Initiative Hierarchy in Jira Product Discovery

[Erik Lau]

Hi there, 

We are considering migration our roadmaps to Jira Product Discovery and wondering if an "Initiative" (bucket for multiple ideas) hierarchy can be created in Jira PD?

Thanks!

[Tanguy Crusson]

Hi Erik, not exactly like that but here's what some teams use:

There's no hierarchical view of ideas. How can we organize a large list of ideas? 

Instead of a hierarchical view you can make use of the flexible views and fields structure to visualize your ideas based on a number of dimensions. You can create a separate field per dimension that you want to use to categorize ideas, and then use them in different views using grouping and filtering.

Demo: using fields and views to organize a large list of ideas

We used the same technique to recommend this way of doing roadmaps by time horizon here - the Jira Product Discovery team does this to create sub-roadmaps per theme instead (same technique - using colour coding and sub-views)

How can we create a roadmap with different time horizons? 

From a customer:

Our 12 month rolling roadmap is divided into 3 time horizons. First is Planned horizon, this is basically the current quarter divided into months. Second is Targeted this is the next quarter and the third horizon is what we call Directional and is the last 6 months/Half of the year. In JPD we can set target dates in months and quarter but we can't set it as a "Half" to show our Directional horizon. Any solution to that?

Here are 2 options, the second one is our favourite

[lauren_sinyard]

@Tanguy Crusson I'm looking at this kind of hierarchy within our JPD project, love that we can create both the larger 'boulder' and the smaller 'ideas' into different views and roadmaps, but when implementing in an org as large as ours, I don't think that long term creating a view for each initiative will be manageable long-term.

We've recently been acquired by a much larger organisation and I'm looking at rolling out Product Discovery across all our product teams but, we've gone from 300 people to a company of 3000 with far more products to incorporate.

I wondered if in future there are any plans to be able to roll up the delivery progress from multiple JPD tickets into the 'boulder'? I know we can't connect JPD tickets using the delivery ticket section, but wonder if there's any future plans for that?

Thanks for all your how to videos so far, it's been super helpful for me as a Jira novice trying and testing my way through this!

[Adam Arrowsmith]

We are looking for the same thing. We are very early on with our JPD implementation so haven't lived with this approach very long but sharing what we've done:

Our whole motivation for bringing in JDP was to be able to more flexibly score, prioritize, and loosely plan work than what native Jira provides OOTB. We think about our work in a hierarchical fashion (we also have native Jira issue types that model this):

Goals

--Initiatives

----Parent Epics

------Epics

Specifically for the purposes of JPD, we want to rank and prioritize both at the initiative and parent epic level. So to model this in JDP we:

1. Created a custom select field "Type" with options: Initiative, Parent Epic.

2. Use the native Jira issue links to represent the parent/child relationship. We're using the Causes/Caused By link type because it is directional (vs. the generic RelatesTo).

3. Once prioritized and we decide move forward with something, those JPD items generate the analogous Delivery Tickets/native Jira issue.

This makeshift hierarchy within a flat structure is a bit awkward and it would be very nice to view things in a true/parent child fashion, but it's the best approach we've got right now.

Open to ideas and would be very interested to hear if others' have similar situations.

[Tanguy Crusson]

Thanks @Adam Arrowsmith !

I recently ran a webinar to describe how we handle it in the Jira Product Discovery team. Our hierarchy is: 

- Themes

-- Boulders

--- Focus areas

---- Ideas

The demo starts here.

[Adam Arrowsmith]

Thanks for sharing @Tanguy Crusson. Lots of good nuggets in that webinar.

[Kent Diprose]

@Tanguy Crusson 

In the video that you have linked, at about 16:51, you display the fields for a Boulder idea. P2-728.

It looks like it is showing a list of ideas that are part of that Boulder idea, including a column for roadmap field. 

How did you achieve this? 

[Tanguy Crusson]

Hi @Kent Diprose , here's how I did it: https://www.loom.com/share/292d59cf5f794e65a1f43ee12df79f6a

[Tanguy Crusson]

Oh wait @Kent Diprose I think I just understood your question.

It's a bit of a power user move 🙂 Here's how I did this: https://www.loom.com/share/b15167184c20400a9a59888ba2269a72?from_recorder=1&focus_title=1

[Cristiano Paiva de Alarcão]

@Tanguy Crusson I've just requested access to this video. Many thanks!
https://www.loom.com/share/b15167184c20400a9a59888ba2269a72?from_recorder=1&focus_title=1

[Tanguy Crusson]

I've just made them both public, thanks