Help shape the direction of agile planning in Fabric!

[Natalie Johnson]

Hi everyone! Nat here from the Fabric team.

We’d love to get your feedback on some concepts and ideas that we have for using Fabric and Jira.

We’re currently exploring how Fabric can support many parts of the agile planning process, from high-level ‘macro planning’ through to team-level planning activities like sprint planning, backlog prioritisation and tasking out.

Our ask: Watch the video below 👇 and leave your feedback in the comments.

We’d love to hear from you on:

• When and where in your workflow you would use these features?

• Why would you use them over your current solution? Why would you not?

• What would you hope that these features could do?

• Are there other features of functionality you hope Fabric can build?

• How would prioritise these concepts against each other? Which ones do you find more valuable than others? Why?

Cheers!
Nat | Fabric design lead

[Jonno Katahanas]

@Andrei Tuch  @Svajunas Gaina @Bowan Spanbroek @Nick Wozniak @Francis Batilo @Andrew Kendris @Austin Churchill @[deleted] would love your take on some of the concept's @Natalie Johnson shared in the Loom video above 🙏

[Deleted user]

We use visual collaboration tools online for user story mapping, so a healthy relationship between Fabric and Jira would be valuable. At first blush, we see 'show child issues' potentially making our user story maps easier to scan. On the theme of keeping Fabric tidy, it might be nice to have some way to gather sticky notes by a value, like a keyword or votes. Or even asking Fabric to generate themes and group notes by them based on note contents. The bulk operations also seem like a nice-to-have and would help with organizing things by labels/keywords.

'Import Jira issues' could also be helpful for us for user story mapping in situations where we have stories already on a board (it happens), but in principle seems like a no-brainer. It saves work on data entry, helps avoid duplicates and conflicts, and presumably would bring in all the information you'd care to see from your board (i.e., assignee, status, etc.).

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Christian

[Bowan Spanbroek]

Nice updates Nat and team. Definitely focusing on the differentiators and adding value to the Jira experience.

• When and where in your workflow you would use these features?

  • Post discovery when we're moving into design and build. 
  • Specific use cases for the smart categories would be team refinement sessions, sprint planning and negotiations & strategy sessions with the product owner. 
  • Would also be a way better format to run standups - we currently look at Jira boards which is a bit clunky and there is alot of noise around the UI for the event purpose.

• Why would you use them over your current solution? Why would you not?

  • The ability to add bulk changes to issues like labels and assigns is a bit of a game changer and actually helps us get around a bit of a clunky process in Jira of bulk editing. Would save quite a bit of time in refinement sessions.
  • The ability to actually link the issues is great as we find this very clunky and manual at the moment so would enhance the usability of Jira overall.

• What would you hope that these features could do?

  • The bi-directional sync is essential for Smart Categories - wouldn't use it without that. We would not use it if the syncing had issues or was slow.
  • Both the connections and the smart categories would need to have a clear way to turn to manual sync (press a button) and then making it automatic should be something you turn on deliberately to avoid messing up boards.

• Are there other features of functionality you hope Fabric can build?

  • If you were going to build a backlog prioritisation smart category could you perhaps make it a seperate 'type' or board with a different UI treatment as it's a really specific use case.  

• How would prioritise these concepts against each other? Which ones do you find more valuable than others? Why?

  1. Bulk Import - IMO this needs to come first as it enables the other features.
  2. Smart Categories - The bulk operations in a visual format adds alot of value to our workflow by making it easier and saving time. 
  3. Changing Issues Relationships - This is something that is a bit difficult to do properly in Jira currently and visualising the connections really helps map a project properly.

- Bowan

[Jonno Katahanas]

@[deleted] great thoughts! Thanks. Really love the idea of having a way to group ideas/work items. We'll have to have a think about that.

[Jonno Katahanas]

Epic feedback, @Bowan Spanbroek 🙏 Some questions:

The bi-directional sync is essential for Smart Categories - wouldn't use it without that. We would not use it if the syncing had issues or was slow.

What does "bi-directional sync" mean for you here? Just that when an issue was dragged into a Smart Section, it immediately updated that ticket in Jira + on the Smart Link view of the ticket in Fabric?

Both the connections and the smart categories would need to have a clear way to turn to manual sync (press a button) and then making it automatic should be something you turn on deliberately to avoid messing up boards.

When you talk about "manual sync", would that be where a user draws connections and defines a relationship to add to the ticket in Jira, BUT, it only adds that link in Jira when the user says they want it to be updated in Jira?

 If you were going to build a backlog prioritisation smart category could you perhaps make it a seperate 'type' or board with a different UI treatment as it's a really specific use case.  

Do you have any thoughts on what you'd hope a separate board with different UI treatment could look like?

Bulk Import- IMO this needs to come first as it enables the other features.

For how you search for Jira issues to import, would you expect to use JQL or just a simple search where you type words related to what you're looking to import? ccc: @Christina Ristevski 

Thanks again for the feedback!

[Christina Ristevski]

On that thread of searching Jira issues to import, how often do your teams use saved filters in Jira?

[Bowan Spanbroek]

@Jonno Katahanas 

• Bi-directional sync would be that as you said it updates directly into Jira - ideally it would also respond the other way with Jira updates happening in Fabric but I don't think that other direction essential on second thought.
• Manual sync - yes exactly, I just think with links but also any updates you would want to be in control as to when it pushes when first using. This is because you may make multiple changes in a team session before coming to a consensus. 
• Backlog board - maybe a different colour with an icon that indicates prioritisation (like 1,2,3 or something)
• For the issue search probably just keywords to start but I know some product owners and operations people might use JQL. 

@Christina Ristevski 

• We use filters quite a bit in Jira but that's because we are an agency and have alot of different projects and types of work happening at once. We also use our sprint board for standups so it helps seperating out projects in that view.

[Jonno Katahanas]

Thanks @Bowan Spanbroek

Re; real-time sync, we'd definitely expect for any link created in Fabric to update in Jira in almost real-time. 

[Svajunas Gaina]

Will it include advanced roadmaps hierarchy when showing child issues?

[Andrew Kendris]

Thank you for this overview @Natalie Johnson and thank you for the mention @Jonno Katahanas 

• When and where in your workflow you would use these features? I see this adding a more tactile way of organizing issues within Jira.  I see tool supporting the early stages of a project (design/planning processes) and when the team does retrospectives.

• Why would you use them over your current solution? Why would you not?
  • Our non-IT teams would benefit from this because the learning curve is not as steep. When we show them Jira and fields that contain data, it rarely has a positive outlook.  If we want to grow our adoption of modern-day tools, this UX and flexibility for collaboration is what will fill in the gap.
  • If we consider another white boarding tool, all the design we’ve done will need to be copied over / duplicated into Jira so this saves our project team time and we can keep the momentum

• What would you hope that these features could do?
  • Smart Sections: Ability to overlap smart sections (think of a dynamic two-dimensional filter gadget where issues can be moved around in the workspace.
  • Visualize Child Issues: Issues can be dragged and dropped from one parent issue to another and have that sync back to Jira
  • Importing Issues, if there is a way to write a JQL script within the Fabric interface so users can get what they need without searching for individual tasks

• Are there other features of functionality you hope Fabric can build To avoid users needing to go down to the toolbar on the bottom to grab items, it would be awesome to have keyboard shortcuts that automatically add those items to the board where the mouse pointer resides (text box, post-its, lines, etc.)

• How would prioritize these concepts against each other? Which ones do you find more valuable than others? Why?
  • Importing Jira Issues: If the team is doing a retro or needs to creatively map out work for existing issues, this functionality is a big win so the user doesn't need to manually copy/paste from a separate window
  • Visualizing dependencies is a big win because that give immediate benefit to teams that need to see how tasks are linked in a more familiar way (Non-technical teams on my end have issues understanding the roadmap view)
  • Smart Sections I would put next in the ranking because that can be done via Jira but if there was a way to overlapping smart sections (mentioned above) that would be a win because all a users needs to do is move the issues from one quadrant to another and update multiple data points.

[Jonno Katahanas]

@Svajunas Gaina great question. I'd assume we'd respect any form of parent-child relationship, which would include those in Advanced Roadmaps. @Natalie Johnson (design lead), our eng feature lead and I will need to dig into this more on our side.

[Jonno Katahanas]

Thanks for the epic feedback, @Andrew Kendris !

Visualize Child Issues: Issues can be dragged and dropped from one parent issue to another and have that sync back to Jira

Love this idea (as well as your others, too). We've played around with something related to this in the past. Might be worth us going a bit deeper.

Importing Issues, if there is a way to write a JQL script within the Fabric interface so users can get what they need without searching for individual tasks

We have some people working on this now! We'll keep you posted when it's available. cc: @Christina Ristevski @Mario Nebl @Eden Gorton 

Are there other features of functionality you hope Fabric can build To avoid users needing to go down to the toolbar on the bottom to grab items, it would be awesome to have keyboard shortcuts that automatically add those items to the board where the mouse pointer resides (text box, post-its, lines, etc.)

We've been planning to do this. Haven't got round to yet. Should hopefully have in near future.

Thanks again for the awesome insight!