Portfolio Hierarchies and Dimensions – dragonboat

A portfolio item (aka roadmap item) may have up to 3 level of inherit hierarchy, and 2 additional "levels" dynamic hierarchy.

Inherit Hierarchy:

Ideas often refers to as features, or projects, or engagements similar to a Jira EPIC or a Github milestone.
Initiatives are just bigger Ideas, usually maps to a program, a product EPIC (in SAFe model). An initiative may have multiple ideas (e.g. Jira epics) and are often more than a few months in duration and often used for the quarterly roadmap.
Bets are often company-wide initiatives, may have multiple initiatives and/or ideas. They are often strategic in nature and used as annual planning.

You can rename these portfolio items to map your internal terminologies.

Change Portfolio Item type

You may change portfolio item types by clicking the ... of the top right of the edit screen.

For example, you may change Idea to Initiative, or Bet, or vice versa.

When you change the Item type, if the item has a link to Jira/ Clubhouse/Github, it'll be unlinked. It will also unlink its previous children.

Dynamic hierarchy from Portfolio dimensions

Portfolio items can be organized in multiple ways. The ability to see these other dimensions allows better prioritization and communication.

There are 6 optional portfolio dimensions. They can all be renamed to fit your organization's terminology

Objective (may have 2 levels based on plan) - typically map to goals / OKRs/ outcomes. In larger organizations you may have 2 levels of Objectives, e.g. Product goals, and Team/ Vertical goals
Roadmap (may have 2 levels based on plan) - typically map to how product teams / area are organized
Timeframe - can be Target quarter or Release or Product Increment, or fuzzy time as This Month, This Quarter, Next Quarter.
Theme - may be used for product theme or strategic themes (across multiple roadmaps)
Category is another way to group your ideas. Some may use it to illustrate the User Journey, investment category/ horizon, e.g. core, adjacent, new investment.
Phase typically maps to product or software development life cycle

A larger organization may have a complex dynamic hierarchy such as

Roadmap (>> Master EPICs) >> Bets >> Initiatives >> Ideas

For a product organization, a Roadmap often refers to a product area, where Master EPIC refers to sub-area of the product.
For a service organization, a Roadmap may map to a Client or a segment of clients
For an IT portfolio, a Roadmap may map to the source of Ideas, e.g. a Business Unit, Tech Roadmap
For a transformation effort, a Roadmap may map to a work stream.

Once you complete the mapping, you may see your ideas as the following:

Or like this

Below is the data structure of dragonboat (Standard Plan) that's best for smaller product organizations with a head of product and a few product managers.

When you import Ideas, you may map the source data with how you'd organize your ideas. You may update, merge or delete values in the Settings page. (Here is how to manage your meta data)

Below is the data structure of dragonboat (Enterprise and Enterprise + Plan)

- for larger organizations with multiple layers of reporting within product organizations

Additional hierarchy is enabled for the Enterprise Plan

1. Master EPIC is an additional hierarchical level between Roadmap and Ideas. This is known as Program in the SAFe Framework, or Initiative in Jira Portfolio. An idea in the same roadmap may or may not have a master EPIC.

2. Key Results is additional hierarchical level between Objectives and Ideas. If your organization uses Overall OKR and Team OKR, you may rename Key Results to Team OKR or Team Goals. You may also leverage the Note field to provide reference link or progress updates for the OKR itself. Similar to Master EPIC, an Idea in the same Objective may or may not have a KR.

3. Bets and Initiatives: (for enterprise + plan only) are bigger, more complex ideas. The analogy is, if epic is a bigger story; then Initiative is a bigger idea, where a Bet has multiple initiatives.

Tip: Introducing new level adds some UX complexity. We recommend performing a short pilot to test out the approach before full roll out.

Questions? Reach us directly via Help or join our Slack community.