BigAgile can be used to build and maintain the product backlog and roadmap. This documentation is designed to guide members of the Product team on how to use BigAgile to create features, and move them through analysis and review into a Candidate state ready for an Increment.

The Product section of BigAgile contains various sections, currently in release 4.9.0 these are:

Firstly, ensure you are viewing the correct Value Stream and Programme.

Adding Features

Select the Programme you want to create Features for: Navigate to the Features section and click the + icon

This action will open the Feature drawer to the right:

The Feature drawer contains all the information around your Feature.

It has a number of sections for certain types of information. You can expand each section using the chevrons.

For the purpose of this document, we will concentrate on the Summary section as it is all that’s needed to create Features.

There are a number of ways that we can create Features in BigAgile.

We will go through the different approaches shortly, but whenever you are creating a Feature you will want to add/ensure the information in the fields highlighted in the picture below is populated:

BigAgile’s mission is to become the central mission control for all product and project value delivery in organisations.

To that end, the best practice to ensure BigAgile is the single source of truth for Feature delivery is to create Features directly in BigAgile prior to any Jira Epic being created.

To do that, we must make sure when adding a Feature that two things happen when the Feature is initially being added:

1.) No Team is selected on the Feature drawer.

2.) No Jira Epic ID is assigned in the Feature drawer.

When you click Save & Post, the Feature will be created in BigAgile and also pushed to the Jira Value Stream Project as a Jira Epic.

If you re-open the Feature in BigAgile you will see it now has a new Jira Epic ID, this can be clicked through to access in Jira.

If you already have a Jira Epic created prior to creating a Feature in BigAgile you can link it without creating a duplicate as would be the case if you used the first method above.

In this case, simply add the appropriate Feature information as in Fig 3.0 but also assign the appropriate Jira Epic ID before hitting the Save & Post button.

BigAgile will sync with Jira and begin pulling in the information for that Epic from Jira (2 minute sync time).

Another way of doing this is through the Import function:

The advantage of this way is that BigAgile will import the exact Epic Title and also any information in the Description field.

In the Delivery Section, when viewing either the Summary View or the Detailed View Programme Boards, there is an option to bulk import Features into an Increment.

This method is good to import multiple Features into an Increment when using tools outside of BigAgile to document and analyse Features prior to delivery, or if we have a specific set of Features for specific teams in a future Increment.

To do this, follow the steps in the diagrams below:

Select a team from the drop down:
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Add a tag:
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(These relate to labels in Jira so be sure any Epics you want to import are associated with a specific tag). Then Click "Create [TAG]", Then click the Search Features button.

You'll then see a list of epics associated to that Tag. You will also see whether the epic already exists within BigAgile as a feature.

Click the checkboxes next to the Epics you want to import, then click "Review".

The final screen shows the list of your chosen epics to import, remove any not needed and click "Import".

They will appear as "Unassigned" features in your chosen Team's swimlane. You will also be able to see these newly created features in the Product Kanban and Features screen.