Top FAQs from roadmaps webinar

Josh Frank

Hi everyone, Thanks so much for stopping by. We recently ran a webinar on roadmaps in Jira Software that is now available on-demand. As part of our follow up to the webinar, we collected some of the top questions and answered them here for you.

We broke out the questions into four sections, which you can navigate through below:

• Questions about roadmaps
• Questions about Advanced Roadmaps
• Questions comparing roadmaps and Advanced Roadmaps
• Questions about Jira Align

 

 

Questions about roadmaps

When exactly is the next-gen roadmap coming to classic projects?	Though we can’t specify the exact release date, roadmaps is currently in private beta and we are planning to bring this new feature to you in the next few months.
How can I be a part of the roadmaps for classic beta?	Unfortunately the application for joining the roadmaps for classic beta program has closed. But we’re working hard to roll out the feature to everyone in the next couple of months.
Will there be any experience differences between roadmaps in classic and next-gen?	Roadmaps in classic projects will be a near-identical roadmapping experience to roadmaps in next-gen.
I’m really interested in the team-level roadmap. Should I be using Jira Software classic or next-gen projects?	Next-gen is optimized for team autonomy and ease of use whereas classic is more optimized for scale and control. If you’re not sure which one works best for you, try them out to see which one best meets your requirements or read more about how they're different in this article (at the bottom of the article). Currently, roadmaps only works with next-gen projects but is coming soon to classic. Advanced Roadmaps currently only works with classic projects.
How do I migrate between next-gen and classic projects?	It is possible to migrate between project templates on Cloud. See our detailed instructions on how to migrate between project types here.

 

 

Questions about Advanced Roadmaps

Why doesn’t Advanced Roadmaps support next-gen projects?	Advanced Roadmaps is built from a pre-existing marketplace app (Portfolio for Jira) that was built for classic projects. When releasing the new enhancements we wanted to get value to customers as soon as possible even if that meant before next-gen compatibility.
Will Advanced Roadmaps support next-gen projects in the future?	We are committed to enriching planning capabilities in next-gen and are currently exploring how Advanced Roadmaps should support next-gen projects but can’t comment on a specific timeline.
How do you navigate to Advanced Roadmaps in Jira Software? How do I know if my company has Advanced Roadmaps?	If you have Jira Software Premium (or the app for Server & Data Center), you can navigate to ‘Plans’ in the Jira Software navigation. All the Advanced Roadmaps features live under the plans tab.
How is Advanced Roadmaps different from Portfolio for Jira Cloud?	Advanced Roadmaps is a refresh of Portfolio for Jira Cloud with some major improvements. With this refresh Advanced Roadmaps (formerly Portfolio): Has a brand new User Interface Offers full control over the roadmap. Incorporates many of the insights you used to get from reports, directly into the roadmap view. Read more about what’s new with Advanced Roadmaps here.
Why do you look at team capacity rather than individual capacity with Advanced Roadmaps?	Our capacity planning features work at the team-level in order to create a more scaled approach for planning capacity. Understanding team velocity enables better planning across sprints and into the long-term. We have a few upcoming capacity features planned that will help teams take future capacity fluctuations into consideration.
Will Advanced Roadmaps include individual capacity?	We are currently exploring the best approach for better management of individual resources and actively taking in feedback.
What tips do you have to get the most out of capacity planning in Advanced Roadmaps?	Advanced Roadmaps offers greater visibility into how much work teams can allocate to sprints (Scrum) or time periods (Kanban). Here’s how to set it up: Select your estimation type in your plan’s settings - Advanced Roadmaps supports days and hours across Scrum and Kanban, and supports Story points for Scrum. Set up your Teams and associate them with issue sources - if you’re using Scrum then be sure to use your Boards as issue sources to bring in the relevant sprints. You can also set your team’s type, capacity, and iteration length (Scrum teams only). Enable capacity on the timeline by grouping by either team or sprint and enabling “Show capacity on timeline” under “View settings” in the timeline view. Assign your work to teams (try our bulk actions feature!) and estimate them based on your chosen estimation method. Either assign work to sprints or schedule work with start and due dates to see the impact on capacity for your iterations/intervals!
Does Atlassian use Advanced Roadmaps internally for software development planning?	Yes! We use it across our organization to manage work that involves multiple Scrum teams and to manage our large programs of work. For those who are curious, this is the hierarchy we use internally: (Anthology → Odyssey → Legend → Epic → Story).
Are there any limitations with how big an Advanced Roadmap can be?	For best performance we recommend keeping your plans to 5,000 issues but are exploring strategies to increase these limits. Others factors like query complexity, instance data (e.g. # of custom fields), and active concurrent usage can also impact performance.
Is Advanced Roadmaps only for Scrum boards or does it also work Kanban?	It works with both. Advanced Roadmaps can use a variety of issue sources such as Scrum and Kanban Boards, projects, and filters. It also supports a variety of estimation methods such as story points, days, and hours.
There are no longer default estimates in Advanced Roadmaps. Is there another way to plan long term without estimating all tasks?	If you’re looking to replicate “default estimates” then we recommend that you set up a Jira automation rule to set a default story point value when the issue is created. You can learn more about our automation features here. For existing issues, you can set the story points field using Jira’s bulk actions function (available via advanced search).
Will there be any future training on Advanced Roadmaps?	Yes we’ll have more webinars in the coming quarters on how to best take advantage of Advanced Roadmaps.
How does the Advanced Roadmaps Cloud experience differ to Server/DC? Can I migrate my Server/DC deployment to Cloud?	Advanced Roadmaps Cloud, Server, and Data Center have only a few minor differences. You can migrate your Advanced Roadmaps plans in Server/DC to Jira Software Cloud Premium via our site migration process. For more information on the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant please visit: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1222010/jira-cloud-migration-assistant?hosting=server&tab=over

 

Questions comparing roadmaps and Advanced Roadmaps

Can you recap all the roadmapping options that are available for me?	Roadmaps is available today for all Jira Software Cloud customers. Today it is only available on next-gen projects, but it’s coming to classic projects soon. Roadmaps is optimized for team-level planning. Advanced Roadmaps is available via Jira Software Cloud Premium (also available as a standalone app for Server and Data Center). Advanced Roadmaps is only available for our classic template. Advanced Roadmaps is optimized for cross-team planning on larger pieces of work. Jira Align is a standalone product, available to customers using our self-hosted or Cloud offerings. Jira Align is optimized for scaling agile within an Enterprise.
What’s the main difference between roadmaps and Advanced Roadmaps?	The main difference is that Advanced Roadmaps is optimized for cross-team planning whereas roadmaps is optimized for individual teams to plan and track their work. Here are a couple examples: With roadmaps you map dependencies between epics by drawing lines within the roadmap. In Advanced Roadmaps you can see every dependency that can potentially impact your plan even if the dependency lives outside of your plan. In roadmaps, you make changes directly to your epics and stories. In Advanced Roadmaps you review all the changes you’ve made before pushing them live. Advanced Roadmaps includes additional advanced features like capacity and scenario planning. We’ve also created this page on Jira Software roadmaps to help navigate some of the differences.
Can I use roadmaps and Advanced Roadmaps together?	Yes! Once we launch roadmaps for classic projects you’ll be able to plan an issue in a roadmap for your team and see the corresponding issue in Advanced Roadmaps when a plan is set up to cover the same board or project. We are planning to align these experiences more in the coming year to ensure a seamless experience across our multiple roadmapping features, whether you’re working at a team or a team-of-teams level.
What exporting options do I have across roadmaps and Advanced Roadmaps?	With roadmaps you can share a link to your roadmap, export to a .png file, or embed a live roadmap in Confluence. With Advanced Roadmaps you can share a link to your plan or embed a live plan in Confluence via an iframe. We will be launching a native Confluence macro very soon!
Can I share roadmaps and Advanced Roadmaps with people who do not have Jira licenses?	You need to have a Jira Software license in order to view the live embedded version of roadmaps or Advanced Roadmaps or link people directly to your roadmap.
How should we think about the difference between Advanced Roadmaps and Jira Align?	Advanced Roadmaps and Jira Align both help you visualize your work, plan for the future, and track progress along the way. Both use Jira as the team level system of record for work, but provide different sets of capabilities beyond the team level. For more details on when to consider Jira Align or Advanced Roadmaps, you can check out this comparison guide.

 

Questions about Jira Align

You mentioned Jira Align is for moving your entire enterprise to an Atlassian planning solution. What is Align and how do I know when I should be considering it?

Jira Align is more than just a planning tool, it’s designed to connect your whole business from strategy to technical execution. It helps you to: Aggregate team-level data to make all work visible across your enterprise in real-time Get everyone on the same page to determine scope, roadmaps, and dependencies across teams and portfolios Connect strategic investments with customer value created to drive outcomes faster and more reliably It’s also the only platform that lets you implement and extend any framework at scale (including SAFe) while still incorporating hybrid and custom frameworks. For more details on when to consider Jira Align or Advanced Roadmaps, you can check out this comparison guide.

Eoghan Murphy_3toq9o

I'm sure there would have been questions regarding the pricing model for existing Portfolio users and the significant increase in cost for Advanced Roadmaps, I know I asked some.

There have also been recognition on other Roadmaps posts that Advanced Roadmaps would only be used by a small subset of an orgs Jira users, so there should be an option to enable it for that subset, and only pay the extra for that subset of users. I'd wager there were questions on that as well, again I raised this.

Can we get some feedback on those issues please