

Disclaimer: Start with strategy before software

Before you dive into Jira, make sure your product strategy and roadmap are already defined. Jira isn’t a tool for brainstorming or ideation—it’s for turning ideas into action. If you're still figuring out your product goals, milestones, or initiatives, check out this product roadmap guide first.

Once you're ready to move your vision into execution, Jira becomes a powerful ally in tracking progress, structuring work, and keeping your team aligned.

Why Use Jira for Product Roadmaps?

Using Jira for product roadmap tracking isn’t always perfect—but it often makes sense, especially for teams already managing their workflows in Jira Software.

Here’s the core benefit: everything in Jira is already tied to real execution. Your roadmap epics are connected to sprints, issue types, user stories, and tasks. This creates a single source of truth across product management, engineering, and other teams.

Key benefits of keeping a product roadmap in Jira:

• Alignment: Epics, child issues, and sprints live in one place.
  
  

• Context: When you create a new issue, you link it to the roadmap by selecting an epic.
  
  

• Visibility: Everyone from developers to product owners to team leads can view priorities and progress in real time.
  
  

You also get tighter integration with Agile practices like backlog refinement, sprint planning, and Jira workflows.

However, Jira has limitations:

• It’s built for internal collaboration—not for polished presentations to stakeholders.
  
  

• Sharing roadmap progress with external users often requires Confluence pages or dashboard views.
  
  

• There’s a risk of roadmap sprawl—if you keep adding to the same epic instead of closing it and starting fresh.
  
  

Pros and Cons of a Product Roadmap in Jira

✅ Pros	❌ Cons
Built-in connection between roadmaps, Jira issues, and sprints	Not ideal for executive or customer-facing updates
Real-time progress tracking for all team members	Can become cluttered with long or messy epics
Prioritization made easier through backlog linking	Requires setup and grooming to stay clean
Cross-team awareness—product, design, marketing, engineering	Epics may be misused as catch-all containers

For product teams that use Agile, Scrum, or Kanban boards in Jira Software, tying the roadmap into the same workflow improves delivery speed and transparency.

Core Elements of a Product Roadmap in Jira

To create and manage roadmaps in Jira, you’ll work with:

• Epics: Large feature sets or themes (e.g., "User Onboarding Revamp")
  
  

• Issues: Tasks, bugs, or user stories that live under each epic
  
  

• Dependencies: Links showing one task or epic must be done before another
  

These elements support goal-based product planning while keeping execution agile. They help teams break work down into smaller tasks, track progress, and connect dependencies.

Pro tip: Use Advanced Roadmaps to plan across multiple teams, set capacity, manage milestones, and define swimlanes.

How to Create a Product Roadmap in Jira (Step-by-Step)

If you're using a company-managed Jira project with the roadmap feature enabled:

1. Open your Jira project.
   
   

2. In the left sidebar, click Roadmap.
   

3. Click + Create Epic to start building out roadmap items.
   

4. For each epic, click + Add Child Issue to break it down into deliverables.
   

5. Drag and drop items on the timeline to assign start and due dates.
   

6. To add dependencies, hover over the edge of an item’s bar on the roadmap, then drag to the item it’s linked to.
   
   

7. Alternatively, link dependencies in the issue view using Linked Issues.
   

Make sure to align roadmaps with sprint timelines, release dates, and team availability.

If you’re using Jira Product Discovery, you can bring validated ideas into your roadmap and connect them to delivery epics.

Best Practices for Product Roadmap Execution in Jira

1. Review regularly

Use dashboards or roadmap views to review roadmap progress each week. During sprint planning, check for outdated epics, open issues, or items that lack assignees.

2. Clean up old epics

Once a feature is released, close the related epic. Don’t treat epics like "ongoing folders." Instead, create a new epic if future improvements are needed.

3. Keep scope realistic

Map out milestones but avoid overloading teams with too many simultaneous tasks. Use swimlanes or boards to visualize capacity.

4. Use templates for repeatable work

Smart Checklist lets you apply checklist templates to roadmap issues. Add a "Definition of Done," release QA steps, or onboarding items automatically when creating new tasks.

5. Define clear dependencies

Don’t wait until it’s too late—link related work using blockers or relates-to links. Add "waiting on" labels or tags where needed.

6. Avoid clutter

Recurring maintenance or BAU tasks (like content publishing or internal reporting) don’t belong on your roadmap. Keep it focused on product development and key feature releases.

7. Track progress with custom fields or dashboards

Use fields like status, progress, due dates, or "Smart Checklist Progress" to monitor execution. Add roadmap gadgets to your Jira dashboards for real-time updates.

Top Add-ons for Roadmapping in Jira

Jira Software includes native roadmap features, but they don’t always cover every product planning use case. These add-ons offer deeper functionality:

🔧 Structure.Gantt

A powerful Gantt chart tool that helps with timeline visualization, dependency management, and resource allocation. Ideal for complex projects with multiple initiatives.

🎯 BigPicture

Great for scaled Agile or enterprise environments. Lets you plan roadmaps by objectives, manage cross-team dependencies, and map releases by quarter or sprint. Supports OKRs, teams, goals, and more.

📝 Smart Checklist

Perfect for adding clarity to roadmap issues. Use checklist templates for Definition of Ready, QA steps, or user story acceptance criteria. Automate checklist creation using issue type, status, or workflow transitions. Explore Smart Checklists on Atlassian Marketplace 

Advanced Tips for Managing Roadmaps with Jira

✅ Use Jira Automation

Automatically assign checklists, notify team members, or update statuses based on changes to roadmap items.

✅ Leverage Custom Workflows

Build workflows that reflect your product development lifecycle. Add validators or post functions to transition rules that block progress if key checklist items are incomplete.

✅ Combine Jira and Confluence

Use Confluence to present roadmap summaries to executives or customers. Embed Jira roadmap views or filtered dashboards. This gives you control over how much detail to show.

✅ Add roadmap metrics

Use Jira reports or 3rd-party tools to calculate cycle time, velocity, or burndown for roadmap epics. This helps with prioritization and forecasting.

✅ Manage roles and permissions

Assign product owners to epics, use assignees to track task ownership, and manage permissions so only certain team members can edit roadmap elements.

Final Thoughts

Jira is not just an issue tracker, it can be a reliable roadmapping tool when used intentionally. For Agile teams already managing their backlog, sprints, and Kanban workflows in Jira Software, bringing your product roadmap into Jira closes the loop between planning and execution.

While it's not built to replace high-level visual product plans, using Jira for roadmap execution keeps product teams, stakeholders, and development teams working together in one platform.

The key is to:

• Keep your roadmap aligned with delivery
  
  

• Break large goals into epics and smaller tasks
  
  

• Use automation, checklists, templates, and dashboards
  
  

• Regularly clean, review, and communicate roadmap status
  
  

With the right setup, your Jira roadmap becomes a living plan that reflects how your product evolves over time.

📚 Not sure how to start? This product roadmap guide helps.

Check Smart Checklist plugin for effective roadmapping in Jira