Plugin for planning iterations by initiative not team

[David Scheer]

Hi Community,

I've been searching for weeks for a tool which can support the following planning process. Your collective intelligence is my last hope!

I need to plan iterations by inititative, not team, so that I end up with something like this (see attached picture). Do you know of any tool or plugin that can achieve this?

Each initiative has multiple features which may in turn involve multiple teams for implementation. I would like to plan the iterations in which those features may be implemented.

I've found multiple plugins that can plan iterations by team but none that can plan by elements in a higher hierachical order, i.e. initiatives without resorting to a gantt-chart like experience. However, gantt-style is not a viable option for my organization.

I would greatly appreciate any help!

Tools that looked promising but can't do the job include:

• Jira Advanced Roadmaps

• Easy Agile

• STAGIL Assets

• Structure

• Big Picture

[Jimi Wikman]

Are you sure it is iterations you need and not releases?

What you describe is portfolio planning with cross initiative sync and releases. Kind of what SAFe try to accomplish with their large solution.

2 things to note:

1. No matter what your tool provides, you still need to collaborate and communicate. A fool with a tool is still a fool.

2. Cross initiative sync with dependency management should be standard for your organization. If you don't have that yet, then no tool in the world will fix that. Adding a tool to fix that will cause a lot of friction and can cost a lot in change management and new role definitions.

That being said you can do this out of the box with just Jira by having all initiatives have a set cadence of their releases and adding a program Jira Project with the initiatives and features as a portfolio. You can also use Advanced Roadmaps for this, or BigPicture as @Anna-BigPicture describe above.

[David Scheer]

Hi Jim,
thank you for your reply. I agree with everything you said.
a) Release: Since we release after every iteration, it's all the same to me. 
b) SAFe Large Solution: Yes, it is similar to SAFe large solution in the way that the solution train coordinates multiple ARTs who build features for a common capability.
c) Fool with a tool & Sync: I know what I'm doing, thank you.
d) Vanilla Jira / Advanced Roadmaps / BigPicture: Yes, I can create the underlying items and have them linked. However, I'm looking for a visualization very similar to the one above, not a GANTT chart or backlog like these tools provide.

[Jimi Wikman]

It depends a bit on how you define things in Jira, but in theory you should be able to get this in Advanced Roadmaps...if:

• You have an issue structure with initiative->Epic/Feature->Story
• All Initiatives have the same iteration periods (Cadence)
• You break down need to features the same way in all initiatives (similar sizes)

Then you can show the iteration periods and the features grouped per incident.

@Anna-BigPicturealso show how this can be done in BigPicture.

You can also go old school and just use the Timeline macro, or just a table with the Features in Confluence based on filters?

[David Scheer]

Hi Jimi,

Thank you for trying to help me out! I really appreciate it. I already set up Advanced Roadmaps on a test environment in a similar way you're describing. 

I had a Initiatives > Features > Stories structure. Initiatives and Features had their own "project" and the teams organized their Epics and Stories as usual in their own projects.

Linking these wasn't the problem nor was setting up a shared cadence using the releases / milestone feature. 

But Advanced Roadmaps uses a GANTT-style visualization and editing mode. For several reasons, I need a "PI-style" matrix canvas instead as pictured above.
What @Anna-BigPicture set up comes close, but has the teams and initiative switched: I need initiatives in swimlanes and teams as tags. The latter is doable in BigPicture, the former is not - to my knowledge. 

Your idea to use a Confluence page comes close to how we currently do it: Our boards are in Miro. It works but causes significant manual overhead and inconsitency issues.

[Anna-BigPicture]

Hi @David Scheer

Indeed, Big Picture and BigPicture Enterprise can support part of the following planning process. 

You can rename Teams to Initiatives and set its mapping to, e.g., a custom field of a single select type. See my image below. 

For the measurement of resources usage, you can use simple Capacity Planning. 

Please let me know if you have more detailed questions.

[David Scheer]

Hi Anna,
thank you for your reply!

If I understand your screenshot correctly, you have the teams cats and dogs working on multiple backlog items for the Big Target and Mid Target initiatives / epics. 

I would like to switch this around, i.e. epics in the swim lanes, teams as tags.

A similar functionality is listed in your backlog, so I don't think you support that, yet: https://jira.softwareplant.com/browse/ONE-2214