Long time Jira user having a VERY hard time understanding and trying to use Advanced Roadmaps

accum_bway

Let me start by saying that I've been using Jira for years with both scrum and kanban projects for software development. I consider myself fairly competent in its base operation and I am now trying to bolster our long term planning by utilizing Portfolio which JUST turned into Advanced Roadmaps.

I must say that although there seems to be a lot of written documentation I am not finding it very helpful. I've been spinning my wheels for days trying to understand how things should work and what needs to be done to get a plan that looks anything like the examples. Are there ANY other resources or tutorials out there other than the "documentation?" I've found a couple of videos, some only a couple of months old, but they all seem to use a UI that no longer exists.

I've got a ton of specific questions, but I'll start with just one for now. I am attempting to follow the guide for including an Initiative issue type found here: 

https://confluence.atlassian.com/advancedroadmapscloud/configuring-hierarchy-levels-998650959.html

I have created the issue type and I mapped the issue type in roadmaps. I used the "Alternative instructions to create a new project just for holding the Initiatives. 

 

Alternatively, you can consider creating a dedicated project, and then create all the initiatives you need in that project. You can then link the epics across all your projects to the Initiatives in that dedicated project for initiatives.

Maybe I'm linking my epics improperly, nothing explicitly says HOW to link the Epics, but I end up with this view of my plan when choosing the initiative scope.

You might also notice that all of the fields are blank. Not sure what else I need to, but this does not match the example. 

I think I like the idea of Advanced Roadmaps, but it is NOT intuitive and thus far the documentation has proven to be very frustrating.

Any guidance on how to try and understand this functionality would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

Pete Morris

Hi @accum_bway - I'm a Product Manager in the Advanced Roadmaps team. I'm sorry you're having a hard time with our new interface. 

It looks as though your initiatives are showing up in the plan correctly, but the desired child epics are not yet linked to the parent, is that right?

You can link epics (or any other issue, for that matter) to a new parent in a variety of ways.

1. You can drag and drop the issue underneath its new parent;
2. You can expose the "Parent" field in the plan by clicking on the "..." and checking the box next to "Parent". Once visible on the plan you can change the parent by clicking on the dropdown in the field;
3. You can select a number of issues using the checkbox on the far left of the screen, click on "Bulk actions", select "Parent", and then select the new Parent issue.

All of the above must then be committed back to Jira Software by clicking the "Review changes" button in the top right of the screen.

Finally, you can also expose the "Parent Link" field on your issue screen scheme in order to update the Epic's parent in the issue view (outside of your plan).

Once you're comfortable with that, you can schedule any issue by clicking on the timeline or by modifying the start/due dates directly. If you use different date fields on your issues then you can update this in your plan's settings.

We have an upcoming webinar you may be interested in here: https://www.atlassian.com/webinars/software/roadmaps-in-jira-software

I hope that helps. Please let me know if you need anything else.