Note: Due to a previously unreported feature, this article has been deleted and then republished. This method is used to provide notification emails to users subscribed to Release Notes updates. Please see Work Tree view enhancements below for details on the additional feature included in version 10.84.

• Enhancements and Features
• Defect Fixes

Enhancements and Features 

Work Tree view enhancements

We've made it easier to navigate between the five views available on the Work Tree page:

• The View dropdown found in the Extra Configs menu has been renamed Tree View and is now accessible from the top-left of the page
• The Narrow Filter Report toggle found in the Extra Configs menu has been renamed Narrow to Program and Program Increment and is now accessible from the top-right of the page 
  • Available from the Top-Down, Team, and Theme Group views 
• Info messages describing the view selections entered display at the top of the page
• These changes address JIRAALIGN-1332

Performance: Work Tree

For better performance when using views inside the Work Tree page, we have removed the following controls:

• Hours column — all views
• Score column — Top-Down, Bottom-Up, and Team views
• Quick Expand button — all views 
• Reset Charts button — Strategy and Theme Group views
  • This change was made as these views do not contain charts

Additionally, we moved the visibility controls for the Health column to the Extra Configs page menu. By default, the column is not displayed. 

When accessing the Strategy view, child items are now loaded on-demand when you expand a parent level. Previously, all children were loaded in the background after first selecting a snapshot, causing performance issues.

Performance: Strategy Tree

For better performance when accessing the Strategy Tree page, child items in the tree are loaded on-demand after expanding a parent item.

Performance: Link Maps

Instances that contain a large number of work items within a portfolio and program increment combination previously experienced timeout errors when attempting to set up a link map.

We have enhanced the selector for work items when creating or editing link maps with our more performant dropdown, which supports search functionality and displays the top 150 results:

Work Item Links

Predecessor and Successor work item links for themes, epics, capabilities, and features may now span across multiple portfolios. These links will display in the View the Predecessor and Successors tray, will be counted in the Program Room, and will display on the Program Board.

API 2.0

Strategic Snapshots can now be created (POST), read (GET), and updated PUT/PATCH using the REST API.

Training Simulation updates

The video and computer-based-training content found in the Training Simulation Checklists has been updated to show the current version of Jira Align and Atlassian branding. Administrators may enable or disable Training Simulations from the Administration > Platform settings page.

Defect Fixes

• Enhancements and Features
• Defect Fixes

Enhancements and Features 

Team Room Progress card enhancements for Agile teams

We’ve updated the dials found within the Progress card of the Team Room, for Agile teams:

The middle dial has been renamed Sprint Load to more accurately reflect the dial’s displayed percentage. We also updated the hover tooltip that explains the calculation. Sprint Load is calculated as:

((Sum of level of effort (LOE) story points assigned to the sprint) / (Average Team Velocity)) * 100

To help you reference the team’s average velocity, we replaced the right-side Accepted dial with Average Team Velocity. This visibility should equip you and others to quickly sense the probability of finishing all work planned in the sprint.

If you’ve entered an override velocity for the sprint, we’ll show that value instead of an average, with an Override Team Velocity label.

To see how your Average Team Velocity or Override Team Velocity is calculated from the last five completed sprints, click the number displayed below the label. The team’s Details panel will display, with the sprints used to calculate the average highlighted.

Report calculation and consistency changes

We’ve updated several report names, calculations, and labels to provide more consistency across views of similar data. Changes include:

Group Velocity (also known as Program Increment Velocity):

• The report name changed to Points Accepted (by Sprint)

  • Because no point totals are divided by a unit of time, this report doesn’t reflect a velocity value

• We changed the Velocity label in the legend and hover messages to Points Accepted

• We ensured the chart uses the same calculations as the Portfolio Program Predictability report, to resolve defect JIRAALIGN-1525

Sprint Coaching:

• We updated the names of several categories found in The Committed Plan section, to better reflect their purpose. No changes were made to how these values are collected:

  • Committed Work label renamed to Stories Committed

  • Task Breakdown label renamed to Tasks Committed

  • Total Effort label renamed to Points Committed

  • Total Value label renamed to Value Points Committed

  • Acceptance label renamed to Acceptance Criteria Committed

• We updated some label names within The Statistics section:

  • In the burndown chart at the top of the section, the orange Actual Burn line changed to Hours Remaining

  • We changed the Sprint Story Progress progress bar at the bottom of the section to Sprint Progress

  • We renamed the Velocity chart at the lower-left to Points Accepted by Sprint, and added an Average team velocity indicator to the chart

  • We resolved some issues with the Rate of Completion chart

    • Dev Complete label renamed to Dev Tasks Complete

    • QA Complete label renamed to QA Tasks Complete

    • The chart now correctly displays the number of development tasks and QA tasks completed each day

Sprint Metrics (also known as the M1 Report):

• We removed the % symbol from the chart name at the top of the page, and connected the first word to Platform Terminology settings. For example, if you have customized your Sprint term to be called “Iteration”, the chart name will read “Iteration Metrics”.

• We updated the Team Objectives section to show a percentage of team objective completion. Added a tooltip explaining how the percentage is calculated. Each cell is calculated as:

  • ((# of team objectives completed) / (# of team objectives planned)) * 100

• We updated the Team Defects section to display white cells with a - symbol when there are no open defects in a sprint, instead of a red cell with a ? symbol

• Story Completion section renamed to Stories Committed vs Accepted

• Planned vs Accepted section renamed to Points Committed vs Accepted

• Splits & Drops section renamed to Split and Dropped Stories

Velocity Trend (Planned vs. Actual Velocity Variation by Team):

• The report name changed to Story Point Progress by Team

• We changed the display style from a single bar showing planned points with a dot inside/above the bar showing accepted points to a dual-bar graph: blue bars represent points planned, while green bars represent points accepted

• We renamed the chart header to Variation between Planned and Accepted Points by Team

• We renamed the chart subheader to See the variation between a team’s planned and accepted points during the program increment to identify predictable teams and spot negative trends before they become a problem

Program Predictability Report:

• We moved the program comparison chart from the bottom to the top of the page

• We moved the Tier view dropdown from the Extra Configs menu to its own space in the upper-left corner of the report

• We ensured that calculations done by the charts are correct:

  • Planned Objectives are critical path objectives assigned to the team or program

  • Delivered Objectives are both critical path objectives and stretch goal objectives assigned to the team or program, and marked Complete

  • Objective Progress percentage values are calculated as: (Delivered Value / Planned Value) * 100

Progress by Objective:

• We reviewed and updated calculations done by the report to ensure that:

  • Planned Objectives are critical path objectives assigned to the team or program

  • Delivered Objectives are both critical path objectives and stretch goal objectives assigned to the team or program, and marked Complete

• We added an info message to the top of the page explaining that planned values do not include stretch goal objectives

• We added tooltips to planned and delivered value labels

Program Allocation:

• We moved the Program Totals section to the top of the page

  • Added a row to the section displaying counts of accepted points

• Loaded labels renamed to Points Accepted

• Actual labels renamed to Points Accepted

Team Burndowns:

• We corrected the x-axis of the charts to show the time period of a sprint, +/- 1 day

• Planned Velocity label renamed to Points Planned

• Accepted Velocity label renamed to Points Accepted

• We shortened chart headers for better readability

• We re-ordered the legend at the bottom of each chart to match the display of other burndown charts

Configuration bar filtering: Objectives

The Objectives and Objective Backlog pages now have been updated to correctly support more scenarios where different filters are selected in the Configuration bar:

• Product has been disabled as an option, as it does not apply to objectives

• When an organization structure is selected in the Configuration bar, objectives are shown when the owner is a member of the selected structure or child levels of the structure

• When a release vehicle is selected in the Configuration bar, objectives are shown if they are associated with a feature assigned to the release vehicle

Configuration bar filtering: Defect Backlog

The Defect Backlog page has been updated to correctly support more scenarios where different filters are selected in the Configuration bar:

• When a product is selected in the Configuration bar, defects are shown when their parent feature (via a defect-story-feature hierarchy) is associated with the selected product or child products

• When an organization structure is selected in the Configuration bar, defects are shown where the user specified in the Assigned to field is a member of the selected structure or child levels of the structure

• When a release vehicle is selected in the Configuration bar, defects are shown that are directly assigned to the release vehicle

Defect Fixes

Important: Same functionality, new name! Our Business Intelligence (BI) add-on module is now called Enterprise Insights (EI) in the Help Center. We’ve updated references to the product in our past articles and release notes to account for this name change, and have also updated the Business Intelligence section of our Help Center to the name Enterprise Intelligence.

Jira Align's Enterprise Insights (EI) will be updated and deployed to test instances running version 10.81 on October 21st, 2020, and will be deployed to production instances on October 26th, 2020. The following enhancements were made:

• Release highlights
• New tables
• Updated tables

Release highlights

• Planning Method column added to Feature, Capability and Epic tables.

• Expense Savings Range and Revenue Growth Range added to Feature tables.

• Feature & Story states updated to include delivery state values (6 - In Delivery, 7 -Delivered) if enabled.

• Capability & Epic states updated to replace NULL with 1 - Not Started state text.

• Goal and Solution Foreign Keys added to Objective tables.

• Role master table added.

• Time Sheet Note Object added.

• MAP User to Time Tracking Role table added.

New tables

Updated tables

Below is our upcoming release schedule. Please note that the SaaS dates to reflect the Saturday that the release will be available in your environments (versus the Friday that our maintenance window starts on).

SaaS environments will be unavailable during our maintenance window, which starts at 11:00PM EST the day prior to what's listed below and ends at 2:00AM EST on the day listed below.

We are very excited to roll out some big changes to the Estimation Conversions settings menu. Many of you have voiced concerns that one estimation conversion for all types of work items is an inhibiter to improving estimation fidelity when planning. We agree.

Background

For those unfamiliar with the estimation conversions functionality, here’s a quick recap. In Jira Align, there are three main estimation systems that can convert values between each other: Weeks (which have Member Week and Team Week variants), Points (which have Fibionnaci and Power of 2 variants), and T-Shirt Size. Portfolios select different systems to use as a metric for estimations.

Stories generally use a point-based method. Larger work items, like features and epics, use T-shirt size or week-based estimations entered as Member Weeks (the effort of one employee during a working week) or Team Weeks (the effort of one team during a working week). These larger estimation methods are helpful for understanding the general level of effort needed for delivery, prior to breaking down a feature into child stories.

Conversions are necessary, as not all calculations can use Member/Team Weeks as an input. Take Estimated Program Increment Load as an example. This calculation is displayed on the Feature backlog to help Program Managers understand if the program increment (PI) is currently underloaded or overloaded. Estimated Program Increment load is essentially estimated planned work divided by the predicted amount of work a program can deliver (aka Program PI Velocity). But! Program PI Velocity is measured in story points. For that reason, we must convert the weekly estimates entered on features into points.

That’s where the Estimation Conversions menu comes in. Found within Platform settings on the Administration page, organizations can set up conversions between estimation systems. Once the settings are saved, sit back and let Jira Align do the hard work of converting various calculations platform-wide based on your configurations.

What’s coming?

In the upcoming 10.85 release, which will ship to test environments on December 5th, 2020, we will roll out separate estimation conversions for epics, capabilities, and features, as well as a revamped settings panel:

The new settings use Member Weeks as the primary pivot for conversion into other estimation systems, as it is an easy concept to understand. Your teams, program leaders, and portfolio managers should work collaboratively to determine the following value:

How many points can one person, working for one full week, consistently deliver? 

Set that number as an organization-wide benchmark.

How will this affect current conversions in my environment?

At first, it won’t! All of your current configurations will be migrated over to the new panel for each work item level. When your team is ready to switch over to the new Member Week based conversions, your Jira Align admin can follow the steps listed below. Upon clicking Save, calculations in Jira Align that use conversions will be updated.

Note: While the estimation system used for point and week-based estimates can be set per-portfolio, Estimation Conversions are global settings that apply to all portfolios in a Jira Align instance.

How do I use the new conversion options?

Admins should perform the following steps once the new settings panel becomes available in their test or production instances to use the new conversion options:

Step 1: Select your work item level

Easy! Start by selecting the work item level you’d like to configure – epic, capability, or feature.

Step 2: Establish the primary pivot

Next, as a team, determine your Member Weeks to Story Points conversion. While this is specific to each work item level, it is the primary pivot used to generate conversions across each of the work item’s estimation systems (T-Shirt, Fibonacci, and Power of 2).

For example, if your team decides that 1 member week is equivalent to 5 story points, then 5 will become your multiplier used in the conversion table.

Step 3: Enter Member Weeks for each system

Within each system – T-shirt sizing, Fibonacci, Power of 2 – all you have to do is set your conversion to Member Weeks. The rest will automatically calculate on its own based on the following multipliers:

• 6 Member Weeks = 1 Team Week
• 1 Member Week = 30 Hours
• 4 Member Weeks = 1 FTE/mo (full-time equivalent per month)

Story points will also be automatically calculated based upon the value entered in Step 2.

Step 4: Save

Click Save to confirm the new conversions (once confirmed, old estimation conversions cannot be recovered).

Done! Check out the new estimations on the affected pages listed in the following section.

What pages and values are affected by Estimation Conversions?

Once set, you’ll notice calculation changes across the platform. Below are the key areas by work item:

Epics

• Epic Backlog Column View>
• Portfolio Room > Execution View
• Portfolio Room > Resource View
• Portfolio Room > Financial View
• Forecast

Capabilities

• Capability Backlog Column View
• Portfolio Room > Execution View
• Portfolio Room > Financial View
• Forecast > Agile by Program
• Forecast > Agile by Team

Features

• Feature Backlog Column View
• Feature Backlog list, step and state view
• Portfolio Room > Execution View
• Portfolio Room > Financial View
• Program Room > Program Increment Load
• PI Scope Change

Standalone Features

• Epic Backlog Column View (for standalone features)
• Portfolio Room > Execution View
• Portfolio Room > Resource View
• Portfolio Room > Financial View

With the Jira Align 10.74 release, we will no longer be sending our release announcement email. We recently enhanced the Help Center to allow those with accounts to sign-up for release notes publication notifications. So, no longer will you have to wait until the beginning of the week after a release to review the details of new and enhanced features, performance improvements, and defect fixes. Now, you'll receive a notification the instant release notes are published on Friday of the release. 

What you need to do

To receive the real-time release notes publication notifications, you'll need to create a Help Center account and follow the Release Notes section. Please note, this will most likely be a different username and password than your Jira Align and Atlassian username and password. 

 To create an account (or reset your password if an account already exists), click the SIGN IN button on the Help Center (see the pink arrow).

Next, click the Sign up link, enter your name and email, and then click the Sign up button. You'll receive an email to finish setting up your account. If you receive a message that says a user has already signed up with the given email, click the Forgot my password link to reset your password.

Once logged in, from the Help Center home page, click the WHAT'S NEW section (bell icon).

Then click the 10X: Release Notes section header (or the link!). Finally, click the FOLLOW button and then the New articles link.

That's it! As soon as we publish new release notes, you'll receive an email notification with a link!