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!

[Rachael Williams]

Hi @Rhys Christian - the documentation says this feature is "currently rolling out to cloud customers".  Is there anything you can share on general timelines we can expect for this to become available?  I'm curious if we see it listed within our upcoming release tracks or will it just appear one day. Our users will love the ability to view dependency lines and having visibility around what is on-track / off-track.

[Rhys Christian]

Hey @Rachael Williams - These improvements are expected to become available on Release Tracks around February 11th.

[Chris Rocheford]

Hi @Rhys Christian , is there a way to show the points completed in the sprint when it is closed? Right now, for our teams it only shows 0/0 points done. This may be a later improvement but just curious.

[Chris Rocheford]

Also, @Rhys Christian, one other emphasis of feedback is if there is a way we can highlight features that have been delayed or pushed out from their original due date.

[Rhys Christian]

Hey @Chris Rocheford - Thank you for sharing your feedback.

• Are you trying to get visibility of spriints that were closed before the Program Board was created? That is currently a limitation because when a Program Board is created we filter out completed work (as they are noise during future planning). The capacity data is based on the scope that's in the Program Board, so these previously completed sprints won't be populated.
  
  But, as you progress through the scope of the Program Board we will retain the completed issues after creation, so will accurately present historical completed sprint capacity.
  Does this work for your needs? 
  
  
• We'll take into consideration your request around viewing the changes to the plan. It's not currently planned on our roadmap but your insights will help us to consider it. Am I accurate in categorising this need as 'baselining', as a way to compare the 'planned' vs 'actual'? and is there a point in time you would take a 'snapshot' of the whole plan to be compared against at a later date?

[Chris Rocheford]

Hey @Rhys Christian , thank you for your reply. Please find my responses below:

1. Points Delivered in Completed Sprints - We just began using the program board to end the year last year using it for our PI Planning session and plan to use it moving forward. The planning for the work that was added during the planning session (early-mid Dec) and in scope for the program board was for the first 5 sprints (PI) of the new year (1/1/25-3/11/25).  With us having completed our first two sprints of the new year/PI, ideally these sprints would show as completed but also show the points delivered in the sprint. On the board, the Jira issues (story, tasks, etc.) are still visible in the completed sprints and showing as such but we're also hoping to be able to see the points delivered in that given sprint when hovering or clicking on the team's sprint.
2. Feature Delivery - Planned vs Actual, you nailed it. We're looking to baseline what was planned vs the actual delivery timeline for our features. We would take the baseline snapshot after our PI Planning Session (a week or two before the new PI starts) and then compare the results after the end of the PI. It would also help to be able to clearly see what features have been moved out from their original date throughout the course of the PI.

Again, really appreciate your response and collaboration. We've had really good feedback from our teams on the beta and we're really excited to see the new changes above come Feb.