In Dragonboat, an Initiative represents a big undertaking that may have multiple Ideas. In a Responsive PPM framework, Initiative may be at the top or middle level of an organization's strategy and execution horizon.
This article covers:
- Initiative Overview
- How to add Initiatives
- Displaying Initiatives
- Connect Ideas with Initiatives
- Initiative Views
- Reporting on Initiatives
- Connect Initiative with Jira items (Jira Standard or Jira Premium)
Initiative Overview
An Initiative (some companies call it Program)
- Often spans a few months or quarters (an idea often last several weeks to less than a quarter)
- May have multiple ideas
- Might involve multiple teams
- May have multiple release/ launch drops (not just code release, could be customer/ marketing launch too)
- Might have its own Estimates, Timeframe, Roadmap and/or Objective, different from what its children Ideas.
How to add Initiatives
- Directly Add Initiatives: Click the "+New" button on the top, or the "+" in the spreadsheet portion of the Timeline view, or using copy and paste to import from spreadsheets.
- Import Ideas with Initiatives: Initiatives are automatically created when importing Ideas with Initiatives. This can be done through copy and paste from a spreadsheet or import from Jira.
- Import initiatives: via copy and paste from a spreadsheet, and select the data type
Import Initiative
Displaying Initiatives
- Similar to editing Ideas, Initiatives can be edited within the edit screen or directly on the page when "Display: Initiative" is selected.
Connect Ideas with Initiatives
- From Portfolio> Board view, select "Group by: Initiative" and "Display: Idea" and easily drag and drop Ideas into the related Initiatives
- On the Initiative Edit Screen: Click on the children Ideas icon
to show the list of linked Ideas to that Initiative.
- Add Ideas by clicking on the "+ Add Idea" button, and update the Idea fields as necessary directly on this page.
- You can also easily unlink epics from an initiative in this light-box view
Viewing Initiatives
On the Portfolio Pages, there are 3 display options: Idea, Initiative, Portfolio.
- In the Idea mode, the filter will apply to Ideas, and ideas may be grouped by Initiatives. When the story mode is turned on, stories of these Ideas will display
- In the Initiative mode, the filter will apply to Initiatives. Only Initiative will display
- In the Portfolio mode, the filter will apply to Initiatives, all of their children ideas will display, and if the story mode is turned on, stories of these ideas will display.
Reporting on Initiatives
- Similar to the other views in Dragonboat, you can choose to display Initiative or Idea. Sometimes Executives or other stakeholders don't need to see the level of detail that displaying Ideas provides, so instead you'd display Initiative which gives a higher level view for the report.
- Summary: Create presentation-like views for your stakeholders by displaying Initiative and other relevant fields
- Snapshot: Share the progress of your strategic outcomes and customize the way your group and display the information. By selecting Initiative, progress will be grouped based on the same Initiative. From there you can click on the progress report of an individual Initiative and drill into the related Ideas/Epics and Stories.
- Progress: Select "Display: Initiative" to see the progress towards your company's Initiatives
- Allocation Report: Select "Display: Initiative" to align with your team on the appropriate resource allocation balance for each of your strategic drivers
Initiative linking with Jira
- If you use Jira Portfolio / Jira Plan / Jira Premium Plan, an Initiative in Dragonboat may be linked with Jira Parent Link. Check details on field mapping guide.
- If you use Jira Standard, you may use a custom issuelink and a special issue type "Initiative" in Jira to connect the 2 systems.
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