Your product teams are doing great discovery work. The problem is that it lives in five different places.
Each team has its own Jira Product Discovery (JPD) space. Each space has its own views. And when leadership asks, "What's everyone working on, and how does it tie to our goals?", someone ends up stitching together screenshots and links.
JPD roadmaps fix that. They pull ideas from multiple spaces into a single view, so you get a true bird's-eye picture of discovery across your organization.
In a recent walkthrough, I showed how roadmaps work, how to configure them, and where they deliver the most value. Watch the full video here, or keep reading for the breakdown.
Why cross-space visibility matters
Siloed planning is expensive. According to Atlassian, Fortune 500 companies lose an estimated 25 billion hours a year to ineffective collaboration.
A lot of that waste starts in discovery. When teams can't see each other's ideas, you get:
- Duplicate work on overlapping problems
- Priorities that don't line up with company goals
- Stakeholders chasing updates across a dozen links
- Features built that nobody asked for
That last one is a big deal. Pendo found that 80% of features in the average software product are rarely or never used. Better cross-team discovery is one of the most direct ways to avoid becoming part of that statistic. It also helps product managers stop taking orders and reclaim the roadmap.
What are JPD roadmaps?
Roadmaps are a feature of Jira Product Discovery that live in their own section of the left-hand navigation. If you use Plans in Jira, the concept will feel familiar. Both give you visibility across multiple spaces.
Inside a roadmap, you can create multiple views using the same view types you already know from your JPD spaces. That includes lists, boards, timelines, matrices, and tree views. If your spaces aren't set up yet, start with our complete guide to Jira Product Discovery setup.
Roadmaps are only available on the Premium tier of JPD. Factor that into your licensing plans before you build your rollout around them. If you're weighing an upgrade, Sketch offers a free Atlassian licensing review.
The key difference from Jira Plans
Here's where roadmaps and Plans part ways:
- In Plans, edits to work items aren't committed to Jira until you explicitly save them.
- In JPD roadmaps, there's no commit step. Changes to fields and ideas save directly back to your JPD ideas automatically.
That's convenient. It also means anyone with edit access is changing live data. Set permissions accordingly (more on that below).
The five view types and how to use them
There are five ways to view your roadmaps. Some of this comes down to preference, but some views are better than others depending on what you need to see.
1. List view: see every team's backlog at once
The list view is the simplest starting point. Group by space, and each team becomes a collapsible section, almost like swim lanes.
From one screen, you can answer questions like:
- What is each team prioritizing?
- What's sitting in each backlog?
- What's actively in progress?
You can add the fields you need to the list, with one caveat covered below.
2. Board view: tie ideas to goals
Board views work well for Now/Next/Later roadmaps. In my example in the video, ideas from two spaces are grouped by goals. That shows both where each idea sits in the roadmap and how it rolls up to a business goal.
You can switch the grouping back to space anytime. Groupings are collapsible, which keeps things readable as you add more teams.
3. Timeline view: cross-team planning by quarter
The timeline view gives you a cross-team quarterly picture, grouped by space. You control the timeline start and end dates, so you can zoom out to two years or tighten things up to two quarters for a more focused view.
One gotcha: edits to ideas save automatically. Changes to the view itself only save automatically when autosave is on. In the video demo linked above, autosave was off, so he had to save the view for everyone after changing the timeline range. If your view changes aren't sticking, turn on autosave or save the view for everyone.
4. Matrix view: compare across dimensions
Matrix views are also available in roadmaps. They're useful for plotting ideas against two criteria, such as effort and impact, across every team in one place.
5. Tree view: see the full hierarchy
The tree view shows how ideas roll up through multiple levels of hierarchy, across spaces. In the video demo, you can see how two ideas from two different spaces roll up to a single custom "opportunity" idea type, which then rolls up to an Atlassian goal.
That's the kind of traceability executives want: a clear line from team-level ideas to company-level outcomes.
Tree view also requires JPD Premium. Sketch has a separate video dedicated to the tree view if you want to go deeper.
The field limitation you need to know
This is the caveat that trips teams up most often:
Roadmaps can only use JPD system fields and global fields. Space-level custom fields won't appear in your roadmap views.
If your teams have each built their own custom fields for scoring, effort, or priority, those won't carry over. Before you build a roadmap, audit your fields and decide which ones should be standardized as global fields.
This is also a good moment to step back and ask whether your teams are measuring ideas consistently. If one team scores impact on a 1 to 5 scale and another uses 1 to 10, a combined view won't tell leadership much.
Sharing roadmaps with stakeholders
Just like regular JPD views, any roadmap view can be published. Click the Publish button at the top, choose who can access it, and share a read-only link.
The best part: published views can be made available to unlicensed JPD users. That means leadership, sales, support, and other stakeholders can see what's in discovery without needing a JPD seat.
Roadmap settings worth configuring
Open the three-dot menu and select Roadmap settings. From there you can:
- Choose included spaces. Decide which JPD spaces feed into the roadmap.
- Set permissions. Click the lock icon to control who can view and who can edit. A restricted setting limits editing to selected users.
- Apply a roadmap-wide filter. Configure a filter in basic mode, or use advanced mode (JQL) to apply conditions like a specific status across every view in the roadmap.
Because edits save straight back to ideas, tight edit permissions are worth the extra minute of setup.
Three ways product leaders can use roadmaps
1. Leadership visibility
Build one roadmap that covers every team or JPD space. Leaders get a holistic view of what's being explored and how it contributes to company themes and goals. For a real-world example, see how Sketch helped a health enterprise unify product intake with Jira Product Discovery.
2. Cross-team prioritization
Compare ideas side by side across teams. Spot overlaps, uncover collaboration opportunities, and make better calls on what to work on next.
3. Simplicity for stakeholders
Instead of sending stakeholders to separate views in separate spaces, give them one roadmap with several views. One location. One link. Less chasing.
Quick setup checklist
Setup isn't horribly difficult. If you follow these nine steps, you should be in good shape:
- Confirm you're on JPD Premium.
- Audit custom fields and promote key ones to global fields.
- Create a roadmap from the Roadmaps section in the left navigation.
- Select the spaces to include.
- Build views for each audience (list for backlog review, board for goals, timeline for quarterly planning).
- Lock down edit permissions.
- Add a roadmap-wide filter if needed.
- Turn on autosave, or save view changes for everyone.
- Publish read-only views for stakeholders.
Of course, you might benefit from further fine-tuning, but these simple steps will get you off to a good start. You can always call us if you get stuck or have questions.
Get more out of Jira Product Discovery
Roadmaps are powerful, but they only work as well as the structure underneath them. Field strategy, idea hierarchy, permissions, and licensing all need to line up.
That's where Sketch Development comes in. As an Atlassian Solutions Partner, we help organizations with Atlassian consulting, licensing, and training across the full suite of products. Our 100% US-based team has supported Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing startups alike.
And when discovery turns into building, we can help there too. Sketch embeds custom software development teams to build the right AI-enabled software and equip your team to run it.
Ready to bring your product teams onto one roadmap? Reach out to talk with our Atlassian experts. For more how-tos, browse the Sketch blog.
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Frequently asked questions
Are JPD roadmaps available on all plans?
No. Roadmaps are only available on the Premium tier of Jira Product Discovery. The tree view also requires Premium.
How are JPD roadmaps different from Jira Plans?
Both provide cross-space visibility. The big difference is saving. Plans require you to commit changes back to Jira. JPD roadmaps save edits to ideas automatically.
Can I use my custom fields in a roadmap?
Only if they're global fields. Roadmaps support JPD system fields and global fields. Space-level custom fields aren't supported.
Can people without a JPD license see roadmaps?
Yes. You can publish roadmap views as read-only links and make them available to unlicensed users, such as executives and other stakeholders.
Why didn't my timeline changes save?
Changes to a view, like the timeline date range, only save automatically when autosave is on. If it's off, save the view for everyone after making changes.
Can I filter a whole roadmap at once?
Yes. Roadmap settings let you apply a filter across every view, using either basic mode or advanced mode (JQL).
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