What does the project timeline show?
Unless otherwise noted, the project timeline view is the same for both company-managed and team-managed projects.
The timeline view is valuable for creating and planning long-term projects. It visualizes data from your work items in a Gantt chart so that you can manage your team's work within a single project.
A Project Timeline can only show work items from one project
Cross-project planning is only possible in your plan, which is included with Jira Premium and Enterprise. Learn more about how Advanced Roadmaps helps you plan across multiple teams.
The column on the left side of your timeline shows the work items in your plan. Parent work items, such as epics, have child work items nested underneath them. You can use the filters at the top of your timeline to show or hide work items based on specific criteria. Learn more about filters.
The default parent work type in Jira is Epic, which is what we use in this documentation. However, this is a dynamic value based on how your administrator configures the parent work item type. For example, if your project uses feature as the parent work type, you’ll see Create Feature.
Each work item on your timeline shows:
Work type icon
Work item key
Work item summary
Progress bar (parent work items only); Learn more about the progress bar.
Status of child work items (parent work items statuses only show when done)
Assignee (if applicable)
Your timeline shows bars that represent the duration of scheduled work items. Parent work items are scheduled using dates, either those you manually set or those it infers from its child work items. Learn more about scheduling parent work items on your roadmap.
Child work items in Scrum projects can be scheduled using the dates of the sprints to which they’re assigned or by Start date and Due date fields. Child work items without a parent won’t appear on your timeline. Learn more about scheduling child work items for Scrum teams.
Work items belonging to Kanban teams are scheduled using the Start date and Due date fields. Learn more about scheduling child work items for Kanban teams.
By default, the top of the timeline shows dates. Use toggle in the bottom right corner to change between Weeks, Months, or Quarters. Along with the dates at the top of your plan, your timeline also shows sprints (scrum teams only) and releases associated with your project. Learn more about releases on your roadmap.
The last two items in this corner of your timeline are theicon which brings up a legend and the icon to make your timeline take up the full screen.
In the example above, there’s lines connecting the timeline bars. These are Dependencies, also called Work item links in other parts of Jira, which allow you to show the order in which work items need to be done. If there’s a dependency between two work items, one must be finished before the next can begin. Learn more about dependencies on your timeline.
Lastly, select a work item on your timeline to open the side panel that allows you to make changes to your work items without leaving the timeline.
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