Themes report

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Themes are high-level strategic focus areas, value streams or investment categories used to set priorities and define where teams will devote most of their time. 

  • Themes are concepts used to label and tag backlog elements and are not time-oriented.
  • Themes are focused on relative resource allocation and allow you to compare how many resources you are spending on one theme versus another.
  • A story can only be assigned to one theme, so if the stories within an epic are assigned to multiple themes, the epic is implicitly assigned to multiple themes.

To create a theme:

  1. Go to your plan via Portfolio (in header) > View Portfolio > click your plan.

  2. Click the Reports tab to display the reports section for your plan.
  3. Click the switch report menu > Themes.
  4. Click + Add theme, name it and add a color.



    ColorLets you distinguish different themes at a glance.
    Target

    The target value that you define in each theme, which is then used to compare estimates and actuals.

    Target allocation percentages will always add up to 100%. The easiest way to ensure that the percentages adding up to 100% is by leaving at least one (1) entry blank. The percentage value for that blank entry is then automatically calculated, based on the difference between 100 and the other defined target values.

    Estimate

    For time-based estimation, this is the sum of all estimates of issues in the backlog that are labeled by theme, and the percentage for this is calculated relative to the estimates of all backlog issues.

    For story point-estimation, this is the sum of all estimates of open issues that are labeled by theme, and the percentage for this is calculated relative to the estimates of all open issues.

    Actual

    For time-based estimation, this is only available if the issues in the backlog have links to Jira issues, and only if these issues have works that's been logged for them. The calculation is then based on the work logs of the issues.

    For story point-estimation, this is the sum of all estimates of closed issues that are labeled by theme, and the percentage for this is calculated relative to the estimates of all closed issues.

    Now that the target is settled, you have to assign themes to the issues in your scope.

(info) To delete a theme, hover over the right side of the theme row, and click  > Delete.

How to categorize items by theme

  1. Go to the Scope view, select the Themes column and assign a theme to each issue.
    • When assigning a theme to an epic or initiative with child elements, the theme is implicitly assigned to all child items.
    • If the child items of an epic or initiative have different themes, the parent item displays all different assigned themes, with only a color indicator.
  2. Click Calculate to reflect the changes in the reports.
  3. Once you've assigned the themes to the issues go back to Reports > Switch report Theme.

Related topics

Last modified on Mar 22, 2019

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