Search
Close this search box.
Search
Close this search box.
Search
Close this search box.

Portfolio for Jira / Advanced Roadmaps / Plans

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Introduction

Atlassian is in the process of making some big changes to its products for the past year. It started with the acquiring of Agile Craft” and labeling it as “Jira Align”. They continued with major changes in the cloud UI, then came the purchase of “The automation for Jira” plugin and integration into the Jira cloud. Now they are integrating “Portfolio for Jira” plugin that for years was a standalone plugin into Jira cloud.

The change with Jira Portfolio was not only the integration but adding the full functionalities and features that were on the Portfolio server edition only into the cloud so we must address this huge change.

New Form –  New Name

The Portfolio for Jira name is something that accompanies us since its introduction in 2014 and as long as it was an external plugin there was no need to change its name.

Now, this is no longer the case on Jira cloud when the new Portfolio is now pre-integrated into the cloud app and a new name can be a better fit. Atlassian named the new portfolio for the cloud: “Advanced Roadmaps” and while the feature is called “Advanced Roadmaps” – the title in the Jira menu is “Plans” which I find to be a bit confusing. The only place that “Advanced Roadmaps” can be found is in the admin settings.

While writing this article, Atlassian published a new version of Portfolio for the server and spread the new “Advanced Roadmaps” name to Jira Server as well.

Features

If you are familiar with Portfolio for Jira v3.0 plugin for Jira software you’ll find nothing was changed in terms of features or look.
However, for users that had used only Jira Cloud’s Portfolio for the past year, this is a massive change in look and functionality. Here are some great features it has:

Progress tracking

While the plan comes with only 3 fields “start date, end dates, status” you can add any field that you like, including a progress bar. You can have the progress by issue count or by estimation (story points / original estimate).

But I think that the major change is that it will show not only “done” percent but also “In progress” so you’ll see the real status of “to do”, “in progress” and “done” statuses of the hierarchy levels.

Tracking progress on Jira's advanced roadmpas

 

Hierarchy levels

You can configure the hierarchy levels the same as before but now, if you wan to work only on a single-level hierarchy, you can decide to show only “epic” to “epic” or “epic” to “story” levels. That’s a huge change that helps a lot during the planning phase.

Timeline

That’s another big change, some will find it difficult to get used to the new look, the timeline is now situated on the right side of the plan and you can basically add/change the start and end dates of issues on the timeline itself.

Timeline planning on Atlassian's advanced roadmaps

Reports

The reports section that was on a different tab is now gone but you have filters to show the exact information that you need, whether it’s only dependencies or by project/sprint.

Dependencies

Instead of showing only on reports, it can now be shown as fields and on the timeline as dots before and after the time range.

Shrinkable columns

You can add as many fields as you wish to see in your plan and you can collapse them by pressing their title if you wish to see the full timeline you can easily shrink all fields by pressing the “fields” title.

Capacity planning

If you are working with Portfolio’s teams you can group your plan by team and enable sprint capacity planning to see the load on a specific sprint.

Sprint Capacity on advanced roadmaps

Rolled up values

That’s one of my favorites, although the roll-up values existed in some form on the old plans, it got much better on this one. Not only that if you look at estimation it doesn’t sum the children with the parent, it also rolls up many other fields such as dates/sprints and more.

There are much more features that this article is too short to include. Find more about advanced roadmaps in the official documentation here.

Pricing

A huge downer for the new Portfolio for Jira cloud is the pricing, instead of paying for the plugin about $3.5 per user, you’ll now have to upgrade all Jira cloud users to the premium plan, meaning to pay an extra $7 per user. At this point, the premium plan provides unlimited storage, 99% uptime, and 1000 automation executions per user so if the only thing you need is Portfolio – the price just doesn’t worth it, but we’ll need to wait and see what else will be available for premium users. Check Jira cloud pricing plans here.

Portfolio vs Big Picture / Structure

The main reason that I prefer Portfolio over other plugins such as Structure or Big Picture is not because of its features, actually, both competitors have more features than Portfolio. The reason is that Portfolio comes with a built-in hierarchy that while it makes the planning stricter  – keeps the plan much more organized than the others.

Whereas other plugins are not strict at all, meaning that you can create a plan with stories above other stories or epics above epics – Portfolio allows a single issue type to present a hierarchy level. That way, you can look at any issue in Jira and immediately know its level in the full picture.

Summary

The latest changes in Portfolio for Jira Cloud are a blessing. If before the changes I hesitated on recommending the Portfolio to Jira cloud customers, with its latest changes it became the only tool that I would recommend for long-term planning in Jira.

While there are some more features on the server Portfolio edition – the cloud edition provides some very valuable new features to cloud users.

The option to switch between the old plan view to the “enhanced experience” new view exists for both server and cloud editions and with the latest features on the server – I guess the old view will probably disappear soon. So, you can name Portfolio however you like: advanced Roadmaps / Portfolio / Plans – it’s finally available for everyone! Atlassian is on its way to taking the crown for best planning app for Jira and their desires to rule the world.

Looking for more tips on working with your team on Jira? Check this article


Related Links:

 

Subscribe for Email Updates:

Categories:

Tags:

Agile Israel Events
Lean Startup
Applying Agile Methodology
Continuous Delivery
Artificial Intelligence
Accelerate Value Delivery At Scale
Implementation of Lean and Agile
ScrumMaster Tales
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
Jira Plans
Professional Scrum Product Owner
Kaizen Workshop
Webinar
Achieve Business Agility
Nexus Integration Team
Scrum Master Role
Advanced Roadmaps
Agile Exercises
Jira admin
Risk Management on Agile Projects
Product Ownership
TDD
Tools
LPM
speed at scale
Scrum Master
A Kanban System for Software Engineering
Scaled Agile Framework
Reading List
Business Agility
Agile and DevOps Journey
The Kanban Method
Rapid RTC
Principles of Lean-Agile Leadership
SAFe Release Planning
Managing Projects
AI
Lean and Agile Techniques
Lean Agile Management
Manage Budget Creation
Video
Development Value Streams
SAFe
Agile Israel
Nexus and SAFe
ALM Tools
Agile Product Ownership
Continuous Deployment
Kanban Game
Lean Agile Organization
Program Increment
Continuous Improvement
Agile in the Enterprise
Code
What Is Kanban
Agile Risk Management
Scrum Primer
Limiting Work in Progress
Jira
Frameworks
RTE
Games and Exercises
Lean-Agile Budgeting
Value Streams
Covid19
Sprint Planning
Agile India
chatgpt
SPC
Introduction to ATDD
Nexus vs SAFe
Story Slicing
RSA
An Appreciative Retrospective
Hybrid Work
Systems Thinking
ATDD vs. BDD
Introduction to Test Driven Development
Agile Mindset
RTE Role
NIT
Change Management
AgileSparks
EOS®
Effective Agile Retrospectives
Agile Techniques
Planning
POPM
Quality Assurance
Elastic Leadership
Kanban Basics
Professional Scrum Master
Lean Agile Basics
Tips
System Integration Environments
Software Development Estimation
Lean Agile Leadership
The Agile Coach
Legacy Enterprise
Agile Community
Jira Cloud
PI Objectives
Enterprise DevOps
PI Planning
Agile Games and Exercises
Nexus
GanttBan
Sprint Iteration
Agile Contracts Best Practices
Kaizen
Agility
agileisrael
Process Improvement
Implementing SAFe
Coaching Agile Teams
Lean-Agile Software Development
Portfolio for Jira
Release Train Engineer
Entrepreneurial Operating System®
SA
Agile Marketing
User stories
Certification
Product Management
DevOps
Large Scale Scrum
Lean Software Development
Agile Outsourcing
QA
Scrum Values
Kanban Kickstart Example
Scrum.org
Agile Product Development
Risk-aware Product Development
Agile Release Planning
ARTs
IT Operations
Agile
lean agile change management
Kanban
Agile Release Management
Iterative Incremental Development
predictability
Agile Basics
ATDD
Agile Assembly Architecture
Test Driven Development
Agile Project
Kanban 101
Continuous Planning
Agile Program
Agile for Embedded Systems
Operational Value Stream
Agile Testing Practices
WIP
Releases Using Lean
Perfection Game
Nexus and Kanban
Pomodoro Technique
Agile Development
Self-organization
SAFe DevOps
Agile Delivery
BDD
LAB
System Team
Lean Risk Management
Legacy Code
Agile Games
Daily Scrum
AI Artificial Intelligence
Lean Agile
Risk Management in Kanban
Built-In Quality
ART Success
Lean and Agile Principles and Practices
Engineering Practices
Atlaassian
Lean Budgeting
Certified SAFe
Scrum Guide
Managing Risk on Agile Projects
System Archetypes
Software Development
Spotify
Agile Project Management
Scrum
Atlassian
Scrum and XP
ROI
Professional Scrum with Kanban
Presentation
Slides
LeSS
speed @ scale
Scrum With Kanban
Continuous Integration
Amdocs
AgileSparks
Logo
Enable registration in settings - general

Contact Us

Request for additional information and prices

AgileSparks Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter, and stay updated on the latest Agile news and events

This website uses Cookies to provide a better experience
Shopping cart