Creating and configuring themes
This page refers to Portfolio classic plans. If you are currently running Portfolio 2.0, please check this link to access the latest page version.
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.
You can create and configure themes by following these steps:
- Select your preferred plan and go to Reports, which is located in the view menu.
- If you want to create a new theme select + Create Theme.
- Configure your themes by selecting the columns and changing the values.
| Theme field | Description |
|---|---|
| Color | Used to differentiate different themes at a glance. |
| Target | Is the target value that you define in each theme and is used to compare estimates and actuals. Target allocation percentages will always add up to 100%. The easiest way to ensure this is to leave at least one entry blank, the value is then automatically calculated based on 100% minus the other defined target values. |
| Estimate | Sums up all backlog items labeled by theme and calculates the percentage relative to all backlog item estimates. |
| Actual | Actual time spent on the theme.This time calculation is based on the JIRA issues work logs. it's only available if the backlog items have links to JIRA issues, and only if these issues have work that has been logged. |
Tip
Both estimate and actual values are determined from the filtered results.
Example: If you set a filter for a certain release, you'll see the estimated allocation based on all backlog items assigned to this release. The target allocation is global and doesn't change while using the filters.