Visualize roadmaps in work view

After you create your backlog hierarchy, prioritize and estimate the backlog items, it is a good idea to visualize your work with roadmaps. A roadmap is a great visual tool that can be used by RTEs, Product and Portfolio Managers to get a bigger picture of the organizational plans. To access the roadmaps, follow the Navigate to roadmaps procedure.

The roadmaps have three views: Work, Program Increment, and Release Vehicle. The Work view offers a granular level of objects, it shows what you have for a selected PI—your themes, epics, capabilities, and features. It shows the objects rolled up to a parent (for example, features by epic) and specific lists of objects (for example, epics or themes). Not to lose the context of what you are working on, you can click the object ID for themes, epics, capabilities, and features and be redirected to the object page where you can view and edit the object.

Prerequisites

1. PI must exist in the system and be tied to a program.
2. Sprints must be created and tied to a PI. 
3. Epics, capabilities, and features must be created and tied to a program.

Views: sprint by program increment and month by quarter

By default, your roadmap shows as months by quarters so that you can see your work in context to relevant time aggregations and be able to navigate without losing that context. However, you can filter your roadmap by PIs and by their associated anchor dates to view your roadmap by when the code is actually released. You can switch between the Month by Quarter and Sprint by Program Increment view options in the View drop-down menu. PIs show at the top of the roadmap in chronological order and are labeled by their roadmap name. Anchor dates show below their respective PIs and are labeled the same as on the Program Board (for example, S1, S2, S3) and by their date range in the day/month-day/month format.

The Month by Quarter view gives a better visualization for when your PIs begin and end. When you point to a round blue icon next to a certain month, you can see a PI’s name and a light blue area, indicating the time period of the PI. This is available only when you select PIs, not time periods or custom date ranges.

You can view the rolled up values of LOE points, hours, and number of items in the object (epic, feature, and so on). Additionally, for features in the Sprint by Program Increment view, you can view a story rollup—a number of stories associated with a specific feature for an anchor date—in the lower-right corner of each grid that represents one anchor date range. This helps better visualize how stories are laid out across the planned feature. Point to the number to see a list of the story names and click a story name to view its details. When the stories fall within the start and end anchor dates, the number indicator matches the color of the bar it corresponds to. If there are stories outside of the feature’s start or end anchor dates, the indicator is red. Here, you can also find the Today Line (a dotted black line within the grid), showing a reference that indicates the current date to better visualize the progress of objects throughout the selected sprint or time period.

Manage your work items

• Reorder: You can reorder objects by dragging and dropping them. However, this change will not persist.
• Filter: You can customize your view by adding or removing columns and filtering by various criteria (theme, epic, capability, feature, health, etc.).
• Sort: Finally, you can sort items using the sort type drop-down menu, which includes the program rank defined in the backlog. A few nuances:
  • The sort is ascending by default. Unranked items display at the bottom in no particular order.
  • Hierarchy: If viewing multiple work item levels (e.g., features by epics), sorting only applies to parent work items. If viewing single work item levels (e.g., features or epics), sorting applies to all items.
  • PI order: If multiple program increments (PI) are selected, work items display by PI order and then by rank. PI order is based on start date. The lowest ranked work item in the first PI sits above the highest ranked work item in the second PI, and so on. Epics and capabilities spanning multiple PIs are listed by rank in their initial PI.
  • Portfolios and solutions: The program rank is used when a portfolio or solution is selected on the sidebar. If a portfolio is selected, the program rank reflects the work item's primary program (not additional programs).
  • Programs and teams: The program-PI rank is used when a program or team is selected on the sidebar.
  • Themes: the global rank is used when sorting themes on the roadmap, regardless of sidebar selection.

Managing your roadmap

After you made the changes on the roadmap, you can synchronize them—push those changes down to the actual objects. You can make a lot of different changes, and then decide what to synchronize with a list of things to sync.

Additionally, you can share the roadmap by creating a detached instance, which is a snapshot of a roadmap in a certain moment in time. You can share your roadmap using a detached instance link or create a .png download of a roadmap. This allows putting the roadmap into a variety of reports outside Jira Align.

Milestones and objectives

Milestones

A milestone (previously "fixed-date milestone") is a task or event that represents progress in the lifecycle of a theme, epic, capability, or feature. You can add and track up to 30 milestones within a single work item. To visualize milestones on the roadmap, make sure assign a start date and/or due date. To create a milestone:

1. Navigate to the specific work item you wish to add a milestone to and open its details panel.
2. Within the details panel, open the Milestones tab and select Add milestone.
3. Enter a name. This is the only required field.
4. Optionally, enter a state, category, start date, due date, and description. At least one date must be included in order for a milestone to display on the roadmap.
5. Once you have entered all relevant information, select Save. You can return to the milestones tab to view or change this information at any time.

To display milestones on your roadmap:

1. 1. From the side navigation, choose Roadmap.
   2. Select the Milestones and objectives button located in the upper-right corner.
   3. To enable milestones, switch on the Milestones toggle.
   4. Once enabled, milestones display as star icons on the corresponding work item’s row. Start dates render as blue stars and due dates render as yellow stars, making milestones easy to track. Completed milestones include a check mark.

Enable and manage milestones settings

To enable milestones for different work item levels, follow these steps:

• Themes: Settings > Roles > Portfolio > Themes > Milestones Tab
• Epics: Settings > Roles > Portfolio > Epics > Milestones Tab
• Capabilities: Settings > Roles > Solution > Capabilities > Milestones Tab
• Features: Settings > Roles > Program > Features > Milestones Tab

Categories help you quick see the domain or phase of work associated with a milestone. Jira Align’s default categories for milestones include "discover", "define", "design", and "deliver".

1. To edit categories, your system role must be super admin, or include the platform setting permission to perform these steps. To proceed:
2. Navigate to the side panel and choose Settings > Platform settings.
3. Select Dropdown > Milestones Category.
4. Enter a new name into the category that you want to modify, or create a new category by adding a name in the new value field. 
5. After updating all relevant categories, select Save dropdown.

Objectives

An objective (sometimes referred to as "objective milestones," although we have deprecated this term) is a high-level outcome that work aims to achieve for teams, programs, solutions and portfolios. You can create and link objectives to multiple work items. All objective types can be viewed on the roadmap, as long as they are linked to an epic or feature and have a start and/or due date. Read more about creating objectives.

To display objectives on your roadmap:

1. From the side navigation, choose Roadmap.
2. Select the Milestones and objectives button located in the upper-right corner.
3. To enable objectives, switch on the Objectives toggle.
4. The list of objectives that are associated with a feature or epic will display, so you can turn them on individually.
5. Once enabled, objectives display as flag icons on the corresponding work item’s row.

Note that objectives can be linked with multiple work items and in this case, they will display multiple times on each work item's row.

Health status

The health status of an item is reflected by the colors. Right-click the bar, and then select the necessary health status. Take a look at the following list to understand the color legend:

• Dark gray – no health
• Blue – done
• Orange – at risk
• Red – critical/slip
• Green – on track
• Light gray – on hold

Changes to the health status are only saved when the roadmap is synced.

Date range

The work item bars show the date range of your themes, epics, capabilities, and features, as well as the progress of their completion. By default, work item IDs and names appear inside their respective progress bars. Point to a bar to view the progress completion percentage for the object that is based on the completed and accepted rolled up effort points divided by total possible rolled up effort points.

Dates rendered for objects on the Work view reference the defined dates seen on the object. If there are no dates defined on the object, then the date from the object's parent is used. You can manually set the dates by pointing to the start or end date on the work item's bar and dragging the double-headed arrow in the needed direction.

If an object spans outside of the selected time frame, an arrow icon appears on the side of that object. Point to the arrow icon to view the start and end dates of that object, its percent completion, and the PIs it is assigned to.

Themes

The start and end dates for themes are based on the dates set on the object in the following priority order:

• If a theme has a target start and end date set, the data is returned within the start and end dates (rendering the start and end date bar based on those dates).
• If a theme does not have a target start and end date set, the dates are rendered based on the assigned PIs from the start date of the first PI to the end date of the last PI.
• If a theme does not have a target start and end date and does not have an assigned PI, the dates are not rendered.

Epics

The start and end dates for epics are based on dates set on the object in the following priority order:

• If an epic has a target start and end date set, the data is returned within the start and end dates (rendering the start and end date bar based on those dates).
• If an epic does not have a target start and end date set, the data is returned within the start and end dates based on the assigned PI's start and end date (rendering the start and end date bar based on those dates).
• If an epic does not have a target start and end date and does not have an assigned PI, no data is rendered (no dates and, thus, no start and end date bar).
• If an epic spans multiple PIs, the epic bar is based on the start date of the earliest PI and the end date of the last PI.

Features

The start and end dates for features are based on dates set on the object in the following priority order:

• In both sprint by program increment and month by quarter views, a feature with a target start and end date set displays based on those dates.
• When using the sprint by program increment view, a feature without a target start and end date set displays based on the target start and target end sprint.
• When using the month by quarter view, a feature without a target start and end date set displays based on the start date of the first PI, and the end date of the last PI.

See also

Navigate to roadmaps

Visualize roadmaps in program increment view

Visualize roadmaps in release vehicle view

Visualize roadmaps in briefing view