If you are on Atlassian mailing list - you may have received the announcement about JIRA Portfolio already, but I would like to share a very personal take on this story, similar to how TeuxDeux story has a "Vanilla" version next to the "Fairytale" and "Adult Contemporary" variants.
Both Irina and I did have a bit of surprise when we saw the first slide - as we were and are very familiar with the product that was being announced.
So here is the gist of the modern fairytale, set in a world where everything is connected and happens fast:
- in late August 2013 as Tempo partners we were contacted by a customer to deploy Tempo Timesheets add-on for JIRA and as a second phase of the project - come up with a project portfolio management solution in JIRA, to run a program of work - on top of multiple concurrent development projects in JIRA, make JIRA "the source of all truth", adding the level of "where are we?" reporting and be able to plan capacity and answer all possible what-if scenarios (as in right now, not a week later after your Program Manager has had a chance to talk to your Project Managers and re-done the PowerPoint presentation that raised the question in the first place)
- the first phase of the project went live in late September and started to be used in anger in October
- we delivered Pre-Payroll and Pre-Billing add-ons to Tempo (add-on to add-on!!!) by January allowing export of timesheet data to external billing and payroll systems
during the summer break we were assessing requirements for Portfolio management, looking on Atlassian Marketplace, crunching numbers and eventually came to a realization that the task is simply too big, and although a specific solution is possible with a combination of existing plugins, a niche clearly exists and someone must fill it, and fill it soon. - in February the Universe answered our silent plea - on LinkedIn (of all places) I connected with Martin Suntiger, from Austria who had a product called Roadmaps for JIRA. After a 2h presentation over Skype (at crazy morning hours for him back in Vienna) and a very engaging conversation, we became partners with Martin's company RadiantMinds, beta-testers and started submitting feedback
- I am sure Martin has been bombarded by gazillion of emails from his customers (after all by now he has about 400+ of them in Austria), but I can still point to the places and features in the add-on that I consider "mine"
- On the 1st of March I wrote an email to our APAC Expert Manager titled "Holy Grail of program management in JIRA"introducing Atlassian to Martin and Martin to Atlassian
- On the 26th of March the add-on was presented in APAC monthly Experts call to all APAC Experts
- On the 15th of May the first official version of "Roadmaps for JIRA" was published to Atlassian Marketplace
- We continued collaborating with Martin, parading the plugin around New Zealand to overwhelmingly positive feedback and using the plugin ourselves since then
- On 22nd of July, together with Xero and Catch Limited we invited Martin to present to Wellington Atlassian User Group
- What do you know? The add-on is so good that somewhere between May and September someone in Atlassian has made the right decision and we get to the end of this fairytale and to a new exciting beginning.
- We met Martin in person at the Summit, his smile is something I won't ever forget
We are 100% behind this add-on. It's amazingly gratifying to see something that one participated in - fly this well.
It works on any level, be it a Team Lead, Department Manager, Project Manager or Program Manager.
It brings you from the realm of manual "recording" and "planning" into the realm of getting it done for you automatically.
As the recent aforementioned Atlassian mail-out puts it - it connects you strategy (i.e. wishful thinking) to development reality.
Robots! Phenomenal! comes to mind again and again.
Ed Letifov
Atlassian Expert
TechTime
Call: +64 21 509 791