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Vision for JPD + Jira Advanced Roadmaps?

J P_tty6su

What is the vision for how JPD and Advanced Roadmaps will work together?

Our team recently migrated from Roadmunk to Jira Advanced Roadmaps.

I really like the flexibility and experience of JPD and want to move our teams to it.

However, it seems a few issues together create a compounded, challenging reality...

1. JPD = Team-Managed, so we can't use the projects for Advanced Roadmaps

2. JPD = Team-managed, so we can't standardize configuration across our product groups... and having everything in JPD creates a monster (and doesn't fulfill the needs AR does)

3. Maintaining multiple projects across Jira Software (for Advanced Roadmaps) and JPD ... and trying to mirror / keep everything updated among everything creates too much chaotic confusion and duplication of work.

Each tool separately doesn't solve the problems and needs of of the other... yet they don't integrate or work together well, so we are stuck in that purgatory. The thoughtful integration of the two concepts would be incredible and organization-transforming... yet I have no idea of what the thoughtful vision is for streamlining and integrating them.

Accepted answers

All comments

Florian Reichl

I catched myself with that same feeling quite often recently...

Sarah Jacobson-Preu

We are excited about JPD as well and are running into this same question. Would hate to get further down the road of adoption of JPD to find that we've introduced another of information that can get out of sync with Jira work issues and company managed projects.

__ Jimi Wikman

I think you should not look at JPD as a backlog manager, as product discovery is a strategic activity. Advanced Roadmaps are an operational tool, as in a tool that show things that have been decided and financed (that is what we have in our Jira Projects).

JPD is about discovering what we should pursue and investigate to find if it has value, then it becomes a work order in our Jira projects.

So the flow, as I see it, is to start with ideas and hypothesis in JPD, verify their value and then create an Epic that connect the ideas with production and finally break down the Epic into work orders.

I don't see the use case of adding JPD items into an operational portfolio in Advanced Roadmaps, since as soon as you have decided to finance something it will be there. If you want to do a prognosis before you commit, then you can just add an epic for that purpose?

Kirk Brohman

Totally agree that Advanced Roadmaps and it being focused on operations rather than discovery.

My concern with the interaction between JPD and Advanced Roadmaps is mostly around the usage of the "roadmap" feature within JPD. If Advanced Roadmaps shows what we've committed or planned to be released, how would the JPD roadmap provide value without becoming redundant? I'm also interested to see how people would use these two tools together.

J P_tty6su

@Jimi Wikman I understand what you are saying in principle and it would be swell if we could start everything with a blank slate, but it doesn't seem to fit that neatly in practice.... at least for us, especially in our context with multiple product groups and engineering teams + folding in teams through acquisition + system integrations, etc.

For us, Advanced Roadmaps is [currently] a psuedo-operational tool. I have migrated product groups from Roadmunk into Jira Advanced Roadmaps. Each of our major engineering groups and teams have wildly different workflows.

We are trying to solve problem of having a common process and structure for our product teams within Jira Software for communicating vision and planning with Advanced Roadmaps... as we are in the process of defining and refining our end-to-end product delivery model. It feels in many ways we are putting the cart before the horse, and constantly slamming both into each other... but it is our reality.

Communicating with Roadmaps is a different operational reality than boards for more task / project management.

At least for us... the farther out the roadmap goes, the more theoretical it is.

JPD allows for wonderful data & visual flexibility for discovery AND for stakeholder storytelling. It is also a heck of a lot easier to use in many ways than Jira + AR.

At least for us, it isn't one of the issues related to the differences between JPD and Advanced Roadmaps and Jira Software... it's the massively weird, permutational (if that's even a word) Venn diagram of non-inclusive + overlapping features & functions across the Jira product suite ( Jira Software, Product Discovery, Service Management, Work Management... AND team-managed vs. company-managed features & functions... AND standard vs. premium features and functions).

There are other situational variables I don't have time to detail right now, but I will if I find time later this week.

Tanguy Crusson

Hi @J P @Kirk Brohman @__ Jimi Wikman @Sarah Jacobson-Preu @Florian Reichl - thanks for the question, and there are already great answers in this thread.

Here's a post that tries to explain our vision for this and where we're going, noting that we are still in "version 1" with the beta.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Product-Discovery-articles/The-relationship-between-Jira-Product-Discovery-Jira-Software/ba-p/2186837#M696

Sarah Jacobson-Preu

Thanks so much for the article. I've already passed it on to my beta team to help us get oriented on our approach.

J P_tty6su

Thanks a lot for this!

__ Jimi Wikman

I read from your reply that you are suffering from the one tool problem that many have in Agile context. The reality in most companies is that you have multiple levels of roadmaps and backlogs, and they don't connect 1-1 since each level also have level specific items as well.

If you set up Advanced Roadmaps properly, using the issue type scaling to provide the separation of levels, then you should get a solid view of the operational levels and a decent view of the strategic ones as well.

Discovery is a part of annual budgets as either maintenance or R&D, so these should be connected on the business levels to your advanced roadmap and I often see people try to shoehorn that into operations for some reason, which cause all kind of issues.

I suggest you sit down and start looking at your processes and then place them in the tool that is logical from what you do, not what methodologies and frameworks say. If you start with the truth that design and ideation is a business process that feed into the finance and requirement processes, then you will probably have a much easier time to fit it into the tools as well.

If you need someone to brainstorm with, then I am sure I'm not the only one here that is more than willing to help you with that

Rohan Swami

Hi all,

Rohan from the Jira Product Discovery Product Management team here.

We’re running a round of interviews to understand how customers are using Jira Product Discovery alongside Advanced Roadmaps. If you would like to share feedback to shape the improvements that we make to the product please book time in with me through Calendly https://calendly.com/rswami-atlassian/jpd-ar

Cheers,
Rohan

kara.peabody

Hi @Rohan Swami I would be interested in chatting with you (calendar shows no times available) if you would still like feedback!

Cheers,
Kara

Seth Mason

@Rohan Swami can we book time with you?

Rohan Swami

@kara.peabody @Seth Mason I'm on leave for the next ~2 weeks hence the calendar availability. I've created some more timeslots during May 4-19, can you try again please?