Skip to main contentDaniel Nash

Case Study

Jira Product Discovery (JPD) Adoption & Product Org Enablement

Standardized prioritization and planning in Jira Product Discovery, turning quarterly wishlists into a continuous partnership between product, business, and technology.

Org Adoption
9 PMs
Planning Cadence
Rolling
Onboarding
8 weeks
Product OperationsStrategic AlignmentJira Product Discovery

Project Summary

I led a cross-organizational initiative to shift Guitar Center's planning process from siloed, quarterly stakeholder lists into a continuous, transparent partnership model powered by Jira Product Discovery (JPD).

By implementing a shared prioritization framework, a unified JPD workspace, and an 8-week onboarding curriculum, I aligned product managers, business stakeholders, and engineering teams around a single source of truth for strategy, prioritization, and progress.

Problem

Before JPD, Guitar Center's planning process was heavily quarterly and transactional:

  • Each quarter, product managers met with their stakeholders and rebuilt an entirely new list of candidate initiatives.
  • Those lists were then handed to the technology teams, who decided what to execute.
  • This created tension between business and technology, with limited transparency into why certain work was chosen.
  • Every quarter felt like a "reset," rather than an iteration on a long-term strategy.

Without a shared system or criteria, it was difficult to:

  • See how work connected to OKRs.
  • Compare opportunities across teams.
  • Avoid duplicate or competing initiatives.

Approach

I introduced Jira Product Discovery as the backbone for continuous planning, alignment, and visibility.

  • Established a unified JPD workspace
    Created a shared JPD project connected to the existing Jira Software projects, so that ideas, opportunities, and delivery work were all part of the same ecosystem.

  • Standardized prioritization with RICE
    Designed a consistent RICE scoring model (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) to ensure every initiative could be evaluated on the same criteria, regardless of team.

  • Built cross-team dashboards
    Configured views that showed:

    • Initiatives by theme or pillar.
    • Impact vs. effort comparisons.
    • Dependencies and ownership across teams.

  • Designed an 8-week onboarding curriculum
    Created a structured onboarding journey for both:

    • Product managers.
    • The broader "product team" (including business stakeholders and developers).

    The curriculum covered:

    • How to capture ideas and opportunities in JPD.
    • How to apply RICE scoring consistently.
    • How to use JPD views in quarterly planning and ongoing check-ins.
    • How to tie initiatives back to OKRs and measurable outcomes.

  • Led training and enablement
    Ran live training sessions, 1:1 coaching, and working sessions where we used JPD in real planning conversations. This helped teams see it as "how we work," not "another tool to update."

Results

  • Eliminated quarterly "rebuilds" of initiative lists, shifting to rolling prioritization instead of starting from scratch each quarter.
  • Improved collaboration between product, business, and technology by making prioritization a shared, transparent process.
  • Achieved full adoption across all nine product managers in the core product organization.
  • Saw organic adoption from teams without an official PM, who began using JPD to structure their own work and discussions with stakeholders.
  • Gave leadership real-time visibility into initiatives, dependencies, and progress against OKRs.
  • Reduced time-to-align on quarterly roadmaps, making approvals significantly faster and more confident.

Role & Impact

  • Defined the vision for how JPD would be used as the "strategy layer" above delivery work.
  • Designed the RICE-based prioritization framework and portfolio views.
  • Led rollout, training, and ongoing coaching across product, business, and engineering.
  • Created and maintained the 8-week onboarding program for new PMs and cross-functional partners.
  • Acted as the connective tissue between teams and leadership, ensuring JPD reflected how the organization actually made decisions.

Artifacts

  • JPD workspace overview (blurred screenshot)
  • RICE scoring template and example entries
  • Cross-team initiative and dependency dashboard
  • 8-week onboarding curriculum outline
  • OKR-aligned portfolio view

Takeaway

Transforming our planning process wasn't just about turning on a new tool. It was about shifting from a quarterly wishlist dynamic to an ongoing, trust-based partnership between product, business, and technology.

By giving everyone a shared language for prioritization and a shared place to see the work, Jira Product Discovery became the backbone for how we plan, communicate, and make decisions. That structure now supports broader AI and data initiatives by giving them a clear, visible place in the portfolio from day one.