Single PI filtering in Jira Align's Strategy Room to retrospect on Feature, Story, & Dependency %'s

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Although the Strategy Room focuses broadly toward outcome rollup metrics, there is a targeted view I share with clients on how to help isolate potential FOUNDATIONAL breakdowns occurring when groups are not completing Features, Stories, and/or Dependencies in a quarter.  In this article, I'll describe how to use it.

Jira Align natively offers numerous areas to monitor work progress, which is typically done through locally "empowered" program level staff.  For example, Program Board, Program Room, PI Cleanup Report and even Roadmaps are frequently accessed for this. 

However, in looking across large organizations at times, there may be gaps in the program team staffing.  Attention to details like Feature completion and Dependency management can be lost.  This seems to happen from turnover, reorganizations, and just a general lack of discipline around reflecting back on a regular basis. 

(Why this is occurring more in 2022 - 2023 as a chronic problem for some organizations is a great discussion for another time!)  

Jira Software emphasizes work by Teams at the ground level accomplishing Stories and other work items, where sometimes completing the parent Jira Epic (aka "Feature") across a time period is not as easily visible and regularly occurring.  Teams may be great at hyper-focusing on getting their work done while still aggregate work item management suffers.

  

To help with visibility across an organization, the Strategy Room in Jira Align has a lower right section tracking work progress that can be useful looking back to a recently completed quarter or program increment (collection of sprints).  Although typically users will view the Strategy Room across time Snapshots that span multiple quarters, by filtering in the Tier 1 menu to a single quarter there can be a nice focused view on Features, Stories, and Dependencies.  (You could also define the Snapshot to just span a single quarter for your filtering.)    

In the example below, we can see that 45% of Features were completed in the previous quarter.  (518 out of 913 Stories and 122 out of 125 Dependencies were also completed.) Making and meeting commitments in a time period helps avoid the tendency for work at the Feature, Story, and Dependency levels to keep starting, but not finishing.  Because this view spans across all work tied to the timebox, this overall metric can effectively guide a Portfolio or Enterprise leader to identify which Programs need help improving. 

(Note: If the work actually was completed, but just not marked done - then an honest conversation needs to happen about "if anyone cares?" or "does it even matter?")  

In this example, the good news is that Dependency management on the whole looks be to operating quite well and is likely not the root cause of the problem (unless perhaps working on the Dependencies distracted the Teams from completing their prioritized work.)

Users can drill into the actual items by clicking the work item blue hyperlink to then contact the applicable areas and help improve things going forward.  Sorting the State field and including the Program column can help targeting the efforts to optimize.

Even though a more localized approach to program management is preferable, the reality across a large organization is that some groups may have struggles.  By leveraging a holistically designed view in Jira Align to filter narrowly down to a single quarter, you can gain helpful insight across to help mitigate unexpected shortfalls.  

Have you found any other aggregate views in Jira Align that can assist diagnosing trouble spots?