How does JPD support continuous product discovery?

[Troy Eberlein]

I just discovered JPD today, so forgive me if this is a noob question. 

It strikes me that JPD is very idea-centric, instead of outcome / goal / problem - centric.  I would like to see strong support for modern product discovery methodologies like those found in SVPG's Inspired or Product Talk's Continuous Discovery Habits. 

I think most companies have a deluge of ideas, often lacking strong linkage to a problem that is clearly worth solving.  I want to get out of the feature factory mentality, and looking for tools that support this instead of adding fuel to the ideas bonfire :-)  

[Tanguy Crusson · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone, it's been a while since the last update on this topic. Good news: we have started working on this. 

As a first step, we're implementing the concept of "issue type", and "relationships" between these issue types, as you can see in this Loom: https://www.loom.com/share/1d360838826842d396ff57d8048dec59

From there, we'll introduce a new type of view (map/tree), so you can do things like this: 

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Tanguy Crusson 

Thanks for this update!

What can you share about how the linking / types of links will work for this feature? 

For example, will it be a new link type, use "Polaris issue link" with "implements", or something else?  Knowing that will help automation rule writers account for this change in any existing rules which use links to manage Ideas versus other issues types.  Thanks!

Kind regards,
Bill

[David Nadri]

@Tanguy Crusson (& the entire JPD team who's working on this) - WOW! Thank you so much for working on issue types and relationships in JPD! This is the long-awaited feature we’ve been missing to better organize various types of objects in JPD like ideas, opportunities, problems, solutions, improvements, tasks, and more. 

A couple of quick questions and feedback:

1. Will this feature be available to all JPD users, or limited to Premium plan? While incentivizing Premium is understandable, I really hope this core feature will be accessible to everyone.
2. Will this feature allow us to create a single, holistic view of goals, ideas, and delivery tickets in JPD (like the mockups below)? (See my JPD post here)
   
   @Amina Bouabdallah mentioned the JPD team is exploring ways to show how everything ladders up from goals to tasks.
   
   The Atlassian Product Discovery Handbook covers how to apply PM practices using JPD by improving the connection between discovery and delivery. However, there’s currently no way to view the full picture—from goals down to sub-tasks in one view—without switching between JPD and Jira. A unified view linking the ‘why’ to delivery tickets would allow stakeholders to easily understand scope, alignment with objectives, and monitor progress across ideas, epics, and stories, all in one place.

If you/your team is open to a short call to discuss any feedback further, I’m happy to connect. Thanks again for this great news!

[JCameron]

@Tanguy Crussonbuilding on what @David Nadri was saying, even if Jira Plans was the mechanism for viewing the top-down hierarchy, that would be fine. Being able to use JPD "Ideas" as an "initiative-level" parent would be ideal.

Internally at my company we currently use Initiatives (and one level above essentially for product area) for our twice-quarterly roadmap planning meetings. We were very excited about JPD since it essentially formalizes the tools and visuals for having a good high-level discussion around staffing, goal impact, ROI, etc. Once it's set up, talking about adjusting weights as the year goes on and seeing how items resort is a much better way to approach the discussion of "what to work on next"?

A lot of excitement for the tool dropped off however when we saw that we couldn't use the JPD Idea issues as drop-in replacements for our Initiatives and have them appear in that spot in our hierarchy on our Plans. Going from backlog to in progress is simply a status change from our point of view. We don't want a hard divide between worlds like that (unless we choose to put one there).

[Brent Vierling]

👍Very exciting @Tanguy Crusson

Thanks for all your work on this.  It opens up exciting opportunities (no pun intended).  In my hope of this feature coming, I've been linking parent/child relationships of my opportunities and solutions.

It looks like you are heading in the direction I was hoping for!  I can't wait.  The visual of the tree also looks really good. 

Please don't push this to just Premium!

[Matt Jones]

This looks like a great step forward @Tanguy Crusson !

Will you be able to "control" the hierarchy in any way (ie. this implements that, is solution for etc.) and define your own types/links to suit your own workflow or ways of working?

And will these types be available in JIRA plans in any way with any hierarchy honoured?

[Tanguy Crusson]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

TLDR: we're not thinking of showing deep hierarchies from goals to work in JPD. However we're going to integrate this with Jira Plans so you can do that. 

E.g. in JPD you can have opportunities, solutions, experiments, editions, iterations. That's a graph of product objects. You ladder up opportunities to goals. You link epics to solutions.

You can then decide to show goals>opportunities>solutions>epics>tasks in Jira Plans (a slice of that graph).

[Tanguy Crusson]

@Bill Sheboy it's going to be saved as issue links

[David Nadri]

@Tanguy Crusson - what are alternative ways to view those hierarchies (like the one I shared) for smaller companies/teams that are on Jira Standard and don't have Jira Plans (Jira Premium)? 

I'd love to use Jira Plans but unfortunately the pricing model for Jira charges for all users, it's not like JPD where you pay just for creators (in our case we're only 2).

[Brent Vierling]

Thanks @Tanguy Crusson for the explanation!

[Tanguy Crusson]

Hi all, the opportunity/solution tree is a great framework. There are a few teams using it in Jira Product Discovery already. Here's a section from the FAQ about how to do that: 

Can we create different issue types and their relationships? (e.g. parent/child or opportunity/solution)

Not yet, but it's on the roadmap. In the meantime you can use the flexible fields and views system to do this. Here is an example:

Demo: grouping solutions by opportunities. And here's a recording for how to reproduce this configuration

More generally we had to pick one noun for the basic object in the app, and were trying to find one that could encapsulate many aspects: problem, opportunity, solution, idea, experiment, feature, etc. We settled on "idea" and we know it's not perfect. What we've built this app for is to help you collaborate on what can best help you achieve your goals, with your teams and stakeholders, taking into account all the data you've got.

[Troy Eberlein]

Thx for the reply.  I had watched that video, and seemed like quite a bit of manual setup.  Re: noun, I think that highlights the core issue - an idea is fundamentally different than a problem / oppty / outcome.  IMO there would be significant value in JPD natively supporting these different concepts.  Thx!

[Robert Ogilvy]

This is why I am here. I am glad different issue types and their relationships in on the roadmap. Hoping it is in your Now category with a rocket ship next to it. :)

I will take a look at your demo in the meantime.

[David Nadri]

@Tanguy Crusson - RE different issue types/ parent-child relationships in JPD:

In our JPD project, if we create ideas and set their custom Type and Opportunity fields and then create Opportunity/Solution views now, later when there's a native way to create different issue types and their parent/child relationships, will there be a easy/clean way to convert them properly? 

[David Nadri]

Hey @Tanguy Crusson @Rohan Swami @Hermance NDounga ! 

RE: [P2-130] Issue types, hierarchies and relationships between ideas

Any updates you could share with the community on this item on your JPD Roadmap? Is it ~1 month away, ~3 months away, etc? Any insights, prototypes, or designs you can share on its progress would be greatly appreciated.

We are desperately waiting on this capability to allow us to organize ideas using issue types/hierarchies according to our model. We've tried the alternatives using the flexible fields/views approach, but it's not trivial or sufficient for our needs. 

The opportunity solution tree (OST) framework by Teresa Torres is very popular and helps visualize the biggest opportunities and align them to our goals. It's really just a decision tree that helps you make sense of this messy world of product discovery (assessing which opportunity to go after vs every feature/idea that comes in), and helps with strategic alignment. Also, the ability to create an 'Opportunity Solution Tree' (OST) view would be very helpful. 

Thank you!

[David Nadri]

@Tanguy Crusson @Rohan Swami @Hermance NDounga - any updates whatsoever that you guys can share on support for Issue types, hierarchies and relationships in JPD? 

It's arguably one of the biggest limitations of JPD. It's been raised by many community members across multiple posts and comments in the group and we've been told it's on the roadmap for years, so I'm hoping it's finally here or close. It will significantly improve JPD's capabilities & use-cases!

We appreciate as much info you could share on this - the community is patiently waiting!

[David Nadri]

Hi @Tanguy Crusson @Rohan Swami @Hermance NDounga - any updates you could please share on Issue types, hierarchies and relationships in JPD? 

[Hermance NDounga]

Hello David, 

We are currently in design phase for this feature! 

Stay tuned on the group we should come up with news before the end of the year. 

Best Regards,
Hermance
Product Manager @ Jira Product Discovery

[Wes Mason [he / him / his]]

+100. See: https://www.producttalk.org/2020/07/opportunity-mapping/

[Annie Ioceva _Nemetschek Bulgaria_]

100% agree.

We use Miro to capture opportunities trees. 

[Ben Arundel]

+1 for Miro 

[Mike Hughes]

Yes need some sort of hierarchy/dependency management. Opportunity/Solution is great, but is only a single parent many children?

Keen to be able to sequence opportunities, where one is dependant on one or more others. This can then be reflected during Prioritisation and be present on the Roadmap as well.

[David Nadri]

@Troy Eberlein - checking in here ~a year later: any updates you can share on how you're using JPD in your continous product discovery workflow? Particularly, how are you using JPD to support more of an opportunity solution tree framework?

Have you found a clever way to track opportunities and solutions in JPD or are you using the manual approach mentioned in this article?

[Troy Eberlein]

@David Nadri We aren't using JPD yet

[Kranthi Kiran Pulluru]

Hey folks, 

Our team at ThoughtFlow is working on an addon to JPD and Jira to bring in Opportunity Solution Trees into your workflow. 

We are currently doing customer research to gain a better understanding of how teams are using JPD, and how they want to adopt ideas from Teresa's book for their product teams.
Would love to invite you for a short chat if you have something to share - https://calendly.com/thought-flow/opportunity-solution-tree-for-jira-customer-interview

[Björn Brynjar Jónsson]

Thanks for sharing, because I just learned Teresa Torres book, Continuous Discovery Habits, on the topic is now available 🎉

I had seen Teresa Product talk few years back and connected with the problem.

I now have a book to read over the weekend 🤓🙌