Top-level Planning Template

This template creates:

• A new issue level above the epic, called “initiative”

  • This allows you to group epics under an initiative and see underlying work nested within your plan.

• A new project

  • The project is where the initiatives you create live.

• A new plan

  • The plan is pre-configured with the new project as an issue source so you can see your initiatives in the plan. You can then add related projects, boards, and filters as issue sources and link underlying issues to the parent initiative.

To start, create your first initiative. Think of an initiative as a big chunk of work that multiple epics contribute to. For example, if your epics are things like “Build New functionality”, “Market new features”, and “Measure impact of release”, then your initiative might be something like “iOS Design Revamp”. Create one now; you can always add more later. Learn more about initiatives.

Next, add an existing project, board, and/or filter to this plan. In a plan, we call these issue sources. For this template, we recommend that you use issues from company-managed projects, and that they contain at least one epic. Learn more about issue sources in Plans.

Finally, reparent your existing epics to the new initiatives. This creates an association using the Parent field, linking the two issues. You’ll see that the initiative now shows the data from the epics contained within. This is called a roll-up; the plan infer values of parents from child issues, and they’re useful for keeping your plan up to date. As you add more epics to the initiative, the estimates and dates will update along with it. Learn more about roll-ups in Plans.

Plans is a sandbox environment, meaning you need to save your changes before you’ll see them on any boards or projects outside your plan. Learn more about saving changes made in Plans.