Portfolio for Jira is now Advanced Roadmaps

[#1]

Today, we are renaming the Marketplace add-on Portfolio for Jira to Advanced Roadmaps for Jira.

In the year since Portfolio for Jira 3.0 was introduced for Server and Data Center customers, customers have been rapidly building their own intuitive, drag-and-drop plans based on real-time information from Jira Software.

We’ve doubled down on adding new ways to plan, visualize, and manage work in Portfolio since the 3.0 launch, but we know that our reach has been limited as more Atlassian customers have begun to embrace our Cloud products.

As a result, we’ve worked behind the scenes to make these capabilities available on Cloud, and today are officially announcing them as the latest addition to Jira Cloud Premium.

With this change, we took the opportunity to look at how we refer to our our planning solutions more holistically. We have rapidly expanded our product family over the past year and have more choice for our customers than ever when it comes to solving how they plan, track, and communicate work across teams. To help you navigate those choices, we are introducing the following naming conventions across our deployment options:

• Roadmaps (available as part of all Jira Software Cloud plans)

• Advanced Roadmaps (available as part of Jira Software Cloud Premium and as a Marketplace app for Server and Data Center customers)

• Enterprise Roadmaps (available as part of Jira Align)

We believe these names both clarify and unify our approach to roadmapping at every level. The primary value of Portfolio for Jira is to provide a roadmap that is real-time, collaborative, and richly featured to communicate plans and the status of work in an intuitive way, and the name Advanced Roadmaps conveys that.

If you haven’t taken a look at Advanced Roadmaps in a while, we invite you to take it for a spin! Regardless of whether you’re on Cloud, Server, or Data Center, you’ll have the same product experience.

Try Advanced Roadmaps

For Cloud | For Server or Data Center

[Benjamin Horst]

Is it just me who had the impression that the picture for this is a middlefinger? :/ 

[Shana]

@Benjamin Horst That was certainly not our intention! I'll share the feedback with our design team.

[Aaron Allsop]

@Benjamin Horst lol! That was my initial thought as well.

[Alisson Santos]

I am using Jira Software Cloud Standard, and isn't the Premium. Can it test tool? If yes, How do it do?

[Josh Frank]

@Alisson Santos  Any Jira Software Cloud Standard customer can test out Advanced Roadmaps (as part of Jira Software Premium) 1 month for free. When you click to upgrade your plan, you're starting a free trial that you can opt out of at any point throughout the course of the trial. 

[Sam Ely]

I had that exact impression.  I would highly recommend that you change your graphic.

[Andy Ukasick]

OMG... that's hilarious! That graphic is definitely flipping us (or someone/something) the bird!  :)

...too late for April fools day.  Haha.

[Benjamin Horst]

@Shana No offense taken :). Actually it’s quite funny, because it’s like those magic pictures ... „ can you see the old woman smile?“

I think one does not recognize when designing it. There’s clearly a timeline there. It was just when I read the text and the pic was in peripheral sight.

Just thought I was the only one who pictured that when I saw it.

[spryce]

Seems intentional. If you want it it is going to double your licensing costs... If you don't like it, see the graphic.

[Deleted user]

@Josh Frank Does this mean if we have an existing Portfolio add-on live on our cloud instance that you'll auto cancel this so we don't get charged if we're already on the Premium plan? 

[Josh Frank]

@[deleted] That's exactly right. If you're a Jira Software Premium customer, you'll no longer be charged for Portfolio for Jira Cloud. 

[Shana]

Thank you to everyone for your very open and candid feedback on our header image! We've decided to remove it from this post.

[Joe Lo]

Any outlook as to when the improved capacity management will be available?

[Pete Morris]

Hi @Joe Lo - what sort of improvements are you looking for?

[dfreedman61]

I am attempting to upgrade to Advanced Roadmaps.  It is not showing up in the marketplace.

[Pete Morris]

Hi @dfreedman61 - are you on Server/DC or Cloud deployment? If you're on Cloud, Advanced Roadmaps is now part of our Jira Software Cloud Premium edition, if you're on Server/DC you can still find it on our Marketplace.

[dfreedman61]

Hi @Pete Morris - I am on server.  When I search  in Market Place it doesn’t not show.  I upgraded Jira to 8.9.  Could this be the issue?

[Pete Morris]

Hi @dfreedman61 yes, we had a small hiccup in marking Advanced Roadmaps as compatible with 8.9. This has been fixed and you should now be able to see it on the Marketplace again. Sorry about that!

[dfreedman61]

Thanks @Pete Morris i was able to access and install advanced roadmaps.

[Natasja Jordaan]

We have Portfolio for Jira (Cloud) and I am using Advanced Roadmap as a trial.  I am unable to export my data to Excel which is functionality I had in Portfolio for Jira. 

I tried running a report from the Initiatives Project to detail all issues but the scope report is not displayed as a report option although an Atlassian search refers to such a report being available.  

What am I missing?

[Pete Morris]

Hi @Natasja Jordaan - the scope report is still present in the live plan interface and can be exported to CSV. This export feature does not yet exist in the new interface but will be coming soon. In the mean time, if you are using the new interface then you can change your interface back to use this feature.

[Thomas]

Hi,

first of all, I`d like to say that I totally love the new UI although it now looks more than a typical PPM solution. Scheduling issues by manually moving them was long time requested and helps a lot.

Some important features were removed.
Themes, Reporting, and Excel export f.e. Maybe because usage wasn`t that high.

But Atlassian made some assumptions that hit us really hard.

Stages and Skills are gone. Hm. That is really a pity.
With those we did high-level planning as we have a fixed flow: Backend -> API -> Frontend. Using stages and skills allowed us to enter high-level estimates on Epic level without creating all Stories at the beginning of our planning.

But the hardest change for us is that Team capacities and the individual assignment of users to team was removed. As we are pooling our resources and adding developers for a certain period or with limited hours to a project is not possible anymore. So as far as I understood, advanced roadmaps can only be used when the team members have 100% capacity. This totally changes our planning. F.e. we planned always only 31hours per developer and week, keeping 9 hours as buffer for bugfixing, vacation, and illness.
Planning of freelancers to enhance team capacities for a certain? Not possible anymore. 
The whole automatic planning does not work in our current setup to get reliable planning again.
Or do it again manually like years before.

Hm... I tried to find an information if these functions will make it also into Advanced Roadmaps but I could find a Roadmap for Plans. Only notes, that functions were removed and reasons why, but no info if they are going to come back.

What will happen with Portfolio? Will it get sunsetted at a certain point and we forced to use Advanced roadmaps?

[Athar Agha]

Thomas - those are really interesting insights, thanks for sharing that .. we're just starting our portfolio work & some of these aspects would have been really nice to use.

Can we have a comment from Atlassian as to whether/when these features would be available in the latest version? or have they been permanently removed?

[Joe Lo]

@Pete Morris As to the "improved capacity management" I asked, I think this Atlassian page (https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiraportfolioserver/future-releases-and-limitations-953663163.html) sums up well as to some of the limitations of the current improved UI. We are a new Jira user, and were told Portfolio was for project/resource management. We started to use/adopt in the past year but as Portfolio moved on to the V3/new UI, some of the basic/common sense resource management capabilities (skills, calendar, availability) were removed. I guess I am speaking more on the lack of the individual capacity planning. Our developers work on multiple projects, large scale projects. So it would be nice before a new project is initiated we have a view to see the needed skills/developers and their current commit/load before we commit to a new project. And the ability to look at project management from various angles (top down-program portfolio/projects & bottom up-individual developer commitments to multiple projects) to do what if planning and resource balancing is important. It seems Portfolio V2 was close and now V3 has just totally removed these aspects of resource/(individual) capacity planning. This has forced us to look at other tools like BigPicture, Structure, and Smartsheets.

I saw on the page https://www.atlassian.com/blog/portfolio-for-jira/portfolio-for-jira-3-and-beyond?_ga=2.39608868.626997724.1590171029-87913291.1525200129 that we can expect more focus on capacity management, hence am interested in knowing what is being improved in this area. Thanks.

[Thomas]

@Joe Lo

What you are describing is exactly our use case for Portfolio.

We created initiatives and epics with Stages and Skills, adjusted team capacities, and calculated the influence of new developments or projects on our current timelines. And based on that decide if we have to fill up our resources or shift priorities or decline a project.  A fantastic option you couldn`t find in any other product elsewhere. And unbelievable important for business decisions. What happens if important team members get ill, shall I grant vacation in a certain period, what deadline can we commit to a new client based on high level estimates? All these functions depend on Team capacities, so I barely understand why this feature is gone.
But as far as I understood the limitations and removed functions in the articles you posted, these functions won`t make it back into Advanced Roadmaps. And this is really more than a pity.
Instead of rethinking the Team availability and absence management - which was really challenging -, Atlassian decided to cut off the functionality...hm, strange decision but maybe not usage was not high enough or the focus of the product has changed. I mean, working with Scrum and interdisciplinary teams on a product or product line, not intercepted by client projects, has lower challenges for planning, fewer dependencies. So maybe we are simply out of scope for Advanced Roadmaps with our company setup.