How can I use Jira Align to manage a rolling strategic plan?

[Samantha Michael]

If you have a strategy that you set over a number of years, then edit on an annual basis (or ad hoc if required), how do you manage your Strategic Snapshots and Themes in Jira Align? 

* Can you create a new Snapshot and somehow realign some of the existing Themes to it from a fixed point in time?

* Do you create Themes per year and name them "Part 1" Part 2" or similar to manage this?

Thanks!

[Steve Sauser]

@Samantha Michael Thank you for your question. 

I think the best way to understand this is to understand the basics of Strategic Snapshots, once you have that fully understood I think you will see how you effectively leverage a Strategic Snapshot for your use case.  

Strategic Snapshots - What are they and how do they work? 

With that information in mind, it is typically best to have a Snapshot to represent a year at a time, but that does not mean that only work from year 1 is only displayed in year 1 (especially at the Theme level).  

• While not necessarily typical it is also entirely possible to use a multi-year Snapshot and leverage the Strategy Room Filtering to narrow the snapshot down to a more focused view.  

Since work in a snapshot is based upon the QIs/PIs association you can create the year 2 snapshot to include all of the year 1 QIs and you will see year 2 demonstrate both Year 1 and Year 2.  

You will notice as well that Goals are directly associated to each snapshot so you can set goals annually as well as across multiple years by associating them to more than 1 snapshot.  

Please read through the article and if you have further questions we will be happy to help. 

Additionally I would advise that Snapshots are typically difficult for most groups to understand just from an article or two; if you have an Advisory Services Engagement your Strategic Engagement Manager can help engage people inside Atlassian engage deeper on this topic. 

[Christina Haderer]

@Steve Sauserhow can I close a Strategic snapshot?

[Steve Sauser]

@Christina Haderer Snapshots themselves are not closed, they have an End date and the individuals managing the snapshots would stop adding new Quarterly Increments (PIs, depending on your taxonomy).  

Typically the natural patterns of closing QI/PIs, moving work items to Accepted, completing goals, etc...is all that needs to be completed.  The snapshot itself does not have a manually selected State or Status, it is all about the underlying timeboxes, work items, etc...