After you have installed Agile Reports, you can add its gadgets to your dashboard. This is a standard procedure and you can find details and instructions in Atlassian documentation.
Configuring the report
To configure the report, perform the following operations:
- Ensure you are good on the prerequisites
- Fill out the fields in the gadget settings.
Prerequisites
For you to have a meaningful data on the report, check on the following items:
- Agile Release Train field exists and is properly set up
- Single select Jira custom field.
- This custom field must be created and configured in Jira, not by a 3rd party plugin.
- It has this exact name "Agile Release Train".
- It has options configured.
- This custom field is configured for the projects that you want to report on or is global (recommended).
- You have tickets that have this ART selected.
- Program Increments are set up for each project in the ART
SAFe often uses Jira's FixVersion field for the Program Increments. Therefore, the given prerequisites are applied to Jira native FixVersion field.- PIs must have the same start and end dates for each team / project in the ART. In SAFe this is usually the first and last days of the quarter, and PIs are often called something like Q1, 2019 Q1, Q1 '19 or similar
Note that this doesn't require sprints to start and end at the same time, because in practice some teams may be a day or two off from other teams. - PI must have the same name across all teams / projects in the ART.
- Tickets where you indicate the business value (BV) are all assigned to a PI.
- PIs for the past periods are marked as complete because the report only accounts for the completed PIs. That is you mark the respective version in the Releases section of each project as released.
- PIs must have the same start and end dates for each team / project in the ART. In SAFe this is usually the first and last days of the quarter, and PIs are often called something like Q1, 2019 Q1, Q1 '19 or similar
- Issue type for tracking the business value should be configured
- Use the necessary issue type for tracking the business value or create a new one for this.
Now the gadget supports the following issue types:- Feature – this is a Jira's Epic issue type renamed to Feature using the SAFe EPIC to Feature Translator for JIRA.
- Capability – new issue type that you can create in Jira.
Portfolio Epic – new issue type that you can create in Jira.
- BV containing tickets must be marked as done to get into the report because it takes into account only completed work.
It might happen that a BV containing ticket (Feature for instance) is completed but it has children tickets that are not yet completed. In this case the report will count this feature in but will display a warning so that you take a look at those. Maybe children tickets will need to be tied to another Feature or maybe they will need to be closed, or a Feature - reopened.
- Use the necessary issue type for tracking the business value or create a new one for this.
- Business Value field exists and is properly set up
- Number Jira custom field.
- This field is configured for the projects that you want to report on or is global (recommended).
- This custom field is configured to appear in one of the three issue types - Feature (renamed Epic issue type), Capability, or Portfolio Epic.
You have business value entered for all tickets that you want to track for the report.
BV field is independent from the Estimate field in stories or tasks and doesn't affect data on the chart.
Fields description
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Program (ART) | An ART conceptually is a Team of Delivery Teams (DTs). This can be up to 120 people broken down into Scrum, Kanban, or XP Teams of 5 to 7 individuals ideally. Each DT should be on the exact same cadence in the PI. For example, the entire PI is on the same 2 week sprints all starting and stoping on the same dates. A prerequisite is to have an Agile Release Train custom field created in Jira. This Jira field corresponds to the Program (ART) field in the report. Make sure all your projects / teams belong to the same ART because a report shows data for one ART at a time. |
| Issue type | Issue type where the business value (BV) is tracked. Now the gadget supports the following issue types:
We plan to add support for the Capability and Portfolio Epic issue types that the Portfolio app provides. Stay tuned for the updates! BV — business value BV can be calculated in the BV field for one of the following issue types: Feature (renamed Epic field), Capability, or on the Portfolio Epic. All these are issue types that consultants configure, they are not provided by a third party app and not by a gadget. You can select which issue type to use for the report. For example, all teams inside a particular Jira use the same BV field but some teams use it inside the Capacity issue type and some - inside the Feature issue type. For the gadget you select tickets of which issue type it should be looking for. The gadget calculates BV when ticket of the selected issue type (Feature, Capability or Portfolio Epic) is marked as Done. Until then the work is planned (counted in the planned BV) but not delivered yet (not counted in delivered BV). For example, while Features should be completed in a single PI, it is possible that the Feature is not completed and gets re-planned in the next PI. |
| Start reporting at | Start date for the report. Select a completed program increment (PI) from which you want to start the reporting. The latest five PIs are available. |
| Lower point | The point where a delivered Business Value percentage should be considered to be still within the norm. The default is 80%. |
| Refresh Interval | The interval at which you want the gadget to be updated. |
Tips for building a good PPM report
- All projects / teams in the report should belong to the same ART because a report shows data for one ART at a time.