How to create a Jira roadmap using Easy Agile Roadmaps [2021 update]

We often get questions about why product roadmaps are considered an agile tool. To some, it seems quite “un-agile” to set concrete dates for a long list of tasks you will likely never get done.

That assumption couldn’t be more wrong. It presumes that a product roadmap is an old, overdone practice more akin to Waterfall predecessors like the *cough*Gantt Chart *cough*. This is not the case. Gantt Charts are for task dependency, and they assume that work will be completed in a linear fashion.

On the other hand, a true product roadmap is completely subject to change. It’s a living document meant to serve as a guide. The roadmap shows what a team needs to accomplish to create specific features or otherwise complete tasks that will provide the most value to customers in a certain timeframe.

This flexibility allows product development teams to make the most informed choices. To help teams do this, we built the simplest and most flexible roadmapping tool for Jira (more on this later). Here, you’ll learn about the benefits of using product roadmaps, the guiding principles of the roadmapping process, and how to use roadmapping tools effectively.

What is an agile product roadmap?

Agile is a broad term for a non-linear way of working that prioritizes flexibility and collaboration. This working style helps teams iterate as they go rather than stick to a rigid plan that doesn’t adapt to new information.

Think of agile as the complete opposite of an assembly line process for making a product. An assembly line has a strict plan where one step happens after the next. Each piece falls into place one after another without extra input or iteration.

🖍 Great for an assembly line of Crayola products, not so great for software development. 📱

Rather than use the assembly line approach, agile teams work collaboratively and iteratively on new products in order to detect roadblocks early, before they can cause a delay. And, Product teams use agile tools to provide clients and stakeholders value on a consistent basis.

Basically, agile product roadmaps are key to producing a great product.

They provide a smooth and collaborative planning process for development teams while maintaining the strategic objectives and product vision stakeholders expect. On top of all that, the flexibility provided by agile product roadmapping delights customers by consistently meeting their evolving needs, whims, and desires.

The benefits of roadmapping for product management

There are many benefits of roadmapping for everyone involved. Roadmapping assists product managers, helps the development team collaborate, gives stakeholders a clear view of the process, and ensures customers are continually pleased with product features and functionality.

Effective roadmap tools can provide the following benefits:

• Enable teams to align their vision around product features
• Provide a clear visual of the most critical prioritizations
• Ensure short-term product goals are met as soon as possible while monitoring and adjusting long-term goals
• Align all team members on what’s most important at any given time
• Keep track of specific product launch and release dates
• Maintain the product vision and business goals
• Ensure all stakeholders can view and give feedback on the current product plan
• Ship a product and solve issues relatively quickly
• Bring constant value to stakeholders and customers

For most teams, it’s truly the beating heart of product development.

4 guiding principles to get the most out of your product roadmaps

We’re obsessed with roadmapping and the many agile strategies that help teams work more effectively. So, we pulled together a list of the most important guiding principles that will ensure your agile team gets the most out of your product roadmap.

1. Focus on themes of work, not features

In the simplest form, themes represent high-level groups of work (like epics). In an agile product roadmap, themes should be customer-focused, unlike traditional waterfall roadmaps where themes tend to focus on business objectives.

Examples of themes include:

• Customer onboarding experience
• Reducing tech debt
• Customer satisfaction and engagement

By grouping work into themes, teams are able to tell a story about where they are headed as well as the goals, objectives, and outcomes that will get them there. User stories provide high-level visualization so that teams can answer critical questions:

• What are we doing?
• Why are we doing it?
• How does it link back to our Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)?

2. Think of the roadmap as a living document

Product managers need to educate their stakeholders on the true purpose of the product roadmap to manage expectations and ensure everyone is on the same page.

A product roadmap is not a promise. It’s a living document that’s meant to serve as a flexible guide.

You need to teach all stakeholders that the roadmap represents chunks of work, such as new features, functionality, and metrics customers value most at a specific period of time. It’s inevitable and expected that customer needs and preferences will change. The roadmap should be adjusted and amended to reflect these changes as time goes by.

The agile product development process should change to maximize the value customers experience. This is what it’s all about!

3. Actively collaborate with stakeholders

Involve everyone in the process, including internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, and the full development team when planning, reviewing, or adjusting the roadmap.

The product manager doesn’t need to be the only one representing the customer’s voice. By gaining the perspective of developers, the sales team, customer support, and engineers, you get a holistic view of the customer experience. This will give you a clear view of what your customers value to determine what should be done when.

4. Ensure the roadmap is accessible to all stakeholders

The product roadmap should be the team’s single source of truth, representing the plan of execution against the company's Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

Understanding what’s going on and why each person is doing what they’re doing is crucial to establishing transparency and confidence in your team.

The roadmap represents the team’s overall vision for a period of time. Ensuring the roadmap is accessible to all stakeholders achieves organizational alignment.

Product strategy with Easy Agile roadmaps for Jira

We teased above that we’d tell you more about Easy Agile Roadmaps. We designed the simplest and most flexible roadmapping tool for Jira. Our roadmap software helps teams align around a product vision to sequence the most critical features for customer delivery.

Easy Agile Roadmaps are designed for everyone involved in the product development process from the product manager to the dev team to key stakeholders and customers. It works seamlessly with both Scrum and Kanban Jira Software boards. And, of course, it’s completely agile. Like, Simone Biles flexible.

Say goodbye to clunky Excel sheets, one-off Powerpoint presentations, and static Gantt Charts. Easy Agile Roadmaps can create a visual roadmap timeline that’s flexible, iterative, and easy to use. Split scheduled work, add date markers, use Quick Filters, track your progress, and export the roadmap as needed. The tool uses a simple drag-and-drop functionality for a clean user experience, no matter the needs of your team.

We’re so sure you’ll love it, you can try it free for 30 days. If you have any questions, our team is ready and waiting to hear from you, or watch an on-demand demo of our roadmapping app in action.

Roadmaps help agile teams produce great products. They’re iterative, visual, collaborative, and they can be created directly in Jira. We designed the simplest roadmapping tool for Jira to bring the benefits of roadmaps straight to agile development teams. Use the Easy Agile Roadmaps app to create product roadmap templates that are simple to use, flexible, and integrated directly within Jira.

In a previous post, we shared a quick guide on how to create a Jira roadmap using Easy Agile Roadmaps. If you haven’t used Easy Agile Roadmaps yet, start there to install a free 30-day evaluation and create a product roadmap in Jira.

This post will cover some of the key features of our app, including how to synchronize your roadmap, schedule work from your backlog onto the timeline, create theme swimlanes, and visualize key date milestones.

The benefits of roadmapping

Roadmaps are extremely useful. Here are just a few of the things they can do:

• Provide a big picture vision for agile teams
• Provide a visual summary of the product development process
• Communicate strategic initiatives and business objectives
• Allow for real-time iterations
• Provide a clear time frame to keep product strategy on track
• Ensure short-term goals are met as soon as possible while still keeping an eye on long-term goals
• Help product managers oversee and organize product releases
• Track important release dates and product launches
• Keep everyone up-to-date on broader business goals
• Illustrate both a detailed and high-level overview of deliverables
• Help product managers and team members see dependencies between issues
• Help development teams bring constant value to external stakeholders

Plus, when you create a Jira roadmap, you have quick access to your product plans, and you always know exactly where your roadmap lives — right in our app. No more chasing down Gantt Charts or looking for one-off PowerPoint presentations!

Easy Agile Roadmaps: configuration, themes, markers, and PDF export

We designed the simplest and most flexible roadmapping tool for Jira to help agile teams work better together. Easy Agile Roadmaps create a flexible, iterative, and easy-to-use visual timeline of product development, allowing product owners to sequence the most critical features for customer delivery.

Watch our demo or follow the instructions below to:

• Synchronize Jira start and due date fields
• Schedule issues on the timeline
• Add swimlane themes
• Configure version and date markers
• Export the roadmap as a PDF

Synchronize Jira start and due date fields

We require users to specify which date fields should be mapped directly to the roadmap for a synchronized roadmapping experience. You’ll need to choose your date fields since multiple custom date fields may exist, such as project start and end dates or contract start and end dates.

A Jira administrator is required to map date fields.

Navigate to the Jira administrative cog and click “Manage apps” from the dropdown menu. Down the left-hand side of the manage apps page, find “Easy Agile Roadmaps,” and click configuration. Here, you can select the desired date field.

In each dropdown menu, you will see all of the available date fields to choose from on your Jira instance. Next, ensure that both of those date fields are associated with the screens used by your product teams.

Once installed, Easy Agile Roadmaps can be found in the project sidebar for every Scrum and Kanban agile board. Clicking on the roadmap icon in the project sidebar will load your roadmap for your selected board. From the dropdown menu in the top right corner, you have the option to view your roadmap from a weekly, monthly, or quarterly timeline scale.

Schedule issues on the timeline

After loading your roadmap, two theme swimlanes are present on the roadmap. The first is an example roadmap titled “My theme” that can be renamed. The second is a swimlane called “issues without themes.” Any issues populated within your selected date fields will appear on the timeline in a swimlane titled “issues without themes,” located at the bottom of your roadmap.

You can use the drag-and-drop functionality to move any issue to a different theme or place it on the timeline.

Issues from your board that have not been populated with start and due date fields can be added to your roadmap from the issues panel. Click on the blue “Issues” button in the top right corner of the roadmap, and simply drag an issue from the panel onto the timeline to schedule it on your roadmap.

Issues can be resized to show their expected start date, duration, and end date. To resize an issue, drag the left or right end to the desired date.

Create swimlane themes

You can slice your roadmap using theme swimlanes. These are a flexible way of grouping work and dividing the roadmap into a more visually digestible format. Theme swimlanes can represent anything suitable for your business context, from distinct themes of work to project components. Examples of themes include health and safety, customer onboarding experience, or customer satisfaction and engagement.

To create a new themed swimlane, click the “Create Theme” button located at the top of your roadmap. Name your theme, and press “Submit.” Your new theme will appear above the issues without themes swimlane and can be reordered using the arrows to the right-hand side of its name.

Configure version and date markers

Use Markers to visualize key date milestones and Jira fix versions on your roadmap.

To add Jira fix versions to your timeline, select the “Markers” button from the top of the roadmap. Click “Add Marker” to the fix versions you want to add to your roadmap.

Date markers are a flexible way of representing milestones or events, such as conferences, beta periods, or marketing campaign launches. To create a date marker, select the “Markers” button from the top of the roadmap. Select the option “Add a Date Marker.” Name your date marker or milestone, set the start and end date, and choose the marker color. Use color to signify different types of events and to add another layer of visual organization to your roadmap.

Export the roadmap as a PDF

The roadmap can be exported as a PDF to share with users and stakeholders who don't have access to Jira. To export your roadmap, click on the ellipses menu and select “Export to PDF.”

Select the timeframe you would like to share using the start and end date options, then press “Export.”

Product roadmap template example

Below is an example product roadmap template made with Easy Agile Roadmaps. The roadmap shows product launch dates, events, and overdue tasks with vertical colored Markers. Issues are arranged and scheduled by date in themed swimlanes that further organize the roadmap.

Easy Agile Roadmaps are completely customizable, so you can establish a process that works best for your team and your stakeholders.

How to get the most out of a product roadmap

✅ Utilize swimlane themes to tell a story about the customer journey. Ensure swimlane themes are customer-focused, so you always have their needs top-of-mind.

✅ Think of the roadmap as a living document. It will continue to evolve based on the needs of your team and stakeholders.

✅ Ensure the roadmap is accessible to all stakeholders so that they understand what’s going on and why you are making each decision. If necessary, regularly export the roadmap as a PDF for stakeholders who can’t access Jira to ensure organizational alignment.

✅ Actively collaborate with stakeholders, and involve them in the entire process. This will give you a clear understanding of what work will bring the most value to customers.

We dig deeper and expand on these guiding principles in our Product Roadmap Guide.

Try Easy Agile Roadmaps free for 30 days

Product roadmaps are widely used by agile teams since they simplify product goals and planning with a visual representation of the product journey.

Easy Agile Roadmaps help teams align around a product vision to continually bring value to customers. Complete a product roadmap so you can impress your team and stakeholders before ever making a commitment. Start your 30-day free trial to see what a difference this can make in your process.

If you have additional questions, ask us for an on-demand demo, which covers the features outlined in this post. Or, contact our team at any time with specific questions about any of our Easy Agile apps.

Just as you looking at a physical map before a road trip helps you understand the legs of each journey, roadmaps help agile teams understand their workloads for the upcoming months. Jira roadmaps offer further benefits, such as timeline visualization and the ability to share relevant information with external stakeholders.

In this article, we'll unpack the purpose of product roadmaps and whether they’re all the same, as well as why Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira is the simplest roadmapping tool for Jira. You’ll discover how roadmaps help Product Owners, agile team members, customers, and stakeholders. You'll also understand the difference between roadmaps and Gantt charts.

Let’s start with discussing the purpose of roadmaps for agile teams.

Why does an agile team need a roadmap?

Roadmaps help agile teams define their big chunks of work and when to complete them by. It’s an artifact to communicate with the team, customers, and other project stakeholders.

With roadmaps, agile team members have a sense of their journey for the next 3-6 or even 12 months. By understanding this journey, teams can better understand their product’s evolution.

If you’re a Product Owner, roadmaps are a great way for you to:

• Demonstrate that you understand company goals
• Show the C suite and the agile team that you're aware of customer needs
• Show you know how to deliver a valuable product to your customers while meeting your company's goals

Roadmaps are also a great way to remind you and your team how their work fits into the bigger picture. They give you an opportunity to motivate and help team members.

Also, by breaking down epics into user stories in the product backlog, Product Owners and the development team can better prioritize, schedule, and assign resources to those work items.

Now that we've covered the basics of Jira roadmaps, let's take a look at how to adapt them for different roles.

Tailoring roadmaps to meet specific needs

Different people on the team will need different views of roadmaps. Some roles focus on analyzing specific roadmap items of roadmaps, and other roles focus on different parts.

The development team needs roadmaps with expected release dates, milestones, and a detailed customer value explanation.

You may prioritize roadmap items by customer value, which makes sense when considering the customer-first agile methodology.

Often, development teams have roadmaps organized by sprints and work items arranged on a timeline. A work item can be a user story, a task, or a bug.

The C suite uses roadmaps to map the work of development teams onto company goals and metrics.

Those roadmaps display work items organized by month or quarter. This organization helps track progress over time and draw conclusions on goal achievement.

When roadmapping for the C suite, you don't need to worry about providing them with detailed work item descriptions.

The sales staff relies on roadmaps to learn about new features and customer value. That kind of information can help improve sales conversion. Roadmaps are a great way for the sales staff to understand upcoming developments they can get customers excited about.

You should also do your best to offer visually appealing and highly readable roadmaps to your customers. They'll look for a prioritized overview of new features.

Jira roadmaps might help you deliver these different types of roadmaps.

Jira roadmaps

Atlassian included roadmaps in next-gen Jira software. Jira roadmaps allow you to define and organize items in a timeline and keep them up-to-date. You can even share the work status with stakeholders.

But the coolest thing about roadmaps in Jira is that it syncs with the developers' work.

As the scope of a project can change while agile teams are working, it can get tricky to maintain an up-to-date roadmap, especially if you’ve been using a static tool like Excel or Confluence. Thankfully, Jira roadmaps allow you to quickly and easily update the work status and item priorities.

Agile teams can attach user stories to the Jira project on which they're working. As a result, Jira software updates the actual work in their roadmap.

You can also use Jira software to break down roadmap items, or epics, which means dividing work into small chunks. And as if this wasn't enough fun, you can use Jira Software's drag-and-drop functionality to adjust item priorities in the timeline. Consequently, Jira Software automatically adjusts the dates in the epics.

These are a few more reasons why Jira roadmaps are worth checking out. They offer:

• Stakeholder collaboration in creating and maintaining the roadmap
• The ability to share information with external stakeholders
• Increased availability and visibility to team members
• Tight links between a team's work and the roadmap
• Seamless item update ability
• Project status visualization
• Both high-level and detailed item descriptions
• Connections between Jira issue dates and dates on the roadmap

Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira can help shape your roadmap as a timeline with swimlanes based on work themes or teams. Drag and drop items on the timeline to set when the team will begin and end working on them. You can also:

• Define milestones
• Filter the roadmap’s view
• Track epic completion progress
• Share a PDF version of the roadmap with stakeholders

Before you go, we should get on the same page about Gantt charts vs. roadmaps.

What are Gantt charts?

When we say “Gantt charts are useful for agile teams,” you might immediately think, “That can’t be right!” 😮 However, Gantt charts can be useful in the right context. They’re just not very agile.

The Gantt chart, named for the chart’s creator, Henry Lawrence Gantt, provides a graphic schedule for planning and visualizing tasks organized by project stages.

Project managers use Gantt charts to manage task dependencies and the critical path. This path is the sequence of tasks that team members must execute on time to not compromise the project’s end date.

Simply put, if you’re building a data center, you have to define the order in which the team must execute tasks. Basically, the team can’t start some tasks before completing others.

Now, let’s clarify why roadmaps are agile, whereas Gantt charts are not.

Why Gantt charts and roadmaps are not interchangeable

At first glance, Gantt charts seem similar to roadmaps. However, at their core, they serve different purposes and audiences.

Gantt charts assume that team members will complete work in a linear fashion. This means that the execution of some tasks depends on the execution of other tasks. And any modification to the schedule can compromise the project’s end date, so you should avoid task rescheduling and frequently track the execution of tasks.

This is why the linearity of Gantt charts goes against the very principles of agile. 🛑

The agile methodology originated from the need to address the inefficiencies of traditional project management practices in software development. One of those methodologies is the waterfall methodology.

Agile teams do adaptive planning and deliver outcomes on an ongoing basis. They also focus on continuous improvement. That’s why no Gantt chart would fit into an agile workflow.

Gantt charts follow a linear delivery model with lots of task dependencies, which tends to be slow. 🐌

On the other hand, the agile workflow has shorter development cycles — iterations — with frequent deliveries and the bare minimum task dependencies. That speeds up continuous improvement. Additionally, agile teams adapt their roadmaps very well to ever-changing priorities and requirements.

Roadmaps are good, but Jira roadmaps are awesome

Jira roadmaps like Easy Agile Roadmaps help order work items by priority and update their statuses. Stakeholders can make collaborative edits on roadmaps in Jira, which is very convenient.

Perhaps the greatest feature of Jira roadmaps is that developers can both track work in Jira Software user stories and through the tasks on those roadmaps. From the Product Owner's perspective, the benefit is how they visualize the developers' work and communicate it with stakeholders.

It’s really important to make sure that both the C suite and the agile team buy into the roadmap. If they don’t, you might not be aligning your team’s work with company goals and customer needs.

Keep in mind that roadmaps’ benefits work two ways: Team members better realize how they contribute to achieving company goals, and you can monitor that process.

Try our Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira. Whether you’re following the Scrum framework or the Kanban framework, it’ll help you organize your team’s work items in a timeline, define milestones, and track progress.