The relationship between Atlas and Jira explained

[Edie Hovermale]

Hello @Rachel Lin ,

As several folks mentioned above, how does Atlas connect or relate to Advanced Roadmaps?

Thanks,

Edie

[Rachel Lin]

@Edie Hovermale 

Great question. At the moment, the Atlas for Jira app does not support Advanced Roadmaps specifically. If you are using epics in Advanced Roadmaps, you'll still be able to see Atlas connected to those epics in the issue view. 

We are starting to explore how Atlas can connect closer to Advanced Roadmaps though. For example, things we've thought about are being able to display status on the bars in Advanced Roadmaps, or being able to group issues by Atlas goals. 

Can you please share with me how you might like to connect Atlas to Advanced Roadmaps? If you're open to a chat, I'd love to schedule some time with you via my Calendly: https://calendly.com/rlin2/30min

[Sing Chen]

Hi @Rachel Lin , are there are resources or documentation that lean into the relationship between Jira Work Management and Atlas?

At Ceridian, we're relatively early in our Jira adoption journey and leading our PMO Operations team, I'd like to better understand how we can make the best use of Jira Software, JWM, Atlas, and Confluence.

Thanks,

Sing

[Rachel Lin]

@Sing Chen Hi Sing! We are just starting to explore the journey between JWM and Atlas. I'd love to chat with you more to understand how your teams set up JSW, JWM, Atlas and Confluence. If you have some time, please drop it in my Calendly: https://calendly.com/rlin2/30min

[Sing Chen]

Thanks @Rachel Lin . It's early days for us in terms of how we optimize the use of the products. I'm piloting Atlas for our PMO work over the next few weeks while at the same time pulling together some folks internally as they have conversations about potentially using Jira Align to connect execution and strategy, and how that fits in with pipeline management, discovery work, tactical work execution, and reporting.

I'm also meeting with our Account Manager this week and will know more in the coming weeks as I start formulating a strategy, which I only have the very bare bones of at the moment.

I'll likely reach out when I feel better placed to have an intelligent conversation with you. Feel a little uneducated at the moment but I'm getting there!

[andrew_pass]

Hi, great to see the progress on this!

Loving the product so far, for the integration between JIRA and Atlas, noticed at the moment the status update only displays on epics.

We have a level above Epics (Initiatives) where the status updates would ideally be linked to rather than at epic level.

I noticed even if I link an initiative to the project in Atlas it doesn't pull through, are there any plans to enable this please?

Thanks,

Andy

[Mike Bronner]

The biggest problem we have is for developers to surface problems to Atlas while working on issues. If would be great for any issue under an epic to automatically contain a status update form for Atlas, so they can record issues as they arise directly in the issue.

The idea is brilliant, but it still falls just a tad short for us to be able to use it effectively in our Scrum team environment.

[Diogo Teles]

Great article! We are trialing Atlas at our business and I can see this question come up. I wish I could just refer the relevant people to these articles and that they would actually read it.

[Richard Herrada]

We think of Initiatives as the projects and Epics as the "milestones" (for lack of a better word) within a project.

It appears that there is a 1:1 connection between an Atlas project and an Initiative or Epic.

However, it would be great if we could connect the Milestones/Epics to the Atlas project too.  So when 1 of the Epic/Milestone dates slips, we have an easy way to communicate that to stakeholders.

In other words:

As a Stakeholder, I want to understand the status of the milestones within a project timeline, so that I have better confidence that the overall project is on track.

[Julia _ 55 Degrees]

There seems to be an assumption that a project (AKA something I track in Atlas) would only have one epic. I think that's rarely the case. So, in order to link a Jira item to the project (seems there can only be one link), do I need to create a parent type card that contains epics to connect that to the Atlas project?

[Antonio Valle _G2_]

@Julia _ 55 Degrees fully agree. When we implement project portfolio management with Jira, we allow for connection to Epics *or* to a fully fledged Jira project.

The main problem here is that you don't have "progress" for a project unless you implement some kind of global tracking or some plugins (and of course destroy the agility concept...)