Is there a way to visualize the relationship between enablers and their business features?

Question

Align has a few methods of defining dependencies and enablers, but as far as I can see, there is no way of visualizing the relationship between the enabler and the feature. For example, let's say we're building Business Features BFeature and Beature2.  Bfeature1 requires Enablers Enabler1, Enabler2, and Enabler3.  BFeature2 requires Enabler2, Enabler3 and Enabler4.

Is there any place in Align where I can see these relationships?  First to see which enablers a feature needs, and secondly to see which features and enabler supports?

Thanks!

Marcie Mierz · Answer

I was thinking about maybe using a Milestone to capture the relationship and create the visualization between the feature enablers and the business features.  I want a way to see a measurement toward feature completeness as it relates to the business feature itself and specific enabler work that precedes it, but is only a subset of other enabler features/features that may be in the parent epic... any thoughts on maybe taking this approach?

Jesse Pearlman_enak8i · Answer

@Lysa Milch Ah!  I see.  No, there isn't anything by design that I am aware of that may resolve this need.

The best I can think of at this time is to use the Objective record and call it your Enabler objective.  You could then associate all the necessary features to each bundle of value being delivered.

You might then review the relationships from the objective to all the features on the program board.  The program board also allows you to configure what is being shown

As for the Roadmap, it lacks the ability to show feature types and that would be a very good feature request.

Outside of these alternate uses there isn't anything else I can think of to drive the visibility that may work for you

Lysa Milch_u3msvy · Answer

Hi Jesse,

That was extremely clear, but not quite what I was getting at,  Seeing which features in Align are enablers and which are business features is fairly straightforward.   What I was looking for, and this may soon turn into a feature request, is a visualization of the relationship between them, more than then two features belonging to a single parent epic.  The use case here is around the prioritization exercise. Enablers can be enablers for more than one feature.  If we’re looking to build several apps, and 3 of 4 of them require a specific enabler, a visualization that shows these relations would be extremely helpful in that prioritization.  It would be clear that we need to start that enabler first, as is it directly tied to 3 of our 4 business features.

The second use case is to be able to track enablers as a part of the roadmap or timeline for each feature.    If we could associate enabler1, enabler2, enabler3 to features feature1 AND feature2, when I looked at the roadmap for feature2, I would be able to see how long the feature would take with the given enablers.