How to capacity plan using JPD?

[trevor.devroome]

Background

We're experimenting with using JPD for tracking our roadmap at an initiative level. I'm trying to work through how the tool can interact with and support capacity planning for our teams.

We use the 'idea' object to represent an initiative and create one or many Epics to represent the key deliverable - that are dispersed across one or many teams.

Each Epic has an estimate stored against it - the sum of all estimates Epics attached to an Initiative gives the total investment 

Also of note - we do have Jira Advanced Roadmaps, which we were exploring to use as part of the capacity planning approach.

Problem

From the structure above - I'm trying to find a way to easily identify and manage capacity per team by identifying, and collating estimates stored on Epics attached as a 'Delivery Ticket' to an Idea - and using that to identify how much capacity each team (represented by a Project) has as prioritise various Ideas. 

What I've tried?

1. Use Advanced Roadmaps [Not Possible]

The first thing I did was try to use Advanced roadmaps to do this roll-up - but my JDP Project cannot be added to the view as it detects it as a 'Team managed project'

2. Use JQL to identify & extract data to report capacity elsewhere [Not Possible]

I then tried to write a JQL query to pull the data out of Jira and create a view in another reporting tool to handle this - but can't figure out which field represents the link between Ideas <> Delivery objects attached. 

Anyone got any ideas on how else I might be able to solve this?

My last option will be to create a duplicate 'idea' object on a company-managed project that is the same as the idea, and lets me use Advanced Roadmaps - but that just adds duplication and overhead to what I'm doing.

[Tanguy Crusson]

To second @Jan-Hendrik Spieth 's point above - in Jira Product Discovery we're focusing more on helping you with the collaboration and communication jobs around product management & especially discovery. 

There are things that are borderline between discovery and delivery, but this one is clearly into the world of delivery planning and execution, which is what Jira Software was built for. In Jira Product Discovery we're looking at how we could help with "top-down capacity planning" but it would be at a much more high level of granularity (e.g. based on T-shirt sizing), not detailed estimations. To help you discuss trade-offs during discussions around the roadmap. 

[trevor.devroome]

Thanks for the insight into the focus here Tanguy.

I understand that focus - but it assumes sizing can be relative across a division, which isn't always the case (eg. might need an eng team + data scientist team to do something). 

[Tanguy Crusson]

Yes, to simplify I'd say: in this tool our goal is to help you decide and explain WHY you want to prioritize something, not HOW you're going to get it out there. 

[Thibault Courtois]

Hi Tanguy

I'm digging up this topic.

"In Jira Product Discovery we're looking at how we could help with "top-down capacity planning" but it would be at a much more high level of granularity (e.g. based on T-shirt sizing), not detailed estimations. To help you discuss trade-offs during discussions around the roadmap. "

This is what started my research, would you have an update on that topic?

[Daniel Krüger]

I get where you all are coming from, but the default views includes a timeline perspective, which does kinda require at least high level capacity planning. I'm working on the roadmap with my CTO; I'm focussing on user value, he's focussing on high level effort, using a RICE-derived framework. However, to plan it on a roadmap, we need to consider that some initiatives are native app heavy, so we shouldn't stack those. I'm not talking about Story Points within a Sprint, but really more on a granularity of weeks per team.

[Erin Mihalik]

If you are using Advanced Roadmaps, then build an Initiative hierarchy. Link the Idea in JPD to an Initiative that houses the epics and not to the epics themselves. Roll up on the initiative in AR. That is what it was designed to do.

[trevor.devroome]

Yeah - I'm contemplating that as a fallback.

But it duplicates my effort of effectively managing two objects for the initiative (the JPD one, and the initiative object in Advanced Roadmaps) - so I'm trying to find a lazier way to handle it.

[Jan-Hendrik Spieth]

Have you considered Ivor's approach using automation, below? It sounds interesting, I think! And if it works, it does at least parts of the job for you.

Your initial post said "capacity planning for our teams" - that sounds to me totally like a project management task. JPD isn't built for this kind of task, imho.

I'm not sure any Atlassian tools give you a totally lazy way to do this. Also with Atlas, which seems to get some features (allbeit maybe just fancy ways of displaying it) capacity/allocation, it'll be another sort of information layer, which in itsself needs some care/management, to provide useful insights.

Maybe there's another Atlassian tool which could help here. Have you reached out to Atlassian to ask them about it?

[Ivor]

Could you define what your end goal would be? From my usage, ideas in JPD are ranked only to prioritize them so that the team knows what ideas to work on first (and its only meant to help plan that on a High-level scale). We actually do the opposite (add the high level effort estimate on the idea then cascade that value to the epic/initiative).

From my initial thoughts based on what you are asking:

1. You could write an automation in the JIRA project to populate the estimation value into the idea in JPD (so from Jira > JPD), using the reference link on the Epic level to update the idea value. You may need to do a jql query to extract all epics or only select the initiative roll-up estimates to populate that (depending on where the total estimate is updated on).

Regarding planning of capacity, this you unfortunately cannot do on JPD, but you could do a "High-level" plan using the "Timeline" view, but is manual. Note: This feature is not yet available but is already announced/showcased in the upcoming feature roadmap by @Tanguy Crusson

However I personally feel that Atlas would make more sense in the future (initiative wise) as they are goal based (which could translate to initiatives or portfolio investment). However atlas is not yet integrated with JPD at the current beta version (it is already announced in the upcoming roadmap feature that is it coming). Atlas on the other hand is not well integrated with Jira software yet from my initial usage and I have yet to find a good use for it (it has some handy features in terms of tracking goals, but lack depth on OKRs, traceability to jira tickets, etc)

[Ivor]

I've did some POC and you would need a Global automation rule.

You can replicate the estimate field that you are using to update the linked issue via "is implemented by" to extract the original idea (depending if its 1 to many or many to many or many to 1) and then update the exact field that you require.