You want to manage your Product Roadmap with Jira? This is a good place to start learning what you need to make the most out of it. I will specifically go through the Roadmap view and Epics.

The Product Roadmap view

The Roadmap section, located in the left navigation bar, provides a Gantt chart view of epic durations and all related user stories, tasks, bugs, and other issue types. Upon accessing this section in Jira, you may observe a similar layout to the one provided in the Jira documentation. Please note that the appearance may vary slightly due to ongoing improvements made by the Atlassian team.

What are Epics in Jira and why is their prioritization crucial for the management of our products?

Epics are a specific type of issue in Jira that are used to group and organize related issues that align with a common goal or objective. They are the only issue type that can be displayed in a Gantt chart view and are often developed and refined over the course of multiple sprints. Epics provide a convenient way to track the progress of large projects or initiatives and ensure that all related work is properly aligned and prioritized.

Prioritization is a crucial aspect of product management because it helps ensure that resources are allocated to the most valuable work first. By prioritizing tasks and features, product managers can make informed decisions about what work should be tackled first and allocate resources accordingly. This helps ensure that the product is developed in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

Effective prioritization also helps product managers balance the needs of different stakeholders, such as customers, users, and the business. It allows product managers to align the product roadmap with business goals and ensure that the product is meeting the needs of its target audience.

Overall, prioritization is a critical aspect of product management because it helps product teams focus on the most impactful work and ensures that the product is developed in a way that delivers the most value to customers and the business.

Tips to use Epics in your Jira Roadmap

With this in mind, try to name your epics so that this is clear, and use outcomes instead of implementations or activities when you name your epics.

Outcomes refer to the results or effects of a particular action or process. In the context of product management, outcomes are the desired results of developing and releasing a product. These outcomes can be financial, such as increasing revenue or reducing costs, or they can be related to the product itself, such as improving user experience or increasing customer satisfaction.

It is important to note that outcomes are different from outputs, which refer to the tangible deliverables or products produced as a result of a process. In product management, outputs may include the actual product or features developed, while outcomes refer to the desired results or impact of those outputs.

Let’s look at a practical case: I have a project for my online courses. Each course is an epic, and I include all the tasks I need to do around the course. My epic names are “Release xyz course”. This is because the final outcome of all my work will be the publication of the material in teachable or LinkedIn Learning.

Inside of this Epic, I have different issues with more concrete activities. For exaple tasks to write and record each course, ideas for content I want to add to each course… When I use Jira for software projects at work, I create epics like “Better onboarding experience”. Inside this epic I add bug reports related to this experience, user stories for new things we want to implement in our software and tasks for data analysis exercises we want to run, ideas to evaluate and marketing tasks for any campaigns or announcements we want to run in relationship to the improvement of this experience.

When you are just starting a project, you can work directly from the roadmap view to create the high level plan. From this view you’ll be able to grain down your epics into tasks, user stories, bug and any other issue type you decide to create. This view is super helpful for product managers and for any other roles that want a high level view of the plan. While the product backlog is great to know what’s next, I find the roadmap gives a better view of the product plan.

Prioritizing and Estimating Epics in Jira

Jira provides the ability to rearrange epics according to priority and dependencies through the use of drag-and-drop functionality. If you organise epics from high priority epics at the top, and low priority epics at the bottom, your timeline should have a nice flowing look, meaning you are completing higher impact work first, and lower impact work just once it is finalised.

If you can’t easily compare the priority of two epics, I encourage you to refer to one of the many prioritization methods available, but to use them as a tool.

There are several methods that product managers can use to prioritize work in their product roadmap:

1. MoSCoW: The MoSCoW method is a prioritization technique that divides items into four categories: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have (for now). This allows product managers to prioritize work based on its importance and feasibility.
2. KANO model: The KANO model is a method for prioritizing features based on customer satisfaction. It divides features into three categories: basic, performance, and excitement. Basic features are necessary for a product to function, performance features enhance the product’s functionality, and excitement features delight customers.
3. Weighted scoring: Weighted scoring involves assigning a score to each item on the product roadmap based on its importance and feasibility. The scores are then totaled, and the items are ranked based on the total score.
4. Value vs. effort matrix: A value vs. effort matrix involves plotting each item on the product roadmap on a grid based on its expected value to the business and the effort required to implement it. This allows product managers to prioritize work based on the potential return on investment.
5. Impact/effort matrix: An impact/effort matrix is similar to a value vs. effort matrix, but it focuses on the potential impact of an item on the product and the business, as well as the effort required to implement it.

By using these methods, product managers can effectively prioritize work on their product roadmap and ensure that resources are allocated to the most valuable tasks and features.

You can read more about 5 proven methods to prioritise these epics in this blog post I wrote.

In addition, dependencies between epics can be visualised through the use of links. Estimated durations for each epic can also be defined using the Gantt chart view, although it is recommended to set these estimates at the monthly level rather than specifying exact dates. While it is important to have delivery dates in mind, it is advisable to be cautious with high-level deadlines to avoid potential issues.

There are a few reasons why it can be dangerous to give precise delivery dates or estimates in software projects:

1. Complexity: Software projects can be complex and involve a wide range of variables that can affect the timeline. Giving a precise delivery date or estimate can be difficult when there are so many factors that could potentially impact the project.
2. Changing requirements: Requirements for software projects can often change as the project progresses. This can lead to scope creep, which can affect the timeline and cause the project to take longer than originally estimated.
3. Unforeseen issues: There is always the possibility of unforeseen issues arising during a software project. These issues can delay the project and cause it to take longer than expected.
4. Pressure: Setting precise delivery dates or estimates can put pressure on the development team to meet those deadlines, which can lead to corners being cut and the potential for mistakes or suboptimal solutions.

Overall, it is generally safer to set high-level delivery dates or estimates rather than specifying precise dates. This allows for flexibility and allows the team to focus on delivering a high-quality product rather than trying to meet an inflexible deadline.

How to use epic colors in the Jira roadmap?

Epic colors can be utilized in various ways. One approach is to use different colors to represent different types of work, such as marketing, product, and strategy. Another approach is to use different saturations to indicate the status of an epic, with darker colors representing work that is planned or in progress and lighter colors representing completed work. For example, dark grey and light grey could be used for strategy epics, with dark blue and light blue representing feature epics. Green could be reserved for completed work, with dark green indicating work that is in production and light green indicating work that is in staging. Alternatively, red could be used to represent delayed work.

Wrap up

Effective prioritization is a crucial aspect of product management, as it helps ensure that resources are allocated to the most valuable work first. By prioritizing tasks and features, product managers can make informed decisions about what work should be tackled first and allocate resources accordingly. This helps ensure that the product is developed in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Want to learn more about how to effectively prioritize your product roadmap? Keep reading to discover valuable tips and strategies to help you succeed