Advanced Roadmap - dependencies

[amit_hergass]

We are currently planning the project on Advanced Roadmap. I am looking for a way to use auto-scheduling based on the dependencies. 

My tickets (Tasks) have estimates but no Start and Due Dates yet, since I expect to get those from the Auto-Scheduling process. As a result, there are no bars on the roadmap plan, which means that I cannot create dependencies of the AR Plan. 

 So unless I will go out of the Plan and create the dependencies on the tickets, I will not be able to get the Auto-Scheduling working.

Is there a way to get plot the dependencies on the Plan without the Start/Due dates set, as this is the point of using Auto-Scheduling?

[Suvarna Gaikwad · Accepted solution]

@amit_hergass yes there is definitely a way. Auto scheduling is done on basis of Story points, issue ranking, any dependencies and release dates if any.

You can achieve your goal in stages as below:

1. Do auto scheduling once and accept changes. It will do auto scheduling based on story points and Ranking in this first round.

2. Now when your timeline is filled with temporary schedule, add dependencies between issues. You will have click on start/end of bar against that issue to add dependencies.

3. Once dependencies are set, do auto schedule again. It will now schedule your timeline based on story points, rankings and dependencies.

Please note roadmap is a sandbox environment so you can as many changes as you want any number of times. It won't affect your actual jira project until you review and save changes to jira. To save changes in jira, review button is available on top right corner of plan.

Hope this helps.

[amit_hergass]

Thank you @Suvarna Gaikwad  for the quick response. 

Followed the steps can created the plan on the first instance:  

After that, I added the two dependencies showing in red on the image, and hit the Auto-Schedule button again. This modified the scheduling on the top Epic, rather then only at the bottom one. 

What made the scheduler creating a large gap in the middle of the Epic on the top?

BTW, I am using days to estimate work not Story points or sprints in this project.

Thanks

[Suvarna Gaikwad]

@amit_hergass This is because of scheduling settings (Dependencies) which is available for Plans. By default it is set to Sequential which means dependent issues will be scheduled one after the other.

Please try changing it to Concurrent and see if it helps. Concurrent means dependent issues can be scheduled at the same time. PFB screenshot.

[amit_hergass]

@Suvarna Gaikwad Thank you for your reply. The Sequential  mode is what I actually want, so dependent tasks will follow each other. However changing config to Concurrent provided the exact same result as in the image above. 

[amit_hergass]

If anyone else will face this issue in the future, the problem is related to task ranking. 

One of the tasks in the top epic was ranked the lowest in the plan, that impacted on the auto scheduling. This issue then blocks other issues under the same Epic and hence reflects accordingly on the plan. You can view the ranking if you change the Hierarchy to  Story->Story in the Filters:

 

Once I adjusted the ranking to be in the correct rank which will then reflect accordingly for your auto scheduling (for example to be second in the ranking view below the top task).

[andrew_sittermann_external]

Huge thanks to @amit_hergass for posting this comment (from Sep 30, 2021). It explains why Advanced Roadmaps Auto-Schedule seems to work almost totally erratically and counter-intuitively. We usually view our AR with legends, epics and stories. The rank column (which usefully doesn't have a column heading and shows the rank only when its not showing a yellow warning triangle), shows the rank of the legend. You simply don't see the rank of the stories (or the epics) unless you follow Amit's suggestion above. So you can't see why AR appears to randomly schedule your issues. Atlassian has SO MUCH work to do on Advanced Roadmaps . In the meantime honest documentation of the problems (like this one) would be a huge help