What are the requirements for a Epic and a Story to be represented in the timeline?

[Thomas Wynne]

I have EPICs and Stories that just aren't showing up in the timeline, I then have Epics and Stories that are showing up that shouldn't be included in the timeline at all.  The app looks to be very powerful but something just isn't right about how it represents Epics and Stories in the timeline.  

I have sprints that aren't showing their correct names etc... I know it's more of a general question but is this application ready for primetime?  

[Allard van Helbergen]

Hi Thomas,

If you're looking for a starter guide to get you going, have a look at the following resources.

• Demo video: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/portfolio/demo
• Introductory docs: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiraportfoliocloud/discovering-portfolio-for-jira-800293075.html

With regards to your question, all data in the 2.0+ release is pulled from JIRA so that it is always up to date.

Have a look at what you have in your scope, teams and releases views, to ensure that everything is as it should be there. For instance, make sure that all your relevant issues are estimated (an unestimated issue can not be scheduled); that your teams are connected to the board you want; and the dates set on your releases are as you expect. 

The Portfolio scheduling algorithm schedules work items as early as possible and as capacity allows. So these might be the things that you see showing up in your schedule which you have not assigned to a sprint in JIRA. They are your proposed roadmap. 

Best,
Allard 

[Jim Degnan]

Thanks for the response Allard.  I'm attempting to better understand the scheduling algorithm as well.

One issue I've noticed is the algorithm doesn't prioritize "In Progress" work items.  It proposes roadmaps that breaks up Epics even if some of the stories are already "In Progress".  As you can imagine, any roadmap proposal that breaks up work this way would not be well received by the project team.

A proposed solution for this is to first schedule the completion of stories in Progress followed by stories that belong to the same Epic.

Is that possible?

[Allard van Helbergen]

Hi Thomas,

I'm glad my answer was helpful. The status of an issue is indeed not considered at the moment. Another solution would be to assign the issue to a sprint to schedule it first.

It would be great if you could file your idea as a feature suggestion here, https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa.

Thanks,
Allard

[Thomas Wynne]

example.png

Hopefully the picture will come through, but this is the timeline I'm talking about.  In reality I believe it's pulling this data from some kind of cache or data store that does not represent what is in JIRA.  For example, in my board I have 4 sprints with Stories and Epic's defined in each sprint.  The top shows that Sprint 4 isn't populated with anything, the other Sprints have some of the Epics but not all of the Epics that are being worked on.. and, they actually contain content that isn't scheduled at all.. which I'm not sure how or why those are being put in there.  The second arrow towards the bottom shows a release that isn't defined in my JIRA system.. it may have been defined in the past but currently there is no release with that end date.  It's all a bit confusing to me to be honest.

I'm excited about the product and what it can do for me.. but I feel like I'm just missing something quite important that makes this work.  Note, all this is pulling from JIRA, I haven't used this to actually Plan yet and push to JIRA.

[Maarten Cautreels]

Hi Thomas,

What Timelines are you talking about? 

Best,

Maarten

[Thomas Wynne]

Maarten, I put it as an answer instead of comment, please see my post in the answers.  Sorry.