New Portfolio Cloud Experience Beta

[#1]

UPDATE 11-May-2020

The beta is now closed to new applicants as we prepare for our Advanced Roadmaps launch. Thank you to those who participated!

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Hi Atlassian Community!

We are excited to invite applications to a private beta for a new Portfolio for Jira Cloud experience that will offer improved ways to visualise your work, plan for the future, and track progress along the way.

When compared to the previous experience, the new interface allows for simple drag-and-drop scheduling of Jira issues, a more interactive timeline for visualising your full issue hierarchy, improved and increased filtering capabilities, greater visibility and interaction with custom fields, and much more. The new interface has also simplified the experience by removing some features such as skills and stages, themes, and individual capacity.

We are looking for existing Portfolio for Jira Cloud customers to help us test and provide feedback ahead of a General Availability launch. Participants will be able to enable the new interface at an individual plan level, controlled by a Portfolio Admin.

Who is eligible?

To participate in the beta, you will need:

1. An existing Jira Software Cloud and Portfolio for Jira Cloud license

2. Portfolio administrator permissions (or the support of someone who has them)

3. Willingness to participate in customer interviews (as necessary)

How do I apply?

The beta is now closed. Please look out for our Advanced Roadmaps launch in the coming weeks!

[Deleted user]

great news

[Adi Shero]

can you please clarify how we can use Portfolio (Advanced Roadmaps), to  Jira Standard.

It's not clear if there are other options for the Standard users.

[Josh Frank]

@Adi Shero Portfolio Cloud (Advanced Roadmaps) will only be available on Jira Software Premium. It will no longer be available as a standalone app. For customers on Jira Software Standard, we are also working to ensure a basic roadmap is available to everyone (you can watch this development here: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17214). Hope this helps! 

[Olive Sun]

Any way to see a demo of this new change?

[Uffe Henrichsen]

Forcing existing Standard customers to upgrade to Premium this way is real dick move. We're a small team and don't need Premium for anything else - but this will cause our license fees to be x7.

In addition, I received an email from Atlassian stating that our account was 'already on a Jira Software Premium trial' and will automatically be upgraded at the end of the trial. I have not requested that trial and again, we don't want it.

Are there any actual customer benefits to this - aside from feature upgrades which would be expected anyway - or is it just Atlassian's bottom line that is being considered here?

[Josh Frank]

@Uffe Henrichsen I appreciate the feedback. Regarding Portfolio, the good news is that we are working hard to ensure every Jira customer has access to a roadmap as part of our Free and Standard plans (you can follow the JAC ticket here). The basic roadmap should meet the needs of small teams and Portfolio will be more for the multi-team, multi-project functionality and more advanced features like capacity management. Happy to chat more over a phone call as well, if you'd be interested. My contact is jfrank@atlassian.com. 

[Josh Frank]

@Olive Sun There's no apples to apples demo available yet, although stay tuned! In the meantime, I suggest signing up for the beta. You can opt in on a project by project basis (you don't have to globally opt in). 

[Uffe Henrichsen]

@Josh Frank If that is the case then that sounds promising, but that is not what the email says. It states in bold:

When this happens, Portfolio for Jira Cloud will no longer be available as a stand-alone app in the Atlassian Marketplace and the Portfolio for Jira Cloud features will only be available as part of Jira Software Cloud Premium.

If you intend to make functionality similar to what we have today, available in the Standard plan, then I think you should be much more clear about it before sending out this kind of 'pay up or lose access' message.

The ticket you link to doesn't have much information about what we can expect, and it appears that it's no longer possible to join the beta (go ahead and sign me up if that is possible). Could you please list down exactly what we can expect to get before you cut off access to Jira Portfolio? I'm happy to discuss over the phone, but I'm sure others would like to know too. Thanks. 

[Josh Frank]

@Uffe Henrichsen  Sorry if we fell short of your expectations. The email that went out is for existing Portfolio customers and is about the evolution of the app. Everyone will be given an extended Premium trial so no one will lose access to the feature in the near term. We want people to have ample time to make the best decision regarding what works best for them. To get a sense of the basic roadmapping feature (it's a separate feature from Portfolio), check out the out-of-the-box roadmap that comes with the next-gen project type. As per the JAC ticket, we are working on bringing that over the the classic project type as soon as we can. Again, feel free to drop me a line if you'd like to chat.  

[Bob Prescott]

@Josh Frank If Portfolio for Jira Cloud is available as part of Jira Software Cloud Premium, does that mean if you have Jira Cloud Premium, Portfolio will not cost any extra?

[Josh Frank]

@Bob Prescott That's correct. Advanced Roadmaps (Portfolio for Jira Cloud) will be included as part of Jira Software Cloud Premium. 

[Uffe Henrichsen]

@Josh Frank The next-gen project roadmap is pretty basic compared with Portfolio e.g. it's not possible to add additional issue types in the hierarchy as far as I can tell. We're using two levels above Epic. If we're stuck doing roadmaps at the Epic level then it won't work for us.

Are there any plans to allow additional levels?

[V R Ravinuthala]

@Josh Frank  - Is there a time line for availability of Roadmaping for Classic Project types. 

I have been evaluating Portfolio plug-in and Portfolio licenses for all users for the features its offering is cost-prohibitive for us. Roadmap features for Classic projects would be helpful.  

"To get a sense of the basic roadmapping feature (it's a separate feature from Portfolio), check out the out-of-the-box roadmap that comes with the next-gen project type. As per the JAC ticket, we are working on bringing that over the the classic project type as soon as we can. Again, feel free to drop me a line if you'd like to chat.  "

[Bruno Fernandes]

@Josh Frank we have all our plans, with teams' velocity, number of developers, vacations, holidays and so on in JIRA Portfolio.

Will this be supported in the new portfolio?

Roadmap as we know it today will not serve our needs!

[Pete Morris]

Hi @Bruno Fernandes !

Capacity management in the new experience focuses more on the team rather than individuals, so while we do support the team velocity from the live plan interface, we do not use the same features for individual level capacity and absences. 

The new experience is an optional upgrade for existing plans, so if you want to continue using the individual capacity features of live plans then you can. We definitely encourage you to give the new interface a go though!

[Joseph Fish]

@Pete Morris With the transition, will the initiative (issue type) hierarchy still only be available as a part of the cloud premium plan.

[Pete Morris]

@Joseph Fish - levels of hierarchy above Epic (such as initiative) are currently a feature of Advanced Roadmaps and yes, Advanced Roadmaps will only be available as part of Jira Software Cloud Premium.

[Uffe Henrichsen]

@Pete Morris - appreciate the straightforward answer - it's taken more than a month to get it but still. So the short answer is that you are removing key features from the Standard plan and our only option is to upgrade to Premium.

It seems pretty clear by now that Atlassian's plan is to water down Standard in order to force customers to move to Premium. This is a terrible strategy - removing features that your customers have spent time and money implementing and now depend on, is a real trust breaker. My worry is what will be removed next? To be clear: We would rather switch to another platform than upgrade to Premium - there are other options that fit our needs for less money.

[Pete Morris]

Hi @Uffe Henrichsen - levels of hierarchy above Epic have never been offered as part of Jira Software Cloud; they were available via Portfolio for Jira. If users would like extra levels of hierarchy but do not need the additional planning capabilities as part of Advanced Roadmaps then they can consider the many options available to them via the Atlassian Marketplace.

Feel free to email me at pmorris@atlassian.com if you'd like to chat more about this.

[Mona]

Hi Pete, 

Will this support Jira Next Gene? Could you send a demo?

Thanks

[Josh Frank]

@Mona  Out the outset Advanced Roadmaps (the new Portfolio experience) will only support Jira Software classic projects, but we are looking at how we can support next-gen in the future. Join our webinar in a couple weeks for an Advanced Roadmaps demo. 

[Mona]

Thanks @Josh Frank! I will definitely will join the Webinar. My main focus regarding the Portfolio management tools is on Resource management and capacity planning for the project. I'm open to hear if you have another adds on App, also. 

[Sunitha]

@Pete Morris I would need some clarification on hierarchy.  I will email you directly. I share similar concerns as other users here, regarding taking away features which we already paid for and spent time building the plans. 

[Krista Parker]

@Josh Frank Question on the switch with the trial for non-premium users - do you know if work on the simplified roadmaps for standard users will line up with that switch for those organization who don't want to move to premium? 

[Eoghan Murphy]

@Pete Morris is there the option to have a subset of account users on Jira Premium? Only a small number of an accounts users would ever need the functionality you're moving from Portfolio into premium, but what seems to be proposed is that we'll be forced to pay for access for all users on the account?

Also on your response to @Uffe Henrichsen above you call out

levels of hierarchy above Epic have never been offered as part of Jira Software Cloud; they were available via Portfolio for Jira

I think Uffe's point agrees that they were only available via portfolio, but points out that it was available as an add on to the standard plan for a reasonable cost and could be restricted to a subset of users... that option is being removed from standard plan users. 

Allowing premium to be restricted to a subset of users with other users on the account charged at standard rate would seem like a more reasonable approach. Alternatively call out migration strategies for customers to the many options in the Marketplace you mention above