Hi Martin, Is there a way to stop portfolio from auto assigning issues to JIRA created sprints if there is excess capacity available? Portfolio created/suggested sprints are very useful, but it would be good if portfolio doesn't auto assign stories to manually created sprints in JIRA

Hi, how does this work with multiple stages that are split across sprints?
I can see how the portfolio side works but it doesn't update the JIRA issues with a sprint.

I can see from the help that issues that span multiple sprints aren't auto assigned back to JIRA. Is there a preferred / recommended approach to this?

Perfect, now is working!
My team was connected to the project instead of using the board.

Thanks

Could you detail how to make the bulk-assignment of issues to sprints from portfolio?
I'm trying to use this help but I cannot see the mentioned option on my portfolio cloud.
Thanks

This issue has been addressed as part of new Portfolio live plans, which are now out of labs and the standard way of working with 2.0.

We have made the following improvements around sprints with live plans:

• Dynamically load sprints and sprint assignments from the boards
• Option to bulk-assign issues to sprints
• Committing manual sprint assignments back to the boards

The following sprint-related suggestion is still open:
Ability to create future sprints from Portfolio plans

As a work-around it is quite easy to just create the future sprint on the board and then bulk-assign the issues Portfolio scheduled into the sprint via the schedule in Portfolio.

Hi all, I've just posted an update above. Live Plans already address this 1 way already today, from agile boards into Portfolio. Until the final release, we're still planning to provide an option to also push suggested sprint assignments in Portfolio back to the board.

Cheers, Martin
Principal PM, Portfolio for JIRA

We want to use Portfolio but since the teams themselves use Jira Agile - it means we need to maintain spints both in Jira and Portfolio and keep them synched.

We did not use Portfolio previously as it did not fit our way of working. Portfolio Live has got us using the service, but a big drawback is the lack of sprint synchronisation. There seems little point in estimating sprints if you can't then sync those plans back to Jira.

I want this feature too. Hope we have it available soon.

Portfolio is dead. Long live Portfolio Live Plans!

Atlassian know it's fatally flawed, the good news is they are well down the path to rebuilding it. I am using the beta from the Add Ons Marketplace (covered by existing Portfolio licence). It is already so much better than the official product that I've completely switched even though it's a beta and needs more work.

I suggest you ask to join this group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7018171 as it has details of the new version etc.

I agree with @Steven James Burks. I am now getting killed over here with explaining how stories are getting assigned to scrum teams and do they have to then mirror that in JIRA. I am interested in a workflow that anyone has used for this. the documentation for Portfolio is absolutely useless.

Good way of describing the current experience when using Portfolio, @George Mihailov ... "Frustrating." Capacity planning ... Not meaningful enough for a company that is large enough to actually use this functionality, in my opinion ... There are much better options out there, a simple project management tool like Wrike, does a better job at capacity planning. The whole point to an app like this would be, in my opinion, as a result of its nearness to Jira, to actually integrate with Jira properly (most common use cases)! See my first post in the this thread.

It just kind of seems like someone really missed the point when they launched this application.

But the right fixes sure could make it valuable.

Very best,

/steven

Introduction of Portfolio into existing Agile environment makes only frustrations. We do good job on sprint planning and then there is a desynchronization on higher level. Unless to use all those nice graphs in portfolio just as an idea for capacity planning. So far not going to keep using it after the trial

To add to this:

• I want to be able to see in Portfolio which stories are in JIRA sprints.
• I want to be able to see which stories are recommended for future sprints (i.e. dynamically replace Sprint 1, Sprint 2, etc. with real sprint names for each associated project)

I agree with every comment I've read here, however, we have found no other tool that gives us both the cross-team view we need, as well as get close enough to JIRA Agile (in that today we can at least import existing issues from Agile). The need for more functionality in Portfolio includes:

• Complete syncing of Sprints created in Agile so that Agile drives the individual task / issue level of information, if desired. In this, Portfolio simply pulls it in, and doesn't mess with it, but can plan around it, especially if the Sprints in Agile are being managed by somebody else, and Portfolio then exists to display this, as well as anything else that is added by the individual managing Portfolio. Often times, there are software teams that have Product Owners who manage Agile, and then a higher level Principal Product Manager that needs to deliver the entire company view, including hardware, manufacturing, marketing, business development, etc. As such, you see the need for this feature.
• The ability to display both Story Point and Standard Time estimates in the same Portfolio Plan. How? Offer a conversion table of some sort. If that is not feasible, then offer external deadlines in Standard Time to be applied to Story Point-based Sprints (this may already be available but I haven't figured it out yet ... If it is, please enlighten me).

Thank you, and very best,

/steven

I'd use this important feature/add-on now if it did this, otherwise it's to time consuming.

This product provides no value unless we can sync with Jira Agile.

It's surprising that our regularly curated sprints in JIRA agile aren't reflected in JIRA portfolio. This is an extremely important part of workflow and anything that can be done to support this would be fantastic.

Just wanted to add that Portfolio is looking pretty great so far and seems to offer much of the cross-team view that we're looking for. Our only blockers to full adoption of it are that we can need to use the sprints from JIRA Agile as well as assignees from JIRA (JPO-161) so that we can minimize the amount of busy work needed to get that view.

Thanks for the new product and keep up the great work!

Portfolio is a nice tool but this feature is an absolute must-have. We're missing the integration of Portfolio and Agile sorely.

As an executive, I want the create Themes and Initiatives initially in the JPO and relate those to Project Level EPICs, Stories. I want to create Portfolio level Releases that aggregate Project versions and Project Level Sprints. This will allow me to track the high level expectations and roll-up actuals from the project level.

A Portfolio planning tool that forces down changes makes it very difficult to support an environment where project level Sprint retrospectives occur every two weeks. I don't want to force the project teams to wait for Portfolio planning to complete before implementing changes at a specific project level. The ability to utilize Agile Project Sprints instead of a separate Portfolio Sprint is almost a must have for my company.

Wouter makes a good point, which I'd like to expand on: our organization has implemented SAFe, which has very specific naming strategies for the sprints (see attachment). Our sprints are named as such: '[TEAM NAME] PSI[#]-[Sprint #].' When I create these sprints, Jira Agile picks up on the numeric sequence and increments it when I create new sprints. This is very small, but very nice user experience. Bottom line though, is that the scheduling is fairly useless to us unless it can support a schedule like the one below (without having to manually create all those sprints...).

I would love to have this feature as well! I've recently started the JIRA Portfolio Cloud trial to see if it's a match for our organisation. Literally the only thing that doesn't work as expected is syncing sprints. I was hoping to use Portfolio as a high-level sprint planning tool, and to have it automatically fill the next sprint in JIRA Agile with the correct stories. This would be a killer feature that would make my life as product owner so much easier.

And a related, albeit smaller, annoyance: JIRA Portfolio starts numbering sprints at 1, even though we have finished over 30 sprints in our JIRA Agile. These sprint numbers are used throughout our organisation, so to restart the numbering would be very confusing. The workaround I use now is to create custom sprints but that is a waste of time.

Hoping this will get implemented!

It's great that the Atlassian tools have become a source of truth for developers. We really love your products and are looking at using JPO to allow the management team adjust the Master Plan with a realistic view on the team's velocity.

We are doing Agile because we wanted to react to the requirement changes.
What good is importing Stories if JPO is not able to react to the changes reflected in User Stories?

If we were to use Epics and Stories to fill in the 'blanks' within JPO, it is in my humble opinion that JPO should track and sync the changes in JIRA / JIRA Agile.

Agreed, I've been using JPO for 2 months now, and this is killing me - The manual work required to track in portfolio is somewhat senseless. I'm not sure why it was decided that 'portfolio management' need only be concerned with planning, and not tracking/updates, but this line of thinking is quite flawed.

Portfolio is not useful to us without having to sync sprints and rank by hand. And Jira Agile is barely useable for scaled Agile with many projects, teams, epics and releases which span projects.

I would like to have the
sprints which are in the JIRA Agile board also available in Portfolio.
Currently there is no link between these sprint. To get more value it would be
great when sprint version are changing in either Portfolio or the Agile board, the
other system is updated. For now we have to update everything manually, which
is blocking the introduction of Portfolio within our teams.

It is clear to everyone how Portfolio is setup at this time. However, I hop Atlassian acknowledges that several users have stated that Portfolio needs a tighter integration option to be able to be useful.

YES! This is the only way to use portfolio. It makes little sense to have it manually synchronized. I tried JPO and found that you'll be never sure if you are (still) in sync with Jira.
C'mon Atlassian!

Having to manually sync sprints between Agile and Portfolio destroys the main potential benefit of Portfolio. If all we can do is a high level sketch plan, adn then we have to manually make sure all the issues in each sprint for that plan are replicated in the right sprints, we may as well carry on using our existing Excel planning sheet (which I hate). We'll carry on doing that until Portfolio can put planned tickets in the right sprint in Agile - doesnt seem like a hugely diffficult task.

An absolute must build.

Please build this. It would save a TON of time and frustration.

I want this feature too. Hope we have it available soon.

Link
Seems to be about the same idea and need.
Focus votes on one to get this done.

• I want this too :-D

This is very important to have! We have 5-6 agile teams and each has it's own very specific Agile schedule to make sure that all the teams have available space in the meeting rooms for all their meetings. This feature is very important for us to use Portfolio effectively!

This is exactly right: if you're planning sprints already in Jira Agile you want that plan sucked up into JPO and not have a separate plan. If we were to deploy JPO today, I would advise people doing Scrum already in JA to just use JPO for rough, higher level planning.