What is the Program board in my plan?

The Program board interface gives planners visibility into the work, priorities, and dependencies of multiple teams so they can plan for multiple iterations at once. It can be used by all planners, but it’s been optimized to support Program Increment Planning rituals (also called Program planning or Quarterly planning), which are an essential part of the SAFe planning methodology.

This view focuses on issues at the level 1 and level 0 hierarchy levels (commonly referred to as the Epic and Story levels). Any hierarchy levels above or below these – such as Initiative or Subtasks – won’t show on this view. Read more about hierarchy levels in Jira.

Each plan can have two active program boards at any time. A Program board is considered active if its end date is in the future. Once a Program board’s end date passes, the board is completed and no longer counts against your allotment of active boards.

The Program Board isn’t designed for real-time collaborative planning sessions such as Big Room Planning. For now, we recommend using a whiteboarding tool alongside the Program board to accommodate the large number of inputs needed for a collaborative planning session.

To get started with your Program board, select Program from the left side navigation then select Create program board. See what the Program board shows.