Released Roadmaps

Empty state
Roadmap status to column mapping
Project selection
Edit public description field
Publishing

Inspiration

Our inspiration for Released Roadmaps was born out of a necessity for more streamlined customer communications. We recognized the immense value of early customer feedback on forthcoming roadmap items, yet realized that maintaining an up-to-date public roadmap was a task that frequently slipped through the cracks.

While there are numerous alternative tools available in the market, none of them integrate seamlessly with Jira Product Discovery and often aim to monopolize the planning process.

Our vision was to create an application that effortlessly allowed teams to create and disseminate cross-project roadmaps among team members and customers. We dreamt of a platform that transcended boundaries of collaboration, where every project detail was transparent to all parties involved, and customer communication unfolded seamlessly.

What it does

Collaboration Without (Project) Borders

Released Roadmaps promote a dynamic environment where collaboration takes center stage. Users can consolidate various Jira Product Discovery projects into a single roadmap, providing a holistic view of all ongoing plans. This feature ensures that no project detail is overlooked, fostering a transparent and inclusive project management experience.

AI-Powered Descriptions

One of the key features of Released Roadmaps is its integrated AI copywriter. This feature eliminates the stress of creating brief, clear, and engaging public descriptions for each roadmap item. The AI copywriter generates the perfect descriptions based on the title and existing description of the idea, ensuring that your roadmap items are clearly communicated to your team and customers.

Seamless Sharing of Roadmaps

Released Roadmaps understands the importance of keeping everyone in the loop. This platform allows users to easily share upcoming features with their teams and customers. Furthermore, users can seamlessly embed their roadmap into their website. This feature not only enhances transparency but also ensures that all parties are continually updated on the project's progress.

How we built it

Aside from using Forge instead of Connect, we decided to build on top of the same technology stack that we used with Released. This approach allowed us to minimize the learning curve, and leverage some of the existing technology we've built to publish release notes with Released.

Challenges we ran into

Requests limits

The Forge platform provides sensible quotas, but to avoid exceeding these limits, application optimization is essential. As an example, our application allows users to generate descriptions for 50 items at a time, which involves making 50 concurrent requests to the OpenAI API.

However, directly sending these individual requests from the front-end would likely exceed the Forge quotas. To navigate around this, we needed to shift to server-side requests to limit the number of requests made via Forge. This approach was somewhat more complex due to Forge's limitations with invoking functions.

Another consideration was ensuring efficient response times. If we chose to process these server-side and waited for all requests to complete before updating the front-end, it could result in considerable delays for the user.

To overcome these challenges, we opted to use an external server to make the API calls and publish the results. This approach allowed us to efficiently manage the requests, staying within Forge's quotas, and yet ensure prompt updates for each generated description. This strategy provides an optimal balance between staying within quota limits and offering a responsive user experience.

Cold start time

Another challenge we encountered was the cold start time. To work around this, we implemented a solution where we show optimistic results to the user before the server saves them. For instance, when creating or updating a roadmap, we display the results immediately and only show an error if the operation fails. This approach not only provides a smoother user experience but also utilizes SWR to receive live updates.

Integrating SWR hooks for data fetching allows us to efficiently manage and handle data fetching and caching. SWR provides a simple and intuitive way to handle data synchronization and real-time updates. It optimizes network requests by automatically revalidating and updating the data when needed, ensuring that users always have the most up-to-date information. This not only improves the user experience by providing real-time data, but also reduces unnecessary network requests and improves overall performance.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our first app, Released, was built on Connect. But we've been meaning to explore Atlassian's Forge platform for a while. When Codegeist came around, it was the perfect catalyst for us to delve in.

We aimed to see what we could realistically accomplish in a brisk 2 1/2 weeks. The result? We were genuinely taken aback. In such a short span, we were able to craft an almost complete MVP. It's quite something to realize what you can achieve with a bit of focus and building on top of a great platform.

What we learned

The Forge team has demonstrated a commendable level of responsiveness when it comes to addressing bug reports. They actively engage with users and promptly resolve any issues that are reported. This level of responsiveness not only instills confidence in the platform but also ensures a smoother development experience for users.

The introduction of the Node Runtime EAP (now in Preview) has provided developers with greater freedom and flexibility. Unlike the current runtime, the Node Runtime EAP supports a wider range of standard modules. This expanded compatibility allows developers to leverage a broader ecosystem of tools and libraries, enhancing the capabilities of their applications. The new runtime also drastically reduces build time, allowing for faster iteration and deployment.

Furthermore, we were positively surprised by Forge's loading times compared to Connect. This optimization ensures that the app feels more native, resulting in a smoother and more efficient user experience.

What's next for Released Roadmaps

Aside from more testing and hardening, the next step for Released Roadmaps will be a private beta with a few select customers that have already expressed interest. With the goal to publish the app to the Atlassian marketplace in 4-6 weeks.

You can find our public roadmap, using Released Roadmaps, on our website.