Introducing Jira Align!

[#1]

Hi Atlassian Community!

We're so excited to welcome Jira Align (formerly AgileCraft) to the Atlassian family.

We expect you'll have lots of questions about the Jira Align platform, how it fits into the broader Jira product family, and what problems it can help you solve.

We're here to help! Below are some frequently asked questions about Jira Align, Advanced Roadmaps for Jira, and more. 

What is Jira Align?

Jira Align connects business strategy to customer outcomes at enterprise scale. It helps:

• Make work visible at enterprise scale

• Gets all teams aligned (and keeps them aligned) across an enterprise

• Maximizes outcomes, driving value and accelerating digital strategy

Is Jira Align or Advanced Roadmaps better for my needs?

The short answer is: it depends on your teams and what your challenges are. At a high level, Advanced Roadmaps for Jira:

• Works best for collections of up to 20 agile teams working together (about 50-150 people at a time)

• Integrates with one Jira instance at a time, supports cross-project visibility

• Supports Scrum, Kanban, and blended team-level agile methods

and Jira Align:

• Can support hundreds to thousands of users at multiple levels across an organization

• Integrates with multiple Jira instances, as well as other popular team-level agile tools

• Supports Scrum and Kanban, as well as Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®), Lean Startup, Spotify, LeSS, Value Engineering, Scrum @ Scale, hybrid or custom agile frameworks

Get more details to determine whether Jira Align or Advanced Roadmaps for Jira is right for you.

Do Advanced Roadmaps and Jira Align work together? Are they integrated?

Today, Jira Align and Advanced Roadmaps for Jira are only integrated in that they both can pull from the same source of truth data in a Jira instance.

Advanced Roadmaps is more tightly aligned to and integrated with Jira today, as it is an app for Jira. Customers who begin using Advanced Roadmaps can expect a very familiar end-user experience.

Jira Align is a separately managed solution that is cloud-based. It will begin to feel more familiar to the Atlassian portfolio as integration into the product portfolio continues.

Today, Advanced Roadmaps are not integrated with Jira Align. However, we will look for opportunities to more tightly align Portfolio to Jira Align so that customers can grow more seamlessly from one product to the other.

Will anything change with Advanced Roadmaps in light of the Jira Align announcement?

Advanced Roadmaps remains a priority for the Atlassian team. Currently, Advanced Roadmaps and AgileCraft (now Jira Align) solve agile at scale problems different use cases and organization sizes. In the future, we will work towards an integration between Jira Align and Portfolio that lets customers seamlessly scale up from Portfolio to Jira Align in a bottoms-up adoption model.

Why is AgileCraft rebranded to Jira Align?

This new name is inspired by the alignment, flow, and connection inherent in the product. The decision to anchor in Jira was an intentional one, given its role around agile and the inherent alignment with the Jira customer base. We’re putting Jira at the center of teamwork, and positioning Jira Align as the de-facto solution for our largest customers to scale their agile success.

[James Bullock]

Not bad. Was wondering how the integration would proceed, and how quickly. Nice start. Not that you asked, but... interesting choice.

• I was (and am) impressed with the AgileCraft acquisition: complementary products, but also positioning.
• "Enterprise Agility", and the notion of roll-up of less-directed efforts into governance and strategy has bedeviled the "Agile" folks for a while.(*) And everybody else, approximately forever.
• Intriguing choice to use the "Jira" positioning, contra "Enterprise Agility." I'm curious whether there is sales-cycle and conversion data indicating this way in works, vs. attempts at strategic-level entry more hitting a wall.

The problem has always been direct-down to keep on track vs. roll-up to steer by. With larger, faster information systems the near-real-time connection from granular ad hock ops to strategic aggregates can be automated. Even very large organizations in dollars or market cap can operate for a time as "entrepreneur with helpers", but are bandwidth-limited on the complexity they can handle. They are brittle.

You can give people more freedom if you can notice sooner when they're doing something dangerous. (Dangerous choices directed above cause a different kind of problem, say strategically casual disregard for privacy commitments made to users & gratuitous spreading of their data can cost you, $30 billion. Hypothetically, of course.)

The wrangling of Atlassian product suite, and how the company chooses to address its customers and market continues to impress. (Still not a fan of he move to Amazon cloud hosting, though I get the reasons why.)

(*)They were entertaining when Deloitte came out with a big chart of "The Agile Landscape." First, if you're gonna make a gaggle of insider-terms so you are important, somebody's gonna get on your band-wagon n claim they're smart about the insider-terms too. Second, as many of the "Agile" consultancy groups found out, working in the nerd pool does not position you to give peer strategy consulting to Mahogany Row. Given AgileCraft's book of business and perspective, one wonders if they are a way into Mahogany Row, which the "Jira" branding would work against.

[John D Patton]

For me ...If a product does not scale - it is not very agile. Should not matter if you have a few teams or hundreds - roll up should be the same elemental process. A tool written for enterprise implies a lack of adaptability by definition.  

I have used Jira Software for 40 users and for 10,000 - same simple flows and process. 

[Wansze Kong]

After reviewing the article, there was mention of Jira Align being a separately managed solution that is cloud-based.  Are any plans to make a non-cloud based version for this solution?

[Scott Boisvert]

With align being cloud based, will it work with Jira Server?

[Akmal Fazleen]

@Shana this was a confusing article to read!

Just look at this quote extracted from above - see the underlined words:

Today, Jira Align and Portfolio for Jira are only integrated in that they both can pull from the same source of truth data in a Jira instance.

Portfolio for Jira is more tightly aligned to and integrated with Jira today, as it is an app for Jira. Customers who begin using Portfolio for Jira can expect a very familiar end-user experience.

Jira Align is a separately managed solution that is cloud-based. It will begin to feel more familiar to the Atlassian portfolio as integration into the product portfolio continues.

Today, Portfolio for Jira capabilities, such as roadmaps, are not integrated with Jira Align. However, we will look for opportunities to more tightly align Portfolio to Jira Align so that customers can grow more seamlessly from one product to the other.

[Antonio Pedro]

When "Jira Align" will be available for a beta / trial version?

[Scott Boisvert]

@Antonio Pedro It's available. You can get a 7 Day trial with one 7 Day extension.  Contact Scott Blacker at sblacker@atlassian.com. I found his contact information on recorded webinar on Jira Align that he did in April.

https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/534906/Jira%20Align%20Product%20Demo%20April%202019.mp4

[Jamal]

Looks pretty interesting.

[M Amine]

Will partners have access to demo instances in order to gain more experience in this new product? 

[Deleted user]

Will partners have access to demo instances in order to gain more experience in this new product? 

[Stephen T]

Does Jira Align with with Jira Cloud? Or do you need to be on Jira Server/DC?

[Piyal Nanayakkara]

This is related on the Jira Align Trial Installation. I was able to go through the Launch Pad and would like to know whether we would be able to get a trial version of Jira-Align installation which can be used to integrate with Jira Server in the development environment?

Regards

Piyal

[William Becker]

Jira Align desperately needs a Dark UI mode.  All the blinding white backgrounds make it difficult to work in the app for extended periods of time.

[MG]

With a story belonging to a feature and a feature belonging to an epic how easy is to have a dhasboard showing a roadmap at the level of the epics or at the level of the features or both? could we filter on demand per agile team? per train? per any other category based on a field in the story or the feature or the epic?

Does JIRA align allows "forcing" a parent FEATURE for any story created or a parent EPIC for any feature created without having the portfolio or the structure JIRA PLUGINS?

Thanks

MG

[L2 System Infrastructure]

Hi all ...

Jira Align is a separately managed solution that is cloud-based. It will begin to feel more familiar to the Atlassian portfolio as integration into the product portfolio continues

An on-prem-version is not or will not be available?

BR Sascha

[Anac2112]

HI,

I want to use my existing Azure Devops to integrate with Jira Align, for the Large solution Configuration, Is that possible & how will it effect the license cost for me.

[Jodi LeBlanc]

I found this product overview and demo of Jira Align by Dan MacMillan, Product Leader at Atlassian useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBeuH4Cl8Bc

[Sridhar Gandla]

Any help getting this Demo file ? - I am referring to this : 

https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/534906/Jira%20Align%20Product%20Demo%20April%202019.mp4 

Any other self learning JIRA Align will be great help. Thank you in advance for your responses.

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

@Akmal Fazleen : nice feedback... definitely in need of some better synonyms to help differentiate between Potfolio/Align and portfolio/align!

[Steven Mustari]

This post actually provided a great understanding of the product. - Thank you for the information!

[Nik Lewis]

Can a delivery team function independently on a standard JIRA instance .. with just the Enterprise level and Execs planning and strategising in JIRA Align? It looks like Align can "Talk" to the underlying JIRA instance.

[Sushil_Das]

Hello Jira Align Admins.. 

We are hiring Jira Align (formerly AgileCraft) System Admins - Location: Hoffman, IL, San Jose . or open for remote.

write to sushil.das@varite.com with your resume/ queries 

Status: Open for FTE, Contract or Contract to hire

[Josh Brown]

Are you able to query Jira Align, like you can in Jira? If so, can you query from within Jira or is there an API?

[vinayak_kumbhakern]

Can Jira Align work independent from Jira? For example, can individual Scrum and Kanban teams be setup in Jira Align directly where those teams can plan and manage their work?

[M Amine]

@vinayak_kumbhakern yes, Jira Align is an independent tool. Its previous name is Agile Craft.