Steerwell documentation

Steerwell runs PI planning in Jira Cloud: a program board with teams as rows and iterations as columns, built on your teams' scrum boards, with cross-team dependency flags, capacity against load, PI objectives, a confidence vote, a ROAM risk board, a read-only stakeholder view and PNG and CSV exports. It runs entirely on Atlassian's Forge platform.

Get started

1. Open Apps > Steerwell and click New increment.
2. Name it (for example PI 26.4). Under Iterations, set the first day, the weeks per iteration and how many, tick Last one is IP if you run an innovation and planning iteration, and click Generate.
3. Under Features in this increment, enter a JQL query for your features, for example issuetype = Epic AND project in (WEB, MOB) AND statusCategory != Done.
4. Under Teams, click Add team, find the team's scrum board and pick it. Then click Match sprints by dates. Click Create increment.
5. Back in Settings, click Create missing sprints for any team that has no sprint for an iteration yet. Then open Program board.

The program board

• Columns are the increment's iterations, plus Not planned for work that belongs to a team but is not in one of the increment's sprints.
• The Features row shows each feature in the iteration it is planned for: its release (fix version) if an iteration maps one, else the iteration you dragged it to in Steerwell, else its own sprint, else the latest iteration of its stories.
• Team rows show the stories in each team's sprint for that iteration, and the work in their projects that is not planned yet. Work in a project no team owns appears in a No team row.
• Each cell shows load against capacity, for example 18 / 12 pts. Red means over capacity.
• Lines go from the work that has to happen first to the work that waits on it. Red: it lands after the work that waits on it. Amber: both land in the same iteration, or the first one is not planned. Grey dashed: in order. Use Dependency lines to show all, flagged only, or none.
• Flags below the board list every problem; click one to select the work item.
• Click a card for its details (what it waits on, what it holds up, its sprint and estimate); double-click to open it in Jira.

Moving work

• Drag a story to another cell, or select it and use Move to in the details panel.
• Steerwell first shows a preview: the sprint change, the load in the cells involved, the flags that appear or clear, and notes (for example "leaves the active sprint" or "the team's board filter may not show it").
• Move in Jira edits the work item's Sprint field as you, re-reads it and tells you if Jira kept it elsewhere. Jira checks your own permissions and workflow.
• Moving to Not planned takes the story out of its open sprint (back to the backlog).
• If someone changed the work item since you loaded the board, Steerwell refuses the move; reload and try again.
• Features: drag a feature in the Features row. If the iteration has a Release for features in Settings, Steerwell sets that fix version (the feature's project needs a release with that name); otherwise only Steerwell remembers the plan.

Capacity

• From velocity: the average of the work finished in the team's last three closed sprints (a story that rolled over counts once, in the sprint it was finished). Scaled by Availability % per iteration (default 100, and 0 for the IP iteration). Recomputed every 6 hours, or click Recalculate velocity.
• Set by hand: a number per iteration.
• The increment counts Story points or Work items (count). Cards without an estimate are counted as unestimated.

Dependencies

Under Settings > Dependencies, tick the link types that order work and pick which side comes first. "A blocks B: A comes first" suits Blocks; "A depends on B: B comes first" suits a "depends on" type. Link types you leave unticked (such as "relates to") are ignored.

Objectives, business value and predictability

• Anyone who can open the increment drafts PI objectives per team or for the program, as committed or uncommitted.
• Editors set Planned BV (1-10) during planning and Actual BV (0-10) at the end.
• Predictability is actual business value of all objectives over planned business value of committed objectives.

Confidence vote

On the Objectives tab, everyone votes 1 to 5 for the program and for each team. Voting again replaces your vote. The summary shows the average and how many votes were 1 or 2. Editors can Start a new vote.

Risks (ROAM)

Raise a risk, pick a team, then open it to add details, an owner and work items. Drag it across Resolved, Owned, Accepted and Mitigated, or pick the status.

Stakeholder view and sharing

Stakeholder view shows the board, objectives, confidence and open risks read only. Copy share link copies a link to it; anyone on your site who can open Steerwell can view it and sees only the work items they may browse.

Exports

• Download PNG: the whole board with title, dates, load, lines and a legend.
• Board CSV: every feature and card with team, iteration, sprint, estimate, what it waits on and its flags, plus load and capacity per cell.
• Objectives CSV and Risks CSV on their tabs.

Who can do what

Editors are everyone (the default) or only the owner and Jira admins. Lock objectives and risks after the planning event so only editors change them. Jira admins choose who may create increments in Jira settings > Apps > Steerwell.

Limits

300 features and 2,000 work items per board, 20 teams and 12 iterations per increment. Scrum boards only. Subtasks follow their parent and are not shown. When Jira is slow, Steerwell stops reading after about 17 seconds and says the board is partial.

Data and privacy

Steerwell stores increments, objectives, risks and votes in your site's Forge storage, hosted by Atlassian. It never stores copies of work items and sends nothing outside Atlassian. See the privacy policy at https://greatwork.company/apps/steerwell/privacy.

Support

hello@greatwork.company. We answer within one business day (US Central time).