Product

At Easy Agile, we’re constantly looking for new ways to improve our products, and one of the ways we foster innovation is through Dash Days—a focused period where our team steps away from daily tasks to experiment, explore, and reimagine how our tools can better serve customers.

During our most recent Dash Days, we took a fresh look at the user interface of two of our flagship products, Easy Agile TeamRhythym and Easy Agile Programs. The goal was to enhance interaction and discoverability, so users can experience the full value of our tools without unnecessary complexity.

Here’s a glimpse into our thought process, challenges, and the exciting solutions we explored.

The challenge

As Easy Agile TeamRhythym and Easy Agile Programs have evolved, we’ve introduced powerful features designed to give users more control and flexibility. However, as new capabilities have been added, the interface has become more elaborate. For us, this presents an opportunity—an opportunity to take a step back, simplify the experience, and help users unlock more of what our products offer.

To address this, we brought people from across the business together to brainstorm how we could improve the experience in both products. Through these sessions, we identified a few core opportunities:

• Discoverability: How do we make it easier for users to find and use the powerful features built into our tools?
• Visibility: What’s the best way to surface the right information and features when users need them? 
• Consistency: How do we create a more uniform experience within and across our products to make navigation intuitive?

Armed with these insights, we then set out to explore solutions tailored to each product’s unique challenges. 

A more personalized experience with Easy Agile Programs

For Programs, we focused on three “how might we” questions to reframe our challenges into opportunities: 

1. How might we create more focus on the actions users are trying to complete?
2. How might we make navigation more intuitive and easy?
3. How might we help users with more context about where they are in the app at any given screen? 

Out of the many solutions we explored, the one that got us the most excited was the idea of an Easy Agile Programs Home Screen—a personalized dashboard designed to guide users based on where they are in their planning cycle. 

This home screen could adapt based on where users are in their journey, offering relevant guidance and actions.

• For new users, the home screen could provide clear onboarding steps and easy access to help, so they can get started quickly and confidently.
• For experienced users, it could offer insights and key actions related to their progress, so they can stay focused on what matters most. Users might even see data summarizing their accomplishments, which makes it easier to share successes with their teams.

Whether someone’s brand new to the product or deep into execution, the home screen could be a great way to guide and coach our users—helping them answer questions like, "What should I be doing next?" or "What extra value am I missing out on?". 

A more focused interface for Easy Agile TeamRhythm

For TeamRhythym, our three key “how might we” questions were:

• How might we provide more focus within the User Story Map during sprint planning?
• How might we improve the discoverability of issues without epics?
• How might we enhance the layout to highlight key features and improve overall usability? 

With these questions in mind, we explored a range of ideas to simplify sprint planning and make it easier for users to prep, plan, and review their work, whether they’re using Scrum or Kanban.

Sprint planning can sometimes feel overwhelming when you have multiple sprints competing for attention. To help users focus, so we explored the idea of introducing a focused view during sprint planning. 

• This would allow users to zoom in on a specific sprint and the backlog alone, while collapsing others. 
• Each issue would have its own row in the detailed view, and users can drag and drop either an entire row or drag individual issues to quickly rank them based on priorities.
• The sprint view will also hide epics that don’t have linked issues in the current sprint, giving users a cleaner view of what’s relevant to their current work.

We also looked at ways to enhance the User Story Map interface to bring the most useful tools and features to the forefront. By improving how key functionality is presented, we’re helping teams quickly access what they need, when they need it, enabling them to stay productive without interruption.

This way, we can create a smoother, more focused experience for teams using TeamRhythm, so they can focus on what’s in front of them without being distracted by everything else.

Your turn. What do you think?

At Easy Agile, we’re always thinking about what comes next. 

These ideas aren’t on our official roadmap just yet, but they’re the kind of innovations we’re excited to explore.

If you think these changes would improve your experience with Easy Agile TeamRhythm and Easy Agile Programs, let us know! Your feedback helps us decide what to prioritize, so we can continue building tools that truly make a difference for your teams.

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Retrospectives help create an environment where team members can freely share their wins and challenges. By encouraging this feedback, you get critical insights into what can be improved in the next iteration. But while it sounds straightforward in theory, many teams struggle to make agile retrospectives work in practice.

So if we know team retrospectives can be a great way to drive continuous improvement and deliver value – why do so many teams struggle to get it right?

The slippery slope to becoming a tick box exercise

According to Easy Agile Product Marketing Manager Tenille Hoppo, the struggle with retrospectives often lies behind two key challenges. "If you’re having the same discussions week after week, and the team can’t see anything changing, then people can become fatigued, disengaged, and bored," said Tenille. "Over time, retrospectives become less respected and less effective as a process, and eventually become nothing more than a tick box exercise".

"Then there’s the challenge around capturing actions in real-time," said Tenille. "We’ve all been guilty of having great ideas while working on something, but by the time the next retrospective comes around, the idea is gone".

The challenges around keeping retrospectives fresh, productive, and integrated with the work in Jira are behind the development of Easy Agile TeamRhythm, an app designed to overcome these common issues and help teams deliver value to their customers more quickly.

Integrating user story maps and retrospectives

"We believed if we could integrate the retrospective process right alongside the work in Jira, teams would be better able to deal with the issues blocking their progress and work more effectively," said Tenille. "So, we mapped out the groundwork as part of an Inception Week project, and soon after that, Easy Agile TeamRhythm was born".

Easy Agile TeamRhythm replaces our first app, Easy Agile User Story Maps, and integrates team user story maps with team retrospective boards. The user story maps are used for planning and managing work (including sprint planning and backlog refinement), while retrospective boards help teams do that work better. "It made sense to build on the sprint planning and backlog refinement capabilities of Easy Agile User Story Maps and introduce retrospective boards to capture and collate ideas for improvement," said Tenille. "With retrospectives colocated where work is managed in Jira, you can turn action items into Jira issues and schedule work, ensuring retrospectives are effective and valuable".

Elevating retrospectives with Easy Agile TeamRhythm

Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports teams from planning through to release and retrospectives. It covers user story mapping, sprint planning, version planning, backlog refinement, and team retrospectives.

By featuring a team retrospective board integrated alongside your Jira boards, agile teams can use the app to:

Capture feedback in real-time

Team members can capture feedback quickly and easily as they do their work. As a result, feedback and ideas don’t get lost and, instead, are there waiting for you when you run the next retrospective.

Combat fatigue with templates

You can access different templates to help change the format of retrospectives, frame things differently, and keep team members interested. This can also help teams see things from different angles and come up with new ideas.

Current templates include:

• Foundation
  A highly customizable template based on the Start, Stop, & Continue model. The team looks at looks at the actions they want to introduce, those that aren't working, and what can continue into the next cycle.
• Get Rhythm
  A music-themed template using the 4 L’s retrospective format, to understand what is “Loved, Learned, Loathed, and Longed for”. The team calls out what they appreciate, what the sprint taught them, what went wrong, and what they would’ve wanted more of.
• Space Mission
  A stellar-themed template based on the Sailboat retrospective format, examining the approaches that inhibit progress, or reap desirable outcomes, and establish a direction for planning the next iteration.
• Rose Blossom
  A rose-themed template based on the Starfish model, that involves rating the efficacy of action items to determine the methodologies they should keep, discard, and apply in the next round.

Improve the next iteration by applying insights

The ‘Actions’ column is where you turn feedback into tangible actions and create in-built accountability. In just two clicks, you can turn an action item into a Jira issue that is automatically added to your backlog. You can then assign an owner and schedule it into an upcoming sprint or release.

“We’ve improved our communication and team alignment, which has helped give us faster results”.

Casey Flynn, Adidas

Make your next release better

"Agile isn’t about wringing every ounce of work you can get from your team, and it’s also not about wasting time in unproductive meetings that don’t drive an outcome," said Tenille. "With Easy Agile TeamRhythm, we provide the framework and functionality to help share learnings, plan solutions, and take action. And as teams focus on incremental improvements, they can start working better together, feel happier in their role, and deliver better outcomes".

TRY EASY AGILE TEAMRHYTHM FREE FOR 30 DAYS

Like to hear more?

Tenille presented on this topic in a webinar with Atlassian Solution Partner Almarise. Watch the full presentation below.

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Most strategies fail because the execution falls short.

A strategy roadmap helps bridge this gap between vision and actions. It gives you a visual of how to execute a strategy, and it outlines key results in an appropriate time frame. (The product roadmap embodies the same principles but on a smaller scale.)

Basically, the strategic roadmap can help team leaders plan how to achieve the goals of a strategic vision and share the business vision with stakeholders.

Here, you’ll learn why you need a roadmap and how to plan one.

Why do you need a strategic roadmap?

Business plans are ideas on paper. Strategy roadmaps are practical.

Agile teams and leaders often outline a strategic plan to achieve a company vision. However, most leaders do not define how to achieve this vision.

Strategic roadmaps fill the gap between business strategy creation and implementation, so team members know exactly what to do.

A roadmap gives a visual representation of what tasks need to be carried out. It also clarifies stakeholder roles and responsibilities and helps evaluate whether you have enough resources to achieve your goals. Lastly, it can be used as a communication tool for teams and stakeholders.

Without roadmapping, organizations can lose sight of the vision, communications become unclear, and teams fall short.

When you create a strategic roadmap, you are making an in-depth plan for meaningful changes. You also understand why the changes are necessary, what tasks to undertake to realize those changes, and the sequence in which specific actions must occur.

Create your strategic roadmap in 6 steps

Once you understand the need for change and the sequence to apply the changes, you can establish a strategic roadmap for any process.

Remember that while you're roadmapping, you should always link your strategic roadmap objectives with the business vision as you work through these steps.

1. Understand the change you want to achieve

Ask yourself what obstacles stand in the way of achieving the vision. Once you outline the challenges you face, you can establish ways to overcome them.

2. Establish short-term objectives

Here, you need to develop long-term strategic plans and short-term objectives. Then, you can figure out how to achieve them. Each short-term objective must link to a specific goal from the business vision.

3. Evaluate your resources

Here, product managers should address their resources (staff, time, finances, technology, etc.) and whether these are enough to achieve their strategic goals. If not, you’ll either need to adjust the plan or find more resources.

Keep relevant KPIs in mind when evaluating your resources. For example, if you want to monitor customer acquisition, you may need additional software to measure current and future service levels.

You can use change indicators to show where your resources are at for each strategic roadmap action.

Change indicators can include:

N: No change needed

L, M, H: A low, medium, or high-level change is necessary

New: New capabilities are required to bring about change

Link these indicators with each objective.

4. Plan how you’ll gain resources

Now, you need to develop a process to gain any needed resources.

An example of this: To increase sales, you’ll hire a new salesperson. That means chatting with human resources about searching and assessing candidates.

5. Develop the initiatives

You should now question how to group actions. With a software development project, you’ll follow a Scrum workflow process. This means you’ll break features down into smaller action items for easier delivery to meet sprint targets.

As in step 4, you may identify more initiatives than you can manage. Use prioritization metrics, use a SWOT analysis, or a balanced scorecard to decide which initiatives to tackle first. One way to do this is to number the initiatives by their importance and limit each action's importance. You will probably end up only implementing the top five initiatives, depending on your capabilities.

6. Create the strategy roadmap

Gather all the information from these steps, and record them in an official document or presentation.

When creating the roadmap, consider:

• Simplifying the road mapping process so all stakeholders can understand
• Clearly communicating why the change is necessary and how the roadmap helps with the visualization of the impending process
• Showing what changes should be made and how these will solve the problem
• Making direct associations between the "why," "what," and "how" so that you can record any needed alterations

Where can you use a strategic roadmap?

There are many possible uses for a strategy roadmap. Here are several examples to consider:

1. Getting buy-in from investors

A startup can use a strategy roadmap to give potential investors everything they need to know about the company’s goals.

A startup roadmap is an excellent complement to a business plan. Both formats demonstrate in-depth thinking about existing capabilities and how you can move from a current to a future state. Prioritization of capabilities also demonstrates reliable strategic thinking.

2. Product road mapping

As mentioned, the product roadmap is like a small-scale strategic roadmap.

Team leaders must also develop a product strategy and show product teams how to achieve those changes. Product roadmaps help to clarify new product development and iterations and link dependencies.

The outcome is the development of successful products.

(Pro tip: Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira can help you create the perfect product template.)

3. Capability-based planning

You can use a strategic roadmap to create change across the organization. Your business plan should address the people, processes, and physical changes you’ll need for a successful change initiative. Prioritize the most important initiatives, and list these on your roadmap to provide a practical course of action for team members to follow.

Make a strategic vision a reality with a strategic roadmap

Product teams can clarify backlogs and timeframes and prioritize resources with product roadmaps. Managers can link strategic visions with strategic roadmaps. Roadmaps help bridge the divide between strategy and goal achievement.

Start enacting your vision with a strategy roadmap initiative today. To get started, check out Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira. Then, follow whichever roadmap template you need to achieve your goals.

This past May John Walpole of Twitter presented Story Maps: A visual tool for customer focused development at the Facebook Technical Program Manager event in Silicon Valley. And our product, Easy Agile User Story Maps for JIRA, got a shoutout — thanks John!

Watch John’s lightning talk now:

John Walpole is a Technical Program Manager at Twitter in San Francisco. Prior to joining Twitter he was an engineer, product and program manager involved in the Xbox, Azure and Windows projects at Microsoft.

In this lightning talk, recorded at Facebook, John explores story maps as a way to figure out what your agile software development team should focus on (in order to satisfy customer needs). Story maps keep the customer journey front and centre during development and make it clear what should be included in a team’s sprint. For more on story mapping see Understand what your customers want with agile user story maps.

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.