Introducing dependency & progress for roadmaps in Jira Software Cloud

[#1]

Nearly a year ago we launched the next-gen template, where we reimagined parts of Jira Software Cloud’s core functionality. One of the ‘crowd favorites’ was the native roadmap, which allows teams to sketch out the big picture quickly.

Since then, many of you have told us that while next-gen roadmaps are great for easily visualizing what’s planned, there’s so much more needed in realistic planning. Much of this today still requires manual effort in understanding teams' progress and dependencies.

So today, we’re pleased to introduce two new features on the roadmap to help you be more effective in your planning – dependency mapping and progress visualization. A third feature, hierarchy view, is coming soon.

Map dependencies on Jira Software’s roadmap

One of the key variables to take into account in planning is dependencies between different pieces of work. Without including them, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand risks associated in delivering a piece of work, uncover blockers, and make decisions on what’s built and when.

Now you can map dependencies between epics on the roadmap to stay ahead of blockers. The visualisation makes it easy to plan the best course of execution and also communicate the rationale behind the plan to stakeholders to manage expectations.

Track progress on Jira Software’s roadmap

A roadmap that isn’t in sync with your team’s progress is an outdated one. Especially when your team is moving fast, it can quickly become tedious to keep track of each piece of work, what its progress is, and how it contributes to the overall schedule.

Now with the new progress bar on the roadmap, you can stay in sync with your team’s progress on each epic at a glance, without digging for details on individual pieces of work.

For more details about setting up dependency mapping and progress visualization, check out the documentation.

Coming Soon: Roadmap hierarchies

We’re not done yet! Keep an eye out for hierarchies, so you can unfold your epics right on the roadmap to see all the work that ladders up to it.

This means you’ll be able to see all the stories, tasks, and other child issues that roll up to your epics right on your roadmap. You can also track who’s working on what to adjust your plan accordingly.

[Eric Tolliver]

Will this be available in Jira server version?

[Dan Barnett]

Why would anyone use the server version over the cloud version?

[Chris Gaskins]

Do you have to use next-gen templates to use this feature?

[nmarcondes]

@Chris Gaskins I believe so. This is the only template that have this feature available for now.

[John Trippe]

"Roadmap hierarchies" -- Yes please! Then we could get rid of TeamGantt and just use Jira. That would be wonderful.

[David Markowski (DO NOT USE)]

I would love to see this available for NON next-gen projects until customize workflows and other issues are up to speed in next gen projects. 

[Ed Haynes]

As we're working a project and move blocking epics around will it automatically move the blocked epics as a result?

[Gabriel Raposo]

How can I have access to this feature?

[Jason Kosecki]

When will this be added to classic projects? No offense, but next-gen is unusable for most organizations due to the lack of customization. That is why we use Jira and not Trello.  

[Ing. Manuel Carrillo]

Yes, as Gabriel mentioned, I cant find this feature. And I see why, it would be great to have this on classic projects

[Michael Aivaliotis]

But you can still only start one sprint at a time.

[Jenine Wech]

Yes please for classic projects! 

[Jan Stähle]

Yes, we need this for the classic project! 🙌🏾

[Jimi Wikman]

Any chance we can have other issue types than Epics in the future?

Epics by nature are just containers and this feels more like we are working with features than epics?

Also, this is getting closer and closer to being the more usable version of Portfolio, so can we expect the abilities to create new parent-child relations in the future as well?

[Marie F. Kent]

Is there a plan to show dependencies between issues below the epic?

[Mark Rothfield]

+1 for classic projects please

[Nur Khairusy]

Can we add this roadmap for all type of project?

[原麻衣子(hara.maiko)]

Someone edited it during the meeting. A lock function is required in the roadmap.

[Erika Sa]

Hi everyone! Thanks for your excitement and feedback.

RE: Roadmap in classic projects 

We're currently exploring ways to bring roadmap into Classic projects. Please follow this ticket for more : https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17214

Just to set some expectation, bringing roadmap into classic project type will be a work of high complexity. There are lots of problems to work through, both technically and also design-wise, to ensure we're supporting your various ways of working with Classic project configuration. So we can't promise anything for the near term. But we will be reaching out to you often for interviews and research.

Thank you!

Cheers,

Erika Sa

Atlassian Product Manager 

[Erika Sa]

@Marie F. Kent : We understand that there can be many types of dependencies you'd like to visualise on the roadmap. We don't have immediate plans to deliver this feature, but we will look into it in the future. 

@Jimi Wikman : Could you tell us more about creating other issue types and creating parent-child relationship? You can still create child issues for epics on the roadmap using the issue view. Read more about it here.

@Ed Haynes : No, but your dependency line will turn red to alert risk if the scheduling of epics don't respect the set dependency. You can read more about it here.

@John Trippe : 🙌coming soon!

[Jimi Wikman]

In Jira you have three levels of parent child relation: Epic, Story and Sub-task. In NextGen you have Epic, Child stask and Child task (which in itself is confusing, but we leave that for now). Since an Epic is nothing more than a container or rubber band to keep stories together over sprints it is a bit weird to use it as a starting point for planning.

Just having 3 levels also restrict the usage of the Roadmap as we can not use it for example for SAFe, which require additional levels of parent child relations. As I see it we currently use Epic as a substitute for feature, which is very strange for me as it would be much better to have Feature, Story, Subtask with the ability to put any of these into an epic.

We also lack the possibility to work with stories as our first level instead of Epics, which is how many teams work today. A Story is after all the default outcome of the requirement process, which means it is the first level of workorders in Jira. In the Roadmap today you start on a level above that, which for me mean we are in requirement mode and not development mode in the roadmap.

So for me the roadmap is having a bit of an existential crisis as it seem to want to be Jira Align, but cater to the team leads in each development team...

[Erika Sa]

Hi @Jimi Wikman thanks for your detailed feedback. As you can see from the simple implementation, this roadmap capability is designed for smaller teams to quickly plan work and track their progress. For planning work at scale, which many teams today follow SAFe for, we recommend Jira Align. For more information on Jira Align, please follow this space. 

[Jimi Wikman]

@Erika SaI understand that, but fact remain that you have a starting point for Roadmap that not everyone will be comfortable with. I for one would find it very strange to build my roadmap with Epics, when the outcome of my requirement work in Confluence would be stories. I would also be blocked from using Epics to group stories belonging together over sprints as they are already used in a different way.

In a large scale organisation where you have a standard way of working, mixing waterfall, RUP, several flavors of Agile and most likely SAFe having NextGen using a different starting point might reduce it's usefulness.

It could be easily fixed by allowing me to choose what the starting point should be. This can be set per roadmap in configuration, or use something like Portfolio for Jira where you can switch the view to any level using a filter. That would also work with plugins that extend the issue type parent child structure such as Structure.

[Steven Skarratt]

This would be great if it were available for classic projects as many others have said. Next-gen projects have too many functional gaps to allow them to be used within our company.

[Erika Sa]

@Jimi Wikman those are some excellent points. I think there's a lot to unpack here, and we'd love to arrange 1hr video chat to discuss about this in-depth. If you could find some time here, we'd really appreciate it. We'll also provide you with $100 as a thank you for your time.