What are the prerequisites for a board to have it work in Portfolio?

[Mary M]

I have been having trouble getting my Portfolio boards to work.  I figured out there are some prerequisites.  At least I think there are.  Does anyone have any more information than I do? This is what I have observed:

• A scrum or kanban board for the team and it has to be ranked.  And, the boards can't share a domain/subdomain.  
• You can define your own sprints, but it works better to let Portfolio do it.
• Epics/Stories have estimations. and are well broken down.
• Team Velocity estimated.  

Am I forgetting anything?

[iceman]

Hi Mary. I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble getting some of your plans in Portfolio to work.

There are some prerequisites that can indeed help you get the most out of Portfolio for Jira, and I'll confirm/clarify your list as follows.

1. It is indeed ideal for your agile board (Scrum/Kanban) to be ranked. That will help Portfolio for JIRA sort out a schedule that works best for your team. However, I'm not sure what you mean about boards can't share a domain/subdomain. Can you please clarify that for me?
2. You can definitely define your own sprints in Jira Sofware -- and Portfolio will schedule your work as realistically as possible, based on how these sprints are configured. On the side of Portfolio, you can actually decide how the scheduling algorithm handles sprints -- either manually or automatically. By manually, you get to decide into which sprint a task will be worked on. By automatically, the scheduling algorihtm determines into which sprint the task will be worked on, based on availability. You can read more about the scheduling behavior here.
3. Yes, it will indeed help to have epics, stories, and team velocity estimated.
4. It's worth configuring the initiative issue type in Jira Software, so you can configure the intiative level in Portfolio more easily. You can read more about that here.
5. It may also be worth reading up on stages and skills in Portfolio. You don't need to set up stages and skills for your plan to work straight away -- but mapping these to how your team works can help spin up a realistic plan for you.

Hopefully these can help you out. 

Cheers,

Ashley

[Ace Ace]

Hello Ashley, 

In order to use Portfolio, do I need to be using Sprints? Will Portfolio work with a Kanban config? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Atlassian's Portfolio team has put a lot of work into making it recognise Scrum data recently. 

However, it really does not depend on Scrum.  Portfolio is most interested in your plain Jira issues.  Kanban adds a couple of useful things related to working in a Kanban style, and Scurm adds some Scrum stuff.  But Portfolio works mostly with the plain issues.

[iceman]

Hello Ace,

Thanks for your question. And thanks for chiming in, @Nic Brough -Adaptavist-, I really appreciate it.

Yes, Portfolio will indeed work with Kanban, as indicated here — when you connect to the work of your teams. You’ll just have to note that it’s better if the boards connected to your plan are all using the same estimate unit, like story points or time-based estimates.

If your issue sources are using varying estimates, you’ll need to configure the conversion ratio for these varying estimates.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Ashley