roadmap tools that can be applied to only a few users rather then everyone?

Question

Hi,

I want 3-5 users to have an equivalent capability to the multi project roadmaps offered in JIRA premium.

right now we have them using tools like MS project. its not cost effective for us to upgrade everyone to premium just so these few people can play with the roadmaps feature. its also not ideal that some of the third party tools like Biggantt do the same thing. with hundreds of users even these lower cost third party tools get more expensive then the other software we are using.

is there any way to get this kind of functionality into a third party tool without having to pay licensing fees for every single user in JIRA?

thanks!

Dave Rosenlund (Trundl) · Answer

Hi, @Lloyd Bullard. To add (a little) to what @Walter Buggenhout has already said...

I work for an Atlassian Marketplace partner. And I can tell you that we — I think all — marketplace partners take your concern into consideration when pricing our products.

For example, if we believe only 10% of the total number of the customer's Jira users will use our product, that becomes part of the pricing formula.

But there are other variables, too, as Walter points out. For example, how much value does the entire organization derive when 10% of the Jira users use our product?

[Those are made up numbers, but it illustrates the point.]

In other words, if we could price our products for a subset of your Jira users, the price would be about the same as the one you see it today.

I hope this helps to clarify things for you.

-dave

Lloyd Bullard_xftsde · Answer

Hi Walter,

we have a small software development team of 10 users doing one body of work for which the roadmap/Gantt tools are useful.

we then have a policy of including everyone across the organization as users in JIRA for an entirely different transformation project. There is no reason for those several hundred users to have access to advanced roadmap tools in JIRA.

it is simply not cost effective to roll out any tool if it includes all of those other users who have no use for it. from what you have described there is no way to segregate users/projects like this unless we set up two entirely separate JIRA licenses.

thanks for your advice, I will look at how running two separate side by side licenses might work but its likely we will have to stick with separate tools for the moment.

Kind regards,

Lloyd

Walter Buggenhout · Answer

Hi @Lloyd Bullard,

Atlassian's marketplace policies are pretty straightforward and very open: if you add an app to your instance, it is billed in line with the user tier of the product you are adding it to. So basically: no, marketplace apps cannot be limited (in terms of license cost) to fewer users than the user tier of your core product. Alternatives may exist by using an external tool that connects to Jira, but is not implemented as an app inside your site.

On the other hand, you say that you are currently using MS Project (which is basically a tool that is applying that model) and you seem to be looking for another solution. That must be because you are not entirely happy with the way this currently works.

Apart from looking at the mere cost of the license, it is also worth looking at the value the tool delivers. Tools like Advanced Roadmaps and Gantt-like apps let you share your roadmap with all your users in Jira, in real time. This provides context to all your users about the bigger picture of what they contribute to - not just to a select group of PM's who design the plan, but don't have proper ways of communicating it to the teams unless they spend a lot of (often wasted time) in meetings or building presentation decks. Opening up your roadmap has a lot of benefits too (and cost savings in other areas).

So, look at your company culture and weigh off the added value against the cost and see what best fits your organisation, I would say.

Hope this helps!