How do you manage lots and lots of ideas?

[Adrian_Lester]

After using JPD for a while and with lots of ideas at various stages through the lifecycle we're feeling overloaded from lots and lots of 'old' ideas hanging around that aren't being actioned, and aren't likely to be soon either.   I'm wondering how other people handle this.  Do you just archive ideas after a period of time?  (How do you sort ideas by age? Is that even possible?)  Or have you some sort of a 'retirement home' for old ideas in JPD?

Thanks,
Adrian

[Freddie Bendzius-Drennan]

There's going to be a ton of ways to tackle this, but one of the top considerations I'd mention is who can make ideas. So pre-empting this issue in the first place. If you give too many people access, then you might drown under a tidal wave of Ideas of varying quality! Where I work we limit creating Ideas to the Product team and a select few others, and use rituals like feedback calls with stakeholders, planning sessions, to create/merge existing ideas.

Re dealing with existing ideas:

• We use different fields/meta data to help sort/filter ideas on different attributes. For example what part of the product or LoB it relates to. This can help you slice and dice the Ideas to find what you're looking for. Of course, those fields need to be filled in...
• We have automations to gently nudge users if an Idea in their name is falling dormant (and suggests they close it if it's not being worked on), and have regular reviews to clean it all up.

At the end of the day, ideas can be archived, and they can be unarchived. We are swift to archive something if we don't think it will be worked on, as we can always find it later on.

[Adrian_Lester]

Great point on the who, I hadn't thought of that.

[Ted]

Can relate! 

We wrote an automation rule that if an idea has been in "discovery" for too long without any updates, the owner gets an email notifying them the idea is stuck. If they don't action it within x amount of time, it moves back to the parking lot. 

We wrote another rule that says if an idea has been in the parking lot for x amount of time without any updates, it gets archived. 

You also can be more restrictive in terms of what needs to be done to allow an idea to be created in the first place. 

[Adrian_Lester]

Nice, this feels like what I'm after.  Thanks Ted.

Adrian

[Nick H]

Hi @Adrian_Lester ,

Good question. At this time there isn't a way to filter ideas based on "age" or created date, updated, etc.:

Having said that, there could be some workarounds or suggestions on how to manage these 'old' ideas hanging around that aren't being actioned.

There is an automation template which edits an idea if it's been idle for X-time, and out-of-the-box sets the status of the idea to Parking lot.

Instead you could archive the idea(s), edit a field within the idea, etc. That way, you could then remove the idea(s) from your views, or filter on the ideas that do not include field that was edited. For example:

^ The automation above would edit both the status of these old ideas, and set the Roadmap field to "Idle." With these new edits, I could them ensure these ideas do not appear in a view within the project:

You could alternatively bulk change multiple ideas at one time that essentially haven't been worked on or updated in the past X-time as well with something like this JQL:

project = XXX AND updated < -100d ORDER BY updated DESC

During the bulk update, we could edit the status of these ideas or a field such as the Roadmap >> Idle (similar to the automation above). Then use the view's filter to not include these ideas from appearing in your lists or views.

Hope those ideas help!

[Adrian_Lester]

Thanks Nick, 

I'll check out that automation template.  If I follow you right, your approach is essentially "Flag old ideas" and then Filter out ideas with the flag set.  There are various ways to achieve that.

[Nick H]

Hi @Adrian_Lester ,

That is correct.

Running a JQL on the ideas that haven't had activity and editing them would be more a retroactive action to the existing ideas.

Configuring the automation if an idea becomes idle after X-time would be more of a proactive approach that would edit the ideas moving forward.

[Amina Bouabdallah]

Hi Adrian! this is very timeline. Any chance we might chat on the phone about this pain? We have a roadmap to help there. Going through the various problems you are facing would help a lot!

[Adrian_Lester]

Sure!  Would love to.  I assume you can get my email from my profile ok?