No More Themes
The Classic Plan migration guide indicates Themes are no longer available in the new Planning experience in Portfolio.
https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiraportfolioserver/migration-guide-859479290.html
Themes are no longer available in the new planning experience. Instead, we're replicating much of its value by providing flexible coloring options for labels and other custom fields.
Problem
This was one of the GREATEST selling features to my strategic leadership given it is the only true portfolio management feature. I COMPLETE DISAGREE that you can get "much of its value by providing flexible coloring options for labels" unless they can also deliver the target/estimate/actuals capability that the report delivered.
https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiraportfolioserver/themes-report-816527579.html
Here is a picture of a sample I built to demo the concept to my leadership:
Question
Is there ANY WAY to get Atlassian to keep the Themes capability?
No idea. No expectation of it being remotely likely. Just felt compelled to put it to the community ...
@Rhys Christian thanks so much for getting back to me! I am encouraged to be reminded that this is a transition approach, and that there is still an opportunity for feedback.
But we also recognise that the pie graph used by the old Themes feature is a highly valued so we'll be considering solutions to introduce this functionality to custom fields so we can reach value parity.
This is great to hear. Similar to Gadgets in Jira Dashboards such as Two-Dimentional filter results, I understand the value of a generic and flexible capabilities based on Jira fields. it would be GREAT to see a similar reporting capability available against existing or custom fields!
introducing this value parity is definitely a strong candidate for our Post-GA roadmap. Our roadmap is heavily guided by feedback we receive and we've been hearing quite a bit of similar feedback from customers throughout the Early access program who still desire this functionality.
Is there a better way or place for this feedback? Perhaps a feature request to be voted on?
Thanks again.
Hey Mark,
As we've developed 3.0 we've primarily been listening to feedback going through the 'Give feedback' button in the new experience. We've also been listening to other feedback such as this post.
We're definitely hearing you and your needs are being considered as we build our development roadmap. FYI - Our short-term roadmap is much around communicating the roadmap as well as going deeper with Capacity planning.
Just want to let you know that we're particularly interested in gauging the traction of the need for 'Themes' so we've got this public ticket so you can vote, add your thoughts and watch for any updates: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JPOSERVER-2627
Cheers,
Reinforcing the feedback here... Portfolio has very few features which let one display the roadmap with intelligent parsing.
Themes allow color coding & selective display of distinct development elements. This was the primary selling point of our organization deciding to use Portfolio to track our roadmap. Removing Themes (absent a clear replacement) would make Atlassion unusable as a roadmap planning tool... Jira/Portfolio is already pretty poor on display capabilities for communicating major roadmap emphasis to internal/external parties.
Thanks for the consideration & replies here.
J
@Jay Teborek I agree. Honestly, when I saw the "New Experience" beta trial, my first thought was "Dang, this is a step back in value away from "agile" visibility with views for multiple levels, to something that is moving toward antiquated "cant" charts which will loose its cross-cutting value.
Just to add to this, we're currently evaluating portfolio rollout for our sector as well, and having themes aligned to practice groups is an incredibly imnportant aspect we would also want to retain
Is there a feature request or ticket we can track to ensure we have visibility of implementation and/or changes? Having group wide visibility for strategic themes is very important for product selection in our area.
Hey Athar,
Thanks for sharing your need for this functionality. We've created a JAC ticket here so you can vote, add your thoughts and watch for any updates: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JPOSERVER-2627
Cheers,