On their own, your roadmaps are powerful tools. Not only do they lay the foundation for your product strategy, but they also serve as essential collaboration tools for your entire team to communicate what’s coming down your product pipeline.
So yes, roadmaps are great on their own. But when you combine them with the flexibility of Jira? Well, that’s a match made in roadmapping heaven. Whether it’s eliminating double data entry or boasting flexible visualizations that encompass everything your team is building, there’s a lot to love.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through what you need to know about Roadmunk for Jira, from the high-level benefits to the nitty gritty how-tos. Ready to get started? Let’s do this.
Getting to know Roadmunk for Jira
At the most basic level, Roadmunk for Jira is a flexible integration that bridges the gap between your overarching product strategy and your day-to-day planning. Think of it this way: Roadmunk is a high-level tool designed with product roadmapping in mind that makes it easy to build, share and present beautiful roadmaps. On the flip side, Jira is a more tactical tool that helps you break down your product strategy into manageable to-do lists. When put together, they form a dynamic duo of high-level product strategy mixed with everyday tasks. If we were playing a game of Word Association, “Roadmunk” might go with “strategic,” while “Jira” would match up with “tactical.”
Remember how we said the integration is flexible? That’s because it meets you at your level. Whether you’re more of a one-way sync roadmapper or prefer two-way synchronization, Roadmunk for Jira supports both—not to mention manual syncs if you choose to go the old-school route. (Keep in mind that if you opt for a manual sync, you’ll have to push updates to Jira by hand in order for any changes to be displayed.)
With a one-way sync, Jira is your source of truth—any updates to your epics, stories and issues flow from Jira straight to your roadmap. But with a two-way sync, any changes you make in Jira are reflected in your roadmap—and vice versa—saving you time and keeping your team organized.
Worried about double data entry? Never fear—with Roadmunk for Jira, your data is automatically synced, eliminating any worries you might have about having to do twice the amount of work. You also have the ability to set up a sync schedule between your roadmap and Jira project to ensure that your roadmap is always up to date with the most current Jira information.
Setting up the integration
Now that you know a little bit more about the integration and what makes it so dynamic, it’s time to start setting it up in your Roadmunk account. Luckily, connecting Jira in Roadmunk is a straightforward, painless process (we promise!).
If you’re an Account Admin in Roadmunk, you’ll be able to set up the integration on your own. Plus, you’ll only need to connect it once thanks to our one-time Jira setup wizard. Even if you don’t have admin credentials, you’ll still be able to use Roadmunk for Jira as soon as the initial setup is finished.
Check out the video below for a detailed rundown of getting the integration up and running. Or if you prefer seeing everything mapped out with text, we’ve included all the necessary steps over on our Knowledge Base.
🔥 Hot tip: Reduce your manual lift by mapping Jira start and due dates to Roadmunk. Just keep in mind that in order to map your dates, the date field should show up on your Create Issues screen and be set to a plain date picker.
The benefits of roadmapping with Jira
Now that you have the integration set up, let’s take a step back and look at what makes Roadmunk for Jira so powerful. No matter what your current roadmapping setup is like, Roadmunk’s Jira integration was created to work alongside—and enhance—your existing workflows. Still, there are plenty of things you can do with the integration that you can’t do in Jira alone. Here are a few of our favorite benefits that will help inspire your own product strategy as you start to familiarize yourself more with how it all works.
Plan your releases with confidence
If you were working solely in Jira, you’d only be able to view one release at a time—let’s just say that’s not exactly ideal. But with Roadmunk, you can bring together all of your upcoming releases in one easy-to-understand view. Not only that, but you can also get a high-level view of which Jira issues are included in each of your releases.
You can even pivot your release roadmap to tell the story that matters most to your audience. Whether that means choosing to display the status, priority or owner of each issue, you ultimately get to decide.
Capture the big picture with epic views
Within Roadmunk, you can get a big picture view of multiple epics by pulling all of them into one handy roadmap. Issues can then be linked into each epic and tracked against any Jira fields that are key to your planning, including status and priority.
Forecast time and effort with more precision
No more second-guessing—with Roadmunk’s Timeline visualization, it’s easy to get an at-a-glance view of the time, effort and resources it will take to finish tasks and assignments. The great thing about Timeline visualizations is that they show what’s happening and when, so there’s never any confusion of where your product strategy is at any moment. Not only that, but this clear, digestible view helps your team avoid unrealistic deadlines that might otherwise pop up unexpectedly.
And thanks to Roadmunk for Jira, any items you create in the Timeline visualization can be pushed to Jira, automatically creating stories and epics so that your team can start working on them ASAP.
Roll up multiple Jira projects into one Portfolio Roadmap
We tend to think in terms of one Jira project being the equivalent of one Roadmunk roadmap. But if your team has multiple Jira projects, you can create one high-level roadmap (a Portfolio Roadmap) that combines all of your initiatives.
🔥 Hot tip: This is especially helpful for organizations who might have multiple teams using their own Jira projects so that they can tell a more complete, in-depth story of their priorities and progress.
Tips, tricks and best practices
Before you head off and start building your own Jira-enabled roadmaps in Roadmunk, here are a few of our favorite tips to take your knowledge of the integration to the next level. With these best practices in mind, you’ll be well on your way to roadmapping like an expert.
Sync smaller amounts of data
In order to keep your performance in tip-top shape, it’s best to keep the data you’re syncing on the smaller side. This will not only help to lower your overall load times, but it will also help improve your roadmap’s overall performance. Think of it this way: the smaller your data, the bigger the picture you’ll get of all of the items that make up your roadmap.
Visualize project completions
Want to see how close an epic in Jira is to being complete? You can take the guesswork out of the equation by visualizing and measuring your epic progress one of two ways:
- Progress by Issue Count is a percentage based on the number of issues that have been marked as Done in an epic. For example, if you have four stories in an epic and only one has a status of Done, they would show up as 25% complete.
- Progress by Story Points is a weighted percentage based on story point values that are assigned to completed stories in a given epic. This gives you a deeper understanding of how much of your total work has been marked as Done. For example, if you have four stories and one of them is completed—but weighted at 50% of the total work—they would show up as 50% complete.
Try on Swimlane for size
You may be a dyed-in-the-wool Timeline visualization fan (and that’s great!), but sometimes it’s better to opt for the Swimlane visualization for Jira roadmaps. Why? The big selling point for Swimlane in this context is that you can neatly bucket your information better while still leveraging linked items for sub-items.
Remember, your roadmaps don’t have to be difficult to decipher or intimidating to format—stick with Swimlane for a more holistic, crystal-clear view of your Jira roadmaps, and your teammates will be crowning you the Marie Kondo of roadmapping in no time.
Ready… set… roadmap!
So there you have it—your comprehensive tour of how to use Jira and Roadmunk in tandem. Whether you’re just getting started on your roadmapping adventure or are already a roadmapping whiz, let this guide be your go-to resource for steering you along your Roadmunk for Jira journey.
Want even more inspiration to get your roadmaps up and running? Check out our repository of more than 35 roadmapping templates, where you’ll find example roadmaps for every business occasion, from product roadmaps to digital marketing roadmaps and beyond.
And if you’re hungry for even more Jira content, check out our comprehensive how-to guide on everything you need to know about navigating it with success. Happy roadmapping!