The Program board is coming out of Open Beta!

[#1]

Hey everyone I'm Rhys, a Product Manager on Jira Plans. Building the Program board has been a fun journey, and now we’re happy to announce that it’s is leaving Open Beta and moving into being a full-fledged feature of Plans!

To mark the occasion, and to update you on the features that are coming to Program board and, and what’s next.

You can also read our updated documentation here.

Dependencies are coming to the Program board

One of the most requested features we heard during our Open Beta period was the need for robust dependency management on the Program board. And that’s exactly what we built.

As we wrap up the first phase of development, the Program board is getting the following features to support planning and monitoring dependencies:

Filter on the dependencies you need to see

You can now filter the issues that show on your Program board based on whether they’re on-track or off-track (off-track dependencies refers to when the lead-in issue is blocking the second issue based on relative placement of the issues in the Board - we discuss this concept more in the documentation).

See how dependencies impact other work

When a dependency is off-track, you can draw a line from it to the work it’s impacting in two ways:

• Show lines that visualize all of the off-track dependencies in your Program board

• Show dependencies related to a specific issue

Add dependencies as you plan

This change isn’t a visual improvement as the other two are, but rather a functionality that many people have requested: you can now create a dependency between two issues without leaving the Program board.

What else is new?

Outside of dependencies on the Program board, there’s still heaps of other improvements to get excited about, such as:

• Flexible cadence - originally, the Program board had a rigid structure of 6 iterations of 2 weeks each. The Program board has been more flexible for a while, but it’s worth highlighting again

• Edit the estimates of Epics on the board

• Suggest sprints to add to your program board based on the team’s backlog

• More information on the cards - the Priority, Status, and Assignee field

• Accessibility improvements - the Program board is easier to use for those who use assistive technology

But this isn’t the end!

As the Program board moves from Open Beta to being a pillar of the planning experience, we’re not going to stop improving it.

We’re still keen to hear your feedback about it, features you want to see, shortcomings of it, and whatever else you want us to hear.

[Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_]

These dependency visualizations are looking good!