Jira is excellent at its job
Jira (and Linear, Asana, etc.) solves the execution problem brilliantly:
- Track individual tasks and stories
- Manage sprints and backlogs
- Assign work to people
- Monitor team velocity
This is the right altitude for engineers working on specific features. It's the wrong altitude for understanding cross-team coordination.
The altitude problem
Jira shows you trees. When shows you the forest. You need both, but they're different views for different decisions.
What Jira doesn't solve
As organizations scale, certain problems emerge that task-tracking tools aren't designed to address:
- Cross-team visibility. Jira shows what one team is doing. It doesn't show how four teams' work fits together.
- Dependency tracking. You can link tickets, but that doesn't surface "Team A is blocked by Team B" at the roadmap level.
- Timeline coordination. Each team has a sprint board. Nobody has the timeline of how sprints across teams align.
- Leadership-level planning. Executives don't need to see user stories. They need to see initiatives and trade-offs.
How When complements Jira
When creates a layer above your execution tools:
Sync, don't duplicate
When connects to Jira to pull progress. Teams don't enter data twice. Their work flows up automatically.
Commitments, not tasks
When tracks what teams commit to deliver, not individual tickets. It's roadmap altitude, not backlog altitude.
Different audiences
Engineers stay in Jira. PMs and leadership work in When. Each tool for its purpose.
What this looks like in practice
- Monday planning: Leadership drags commitments around in When, seeing how changes affect all teams.
- Daily work: Engineers work in Jira. Their progress syncs up to When automatically.
- Weekly reviews: Everyone looks at When to see the big picture. Dependencies are visible. Risks surface early.
- Quarterly planning: Teams make commitments in When. Those commitments inform what goes into Jira sprints.
"We tried Jira Advanced Roadmaps. It's still Jira. We needed something at a different level." VP Engineering, B2B SaaS
Integration approach
When integrates with Jira in a lightweight way:
- One-way sync. Progress flows from Jira to When. When doesn't write back to Jira or change your workflows.
- Epic-level connection. When commitments link to Jira epics. This is the right granularity for alignment.
- Status inference. When calculates commitment progress based on linked epic status. No manual updates needed.
- Read-only access. When only needs read access to your Jira. Your data stays secure.