Start planning at scale with just a few clicks with the new Top-level planning template

[#1]

Hi everyone,

I’m a Product Manager for Jira Software Premium edition. I’m here to announce that we shipped a new template to help customers start planning at scale. The feature is rolling out the week of July 24th.

The Top-level planning template is designed to help customers with existing Jira Software data create a high-level overview of their organization’s work by:

• creating a pre-configured project with an issue hierarchy level above Epic called Initiative

• creating a pre-configured plan with the above project as the issue source. The plan is the best place to create, plan, and track the initiatives you'd create.

• demonstrating how to connect existing epics to your newly-created initiatives

On this page, we’ll go into detail about how this template helps customers get started with planning and tracking work above the epic level faster, and where you can find this new feature.

Where is this new template?

If you’d rather just explore it yourself, here’s how to find this new feature in Jira Software Premium:

1. From anywhere in Jira Software, select Projects > Create project from the top menu.

2. In the Software development tab on the left (which is the default tab), select the Top-level planning template.

Don’t have Jira Software Premium? No problem – you can try it for free right now! 

Introducing Initiatives

One of the most powerful features of Jira Software Premium that helps organizations plan at scale is the ability to create and manage issues at hierarchy levels above Epic in Advanced Roadmaps. By default, this level is called Initiative, though you can change this later to match your organization’s structure. Learn more about configuring hierarchy levels in Advanced Roadmaps.

Initiatives compile Epics from multiple teams to achieve a much broader, bigger goal than any of the Epics themselves. While an Epic is something you might complete in a month or a quarter, Initiatives are often completed in multiple quarters to a year. Learn how to plan with hierarchy levels above Epic.

The Top-level planning template automatically creates this new hierarchy level, and shows you how to use it in an Advanced Roadmaps plan with existing Jira Software data.

About the template

This template:

• creates the Initiative hierarchy level

• creates a project and an Advanced Roadmaps plan

  • The project is where the Initiatives you’ll create live, but it’s not used in the top-level planning process. After you use the template, you’ll land in your Advanced Roadmaps plan since managing hierarchy levels above Epic (like Initiatives) is easier in a more-visually appealing, hierarchy-based view. This’ll make more sense when you see it.

The Top-level planning template tutorial

As you go through the tutorial, here’s what you’ll accomplish:

1. To start, create your first Initiative.

   Think of an initiative as a piece of work that multiple Epics contribute; for example, if your Epics are things like “Build New functionality”, “Market new features”, and “Measure impact of release”, then your Initiative might be something like “iOS Design Revamp”. You only need to create one right now; you can always add more later. Learn more about Initiatives.

2. Next, add an existing project, board, and/or filter to this plan. In Advanced Roadmaps, we call these Issue sources. For this tutorial, we recommend that you use issues from company-managed projects, and that they contain at least one Epic. Learn more about issue sources in Advanced Roadmaps.

3. Finally, reparent your existing Epics to the new Initiatives.This creates an association using the Parent field, linking the two issues. You’ll see that the Initiative now shows the data from the Epics contained within. This is called a roll-up; Advanced Roadmaps infers values of parents from child issues, and they’re super useful for keeping your plan up to date. As you add more Epics to the Initiative, the estimates and dates will update along with it. Learn more about roll-ups in Advanced Roadmaps.

4. Before you’re done, you’ll see a prompt about how Advanced Roadmaps is a sandbox environment, meaning you need to save your changes before you’ll see them on any boards or projects outside your plan. Learn more about saving changes made in Advanced Roadmaps.

We want your feedback!

This is the first new template we’ve created to make getting started with Advanced Roadmaps easier, and we want to hear what you think. Was this template easy to use? Did it help you create your first plan? What can we do to improve it? What other templates can we make?

Let me know in the comments section of this post!

[Jonathan Santos]

Hello @Roi Fine  thanks for sharing this update. I'm going to try it :)

[Nikki DuBois]

I do not see this option yet in our Jira. When do you expect the roll out to be completed?

[Roi Fine]

Hey @Jonathan Santos and @Nikki DuBois , we're at 50% rollout. I hope we'll be 100% by the end of the week. I'd be happy to know your thoughts once you've tried the template. Cheers! 

[Jonathan Santos]

Hi @Roi Fine try the Top Level planning template. Perform the following steps:
1- Create a project with that template
2. Create an Initiative issue
3-I understand that to add the epics it is necessary to add issues to the plans through Issue source since in the Top Level planning template it only has issue type initiative.

4-The issue link is made through the "Child Issue", from the details view of the issue can you add more issues to Child issues?

thanks !!

[Roi Fine]

Hey @Jonathan Santos , unfortunately, you can't create or add epic child issues from the details. But you can either:

1. Add the parent initiative from the epic details view using the parent field

2. Add epics to the parent initiative from the Plan user interface

Let me know your thoughts

[Jonathan Santos]

@Roi Fine  Thanks for response !!

[Sérgio Nogueira]

I am trying to create a demo for this new feature, since yesterday, and I am getting an error, in my production and sandbox instances. Is this fully rolled-out? 

[Roi Fine]

Hey @Sérgio Nogueira I'm sorry to hear you've got an error message. We're investigating these errors. One reason this could happen is if you already have an issue type called initiative on your site. Please check if that's the reason, if so I would recommend you change the existing initiative issue type to a different name. 

Please let me know if it works for you

Roi

[Jason Waller]

I have the same issue as Sergio.  I have checked and removed the issue type "initiative" but still get the same error, further investigation has discovered that the creation process is creating the Issuetype Initiative, and workflow scheme. But I still receive the error, no project or plan is created 

[Jason Waller]

Ok so I worked out the problem... 

I had odyssey set at the top of my hierarchy from when I tested ARM last year.  So when the template was trying to set Initiative above the epic is was causing the creation to fail.  

Worth checking your Issue Type Hierarchy if you have the problem 

[Sérgio Nogueira]

Hi @Roi Fine I think that's the issue, we had just setup a process of Initiative Lifecyle and created the issue type Initiative. We are changing it's name, and I'll let you know later if this solved the error. Thanks.

[Roi Fine]

Hey @Jason Waller and @Sérgio Nogueira please let me know if your issue is resolved once you've changed the pre-existing issue type name to something else than Initiative. Otherwise, I'd advice you to contact support so the developers on my team can assist further.

[Jason Waller]

@Roi Fine  it wasn’t having an issue type called initiative that was causing the error for me. The cause was  I already had a hierarchy above epic. In my case odyssey. Once I removed this and epic was the top level in the hierarchy the creation process worked fine 

[Ken Young]

@Roi Fine A question about this capability (or the roadmap for this feature).   Will Initiative level (i.e. cross project/product) releases be able to be coordinated from these projects.  Asking if this can be able to to coordinate across projects that may be different microservices to track customer impacting features.  Thx

[Roi Fine]

Hey @Ken , yes! In the Plan created with this template you could create a Cross Project Release.

[Bernice]

I would like to put my observations on the testing done at my end for the larger audience to avoid from encountering this issue. As per the pre-requisite for this "Top-level planning", you need to have an issue type higher than "Epic".

Make sure to check that this issue type has the higher ranking/level in the issue type.

• In the below screenshot you can see that under Issue type Hierarchy, we have issue type called "Initiative/Anyname" with Level 2/higher(ie.above epic).
• Make sure it is associated to an issue type and then click on "Save changes" to be able to create a project using Top-level planning template.

 

Another important thing to check is that, some customers do not see any issue type above "Epic" in Issue type Hierarchy screen but still will be able to create. This is due to the presence of an issue type above Epic level under Issues > Issue types just like shown in the below screenshot.

You can see that issue type "Design" has Hierarchy level is 2 which is above "Epic". If this is already present in your site, then it should automatically allow you to create a Top-level planning project.

Hence, make sure to check these 2 screens if you are encountering this issue. Hope this helps! :) 

[Ajay _view26_]

@Bernice  Thanks for the tips!

One issue which I am facing is that I am unable to group my Epic SM-55 under the Initiative. I get the below error

Issue can't be moved

SM-55 is part of a team-managed project, and can't be moved outside of SM Project

[Shourya Raj Vansha Acharya]

Hello @Roi Fine

I am working as a Program Manager for my company's R&D and I was exploring the Initiatives. First of all, a great and powerful feature that would definitely make planning more robust and less Excel-dependent. 

My question is - Do we have a way to introduce the Initiatives to the existing projects?

If so, could you please help me with the steps to do so, or point me to the article that can help me achieve it?

Thanks,

Shourya

[Roi Fine]

Hey @Shourya Raj Vansha Acharya , yes you can. Please refer to the section "Adding the initiative level to a project" in this page

[Jamie Carey]

Does the initiative only exist for *new* projects using this template or can we add it to existing projects?

[VINCENT DUPONT]

Hello, I'm glad to see Atlassian provides a usable concept around Initiatives

I use Initiatives in Jira for more than 1 year with very few problems to manage my project portfolio.

The first constraint is that the initiative is created like a usual "task", so from the standard Jira screen you can only add sub-task to it. In the propose template (here), Atlassian removed to ability to create a sub-task from the default screen.

There are 2 ways to add an Epic under the Initiative

1. in a Advanced Roadmap plan, drag an Epic as a child of the Initiative

2. in one Epic, use the "Parent Link" field (soon "parent" will be used) to fetch your intiative as its parent

Another trouble : Initiatives are not managed in the Timeline view of a board. So you must use advanced roadmap instead.

beside these 2 "problems", Initiatives are very useful

Vincent

[Roi Fine]

Hey @Jamie Carey , the template creates a new project where your initiatives will be created and stored. Having a separate project for initiatives is our recommended setup. You can still add initiative issue types to a project with other issue types if you wish. Check this doc for the next steps if you wish to add an initiative to an existing project.

[Christine Lee]

Are there any plans to support the "Initiative" level for team-managed projects in the future?