How do we start planning with Advanced Roadmaps?

[Jose Sermeno]

Background:

- 7 dev teams working in their own project.

- Issues types used today are Epics/Stories/Bugs/Tasks/Subtasks - managed by the teams within their project but some Epics include work from multiple projects.

- 3 week sprint cycle aligning their output with a common release to production ie v151, v152, v153 etc. We track this as the Fix Version in issues.

- Sprints include general features/bugs for all Brands we support and some Epics/Stories are tied to a specific or multiple Brands.

- Brand names are added to tickets using a multi-select custom field and are tracked across all issue types.

- Our company currently plans a Roadmap in a slide deck broken down by Quarter containing high level features that require effort from multiple teams.

- Some roadmap features need to be delivered by a certain date or for specific customers, others could potentially be deprioritized and new unplanned feature work added later.

- Dev teams point and plan work for the next sprint just days before the current sprint ends.

- Epics/Stories/Bugs/Tasks/Subtasks don't get assigned start/due dates, they just get "added" to a sprint using the Fix Version field once planned during the sprint prior.

We need to have a roadmap view in Jira that shows where we are within a specific Quarter to ensure we are going to deliver the features planned.

We need to present a view by Brand showing what Sprint specific features will be delivered in or were delivered.

We need a view of cross team dependencies/blockers.

We need to have a plan view where we can see potential impacts or trade-offs of rearranging/adding/removing work.

How can we start using Advanced Roadmaps? What process changes could we make?

Slide Deck Quarterly Work = Quarter Issue Type Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4?
Each Feature planned within a Quarter = Initiative?
Are Cross-Project releases needed? Are they helpful?
Can we view a roadmap status for the Quarters/Initiatives without the Epics/Stories from each project having defined Start/End dates?

Please share your thoughts!

[Eddie Meardon]

Hi @Jose Sermeno

Sounds like you have quite a complicated use case for Advanced Roadmaps. I'm going to throw a volley of documentation links your way that might help with your setup, and if you have any further questions feel free to reach out. 

One note before you get too far down this road is that currently Team-managed projects aren't compatible with Advanced Roadmaps, though the functionality is coming very soon. 

• For initial setup, I'd point you to the Get Started with Advanced Roadmaps section of the documentation. That has information about how to configure your Jira instance as well as what you need to set up in Advanced Roadmaps, including the custom labels that you use for Brands.
• For adding teams to your project, check out Teams. This is also where you'd set up the sprint duration and capacity of teams. 
• For deliverables that need to be done by a certain date, you could use Releases in Advanced Roadmaps. You can show these on your timeline, then plan against them. In Jira, these are called Fix versions. 
• When you talk about Dev teams planning their work days before a sprint start, the terminology that might help you find more information is "backlog grooming". A plan in Advanced Roadmaps can cut down on some of the time each grooming session takes.When you create a plan and assign issues to sprints, they'll be pre-placed into that future sprint in Jira. Then, as your teams move through their work, their grooming sessions will essentially be confirming what's already assigned to them, de-prioritizing things that aren't, or filling in their capacity it they're ahead of schedule. Here's some more reading about how to use a backlog for Scrum teams.
• You can set Advanced Roadmaps to use the dates associated with an issue's sprint assignment, as detailed on the Schedule issues page.
• You can change the timespan of your plan using the timeline settings, as detailed on the View your plan page (#3 is what I'm referring to). Right now, the increments are 1 month, 3 months, 1 year, and custom, but there will be a days/Months/Quarters/years view coming soon.
• Advanced Roadmaps calls issues that block other issues Dependencies. 
• Lastly, Advanced Roadmaps has the ability to create riffs of an existing plan. We call this feature Scenario planning. It allows you to create "what if" versions of your plan based on different outcomes. 

This is a pretty comprehensive list to get you started. That whole docset has some good reading that might be of interest to you, but if you have other questions, feel free to reach out here or to our support channels at support.atlassian.com/contact.

Cheers

Eddie

[Zach Greene]

Hi @Eddie Meardon

Question for you, we've built out a Q3 & Q4 2021 Advanced Roadmap with ~20 Epics slated for Delivery in the next 2 Quarters. From a New Feature Request standpoint, is there a way to "Add Flag" or "Block" at the Epic Level in Advanced Roadmaps similar to JIRA At the Team Level? Or Existing Functionality to Temporarily "Block" Epics that are "On Hold"

Thanks,

Zach 

[David Wuth]

We use the Flagged field set to a value of Impediment on Epics that are blocked (in our case, stories not yet created). The flag is visible in both Advanced Roadmaps and in the regular Jira issue view, plus you can write JQL against the value.