Planning work
This is the alpha version of Portfolio for Jira 3.0 — your sneak peek at the improved functionality that's just around the corner. As such, do note the following:
- Some features may not be complete just yet, as we're continuously iterating on these.
- Because it's an alpha version, the documentation will only be visible to you, our alpha users. You will not find any alpha pages in the usual page sidebar.
We've linked the table of contents below, so you can easily navigate to the alpha pages at any time.
Once your plan is up and running, you're just about ready to plan more work for your teams. Most likely, your plan will already have issues in it, based on the issue sources you've previously selected.
You may also need to create more issues, to accommodate high-level work as they come. As you'd already know from previous versions of Portfolio for Jira, you can do this directly in your plan. In Portfolio for Jira 3.0, we're making this more straightforward and intuitive.
Do note that at any point in time during planning, you may just be planning high-level work — and that's fine. This essentially means that during high-level planning, it's typical to have placeholder estimates, and even skip specifying issue details, like assignees and target dates. Your teams can define more accurate values for these details later on.
Viewing issues
| 1 | Select the hierarchy levels from which and to which you want to view issues. |
| 2 | Expand an issue to view its child issues. |
| 3 | At the bottom of the scope section, you'll find the Issues without parent section, which displays the issues that do not belong to any parent issue. This section also displays the issues according to their hierarchy level. Expand a hierarchy level to view the issues of that hierarchy level. |
| 4 | Above the timeline section, configure the timeframe settings to view issues as needed:
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| 5 | The schedule block, which represents the schedule duration of an issue in a plan, based on the target dates that have been set for the issue. Ideally, an issue would have both target start date and target end date, but it's quite possible for an issue to have just one of the dates. In this case, the schedule block displays in a solid color on the end of the target date that's been set. The solid color transitions and gradually fades towards the other end of the schedule block, where the target date hasn't been set. |
Creating issues
Before creating issues, make sure that you've already done both tasks:
- created the initiative issue type in at least one of the projects that's being used in your plan
- configured the hierarchy levels of your plan, as needed
Otherwise, some of the issue types won't be available to use. See Configuring initiatives and other hierarchy levels for more details.
You can create issues directly in your plan without having to jump back to Jira, and there are several ways to do this in 3.0 plans:
- Create a child issue of an issue at a specific hierarchy level
- Create an issue of the same hierarchy level
- Create an issue at any hierarchy level
Also, note that the default duration for issues would depend on the timeframe in which you're viewing the plan. Note that you can always edit the duration after the issue is created.
- 3M: 1 week
- 1Y: 1 month
- Fit: The default duration depends on the date range of the issues in the timeline, which affects the width of the issues in the timeline. If the width fit is small, then the default duration could perhaps be a week or a month.
- Custom: The default duration depends on the duration that you set between the start and end dates. If you set a short period of time, then the default duration would be shorter as well.
Creating a child issue of an issue
A plan typically contains issues coming from multiple issue sources, such as boards, projects, or filters. As a best practice, it would help you plan work and create issues more efficiently if you keep in mind the issue source, and the parent issue of the issue you're creating. This helps you create child issues of issues across multiple issue sources, where it makes most sense.
Creating a child issue of an issue
To create a child issue of an issue:
- In the scope section of your plan, go to the parent issue for the issue you want to create.
- Hover on the parent issue > click + > select the hierarchy level for the issue you're creating. This will add a row for the new issue, right below the parent issue.
- In the new row, select the issue type for the new issue > select the corresponding project.
- Give the new issue a name, then click Enter.
- If already known, specify other issue details, like assignee, team, estimate, sprint, release, and target dates.
In the roadmap view of your plan, above the timeline section, click Review changes. The 'Review changes' dialog will display.
While reviewing your changes, perform the following as needed:
- To view multiple changes, expand the corresponding item in the 'What changed' column.
- Clear the checkboxes of the changes that you do not want to save in Jira. While these changes won't be saved in Jira, these will still exist in your Portfolio plan.
- Select the checkboxes of the changes that you want to save in Jira, then click Save selected changes in Jira.
Creating an issue of the same hierarchy level
You can also create a sibling issue — sibling issues are issues of the same hierarchy level.
Creating an issue of the same hierarchy level
- In the scope section of your plan, find an issue of the same hierarchy level of the sibling issue you want to create.
- Hover on the issue > click + > select the same hierarchy level. This will a row for the new issue, right below the issue you'd referenced.
- In the new row, select the corresponding project.
- Give the new issue a name, then click Enter.
- If already known, specify other issue details, like assignee, team, estimate, sprint, release, and target dates.
In the roadmap view of your plan, above the timeline section, click Review changes. The 'Review changes' dialog will display.
While reviewing your changes, perform the following as needed:
- To view multiple changes, expand the corresponding item in the 'What changed' column.
- Clear the checkboxes of the changes that you do not want to save in Jira. While these changes won't be saved in Jira, these will still exist in your Portfolio plan.
- Select the checkboxes of the changes that you want to save in Jira, then click Save selected changes in Jira.
Creating an issue at any hierarchy level
If you're planning high-level work and just want to create issues fast, you can choose to create issues at any hierarchy level. This is helpful for when you have some issues to create, but you can't connect these to parent issues just yet.
Creating an issue at any hierarchy level
To create an issue at any hierarchy level:
- In the scope section of your plan, click + Create issue.
- Select the hierarchy level for the issue. This will create a new issue at the bottom of the scope section, along with other issues that don't have parent issues.
- Give the new issue a name, and click Enter.
- Specify the corresponding issue details as needed:
- Issue type, which is necessary when you have multiple issue types mapped to the story level
- Issue source, for when your plan has multiple issue sources, i.e. boards, projects, and filters
- If already known, specify other issue details, like assignee, team, estimate, sprint, release, and target dates.
In the roadmap view of your plan, above the timeline section, click Review changes. The 'Review changes' dialog will display.
While reviewing your changes, perform the following as needed:
- To view multiple changes, expand the corresponding item in the 'What changed' column.
- Clear the checkboxes of the changes that you do not want to save in Jira. While these changes won't be saved in Jira, these will still exist in your Portfolio plan.
- Select the checkboxes of the changes that you want to save in Jira, then click Save selected changes in Jira.
Removing an issue from a plan
In 2.0 plans, you can remove issues from a plan by doing one of the following methods:
| 1 | Removing issues from the plan directly from the scope table |
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| 2 | Accessing the 'Create plan' wizard, and removing the issues from the scope of your plan | This only works for issues that have already been committed to Jira, which essentially means the issues already exist in your Jira instance.
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| 3 | Reverting the issues you've just created in your plan, before committing these changes in Jira |
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In 3.0 plans, we're still iterating on what we believe will be a more favorable experience, in removing issues from plans. At this time, you can remove issues by:
| 1 | Discarding the issues you've just created in your plan, before saving these changes in Jira |
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| 2 | Accessing the 'Create plan' wizard, and removing the issues from the scope of your plan | This only works for issues that have already been committed to Jira, which essentially means the issues already exist in your Jira instance.
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Linking an issue to a parent issue
In 2.0 plans, you'd link an issue to a parent issue in the scope table. You'd click the issue, and the details pane displays on the right, and then you select the parent issue to link it to.
In 3.0 plans, you can simply drag and drop an issue to its parent issue. Note that you can only link an issue to a parent issue of the corresponding hierarchy level that you've configured for your plan. This means that if you've configured epics as the parent issues of stories, then you can only link a story issue to an epic issue.
To link an issue to a parent issue:
- In the scope section, find the issue that you want to link to a parent issue.
- Drag and drop the issue to the parent issue of the corresponding hierarchy level.
In the roadmap view of your plan, above the timeline section, click Review changes. The 'Review changes' dialog will display.
While reviewing your changes, perform the following as needed:
- To view multiple changes, expand the corresponding item in the 'What changed' column.
- Clear the checkboxes of the changes that you do not want to save in Jira. While these changes won't be saved in Jira, these will still exist in your Portfolio plan.
- Select the checkboxes of the changes that you want to save in Jira, then click Save selected changes in Jira.
Deleting an issue
You cannot delete issues directly from an 3.0 alpha plan, if these issues have already been saved in Jira. You'll need to delete the issue form Jira, and to do this, you'll need the 'delete issue' project permission.
See Removing an issue from a plan to know how to delete issues that haven't been saved in Jira yet.