The investment lives above the line. So should the answer
Most tools on Jira answer the delivery team's question: are we shipping? Sapper PMO answers the sponsor's: is the investment still on track to pay off?
Different question. Different altitude. Same Jira.
“I'll come back to you on that.”
The sponsor asks the obvious follow-up. What did that change do to the budget? Which work packages are at risk because of it? Are we still on track for the payoff?
The answer is in five places at once. Cashflow in a spreadsheet. Status in last fortnight's deck. Risks in Confluence. Decisions in meeting minutes. Delivery in Jira. None of them agree, and none of them is obviously the one that's current.
So the conversation stops. The picture was stale before it was presented, and the person in the middle is the integration layer. All that effort, and no more insight than the monthly steerco slide.
One live case file for the investment, kept where the work already lives.
Sapper PMO sits on each Jira project as six tabs, plus a portfolio view across them. The picture is current because it is the place where the picture is kept — not reassembled the night before the meeting.
Six tabs on every Jira project. Investment Health is the one you land on.
Investment Health anchors the view. Cost, Schedule, Scope and Risk RAGs are derived from the registers beneath them — so they can't be coloured in by hand.
Investment Health
The dashboard you land on, and the one you present from. Includes a Steerco One-Pager presenter mode. Derived RAGs, not hand-coloured.
Investment Thesis
On track for what, exactly. Business problem, outcome, return expected, named sponsor and steering committee. Draft → Submitted → Approved.
Work Packages
Scope and budget at the unit executives think in. Baseline, forecast, actual, RAG, owner, linked Jira issues — with a phase and timeline view. Not tickets.
The registers the RAGs are derived from. Governance, not a Jira board.
Risks, Decisions and Changes. This is where the colour on the dashboard comes from — and where the corporate memory lives.
Risks
A register on the threat, opportunity and materialised model, sorted by impact times likelihood, with the 4Ts treatment. The governance view, not a Jira board.
Decisions
Append-only corporate memory. Proposed → Approved or Rejected, separation of duties enforced. What did we approve, and when — answerable in the room.
Changes
Scope, timeline and budget change requests on the same approval pattern. Once decided, the entry is immutable. The cumulative impact is always there to point at.
Roll it up, present it live, and answer the follow-up there and then.
Portfolio Health rolls the projects into one view. Investment Health is the deck you present from. Ask Sapper handles the question you never anticipated.
Portfolio Health
Every project's Investment Health in one view across the whole programme. Build a Jira Plan (formerly Advanced Roadmaps) and use it as the filter — rolled up overall and by investment theme.The board-level picture.
Present from the dashboard
Open Investment Health on the projector and run the meeting from it. There is no parallel slide pack to keep in sync. The dashboard is the deck.
Ask Sapper
A Rovo copilot for the follow-up no deck anticipated. Ask it live, in the room — scoped to this project's Sapper data, its Jira work items and linked Confluence docs, so you can read the financial model or the technical issue below the line, not just the RAG. Available on Premium and Enterprise Jira sites.Instead of coming back to it next fortnight.
This is not another Gantt over Jira.
Advanced Roadmaps and the Gantt overlay-style apps still only manage delivery — sequencing, dependencies, who is doing what when. Sapper PMO manages the investment outcome — whether the money is still going to land. Delivery stays in Jira, exactly where it should be.
Below the line: Roadmaps, Gantt overlays, sprint metrics. They manage how the work gets done — the delivery team's question.
Above the line: Sapper PMO. It manages whether the investment lands — the sponsor's question.
Nothing leaves your instance. Safe to install on a messy, existing Jira.
Built on Atlassian Forge. It reads your Jira data and keeps its own governance records separately — it can't write to or change Jira data in your projects.
Built on Forge
It runs entirely on Atlassian Forge. No external servers, no external database, no data sent anywhere outside your Jira site. Inside your tenancy, full stop.
Read-only on your data
It reads Jira data and keeps its own governance records separately. It can't change anything in your existing projects.
Your projects, untouched
No new issue types, no workflow changes, no customisations to how delivery already works. Loosely coupled — you link a Sapper item to a Jira issue only when there's a reason to, so delivery keeps its velocity.Safe on a messy, existing Jira instance.
Early software. I want it in front of people who run governance for real.
A few things to be straight about, because the worst beta is the one you walked into expecting a finished product.
It works today
Sapper PMO is fully functional right now — every tab, every register, the portfolio roll-up and Ask Sapper. It's an early version, so you'll hit the odd rough edge. What I want back is your honest take on what's missing. Early contributors, not paying customers.
You'll install a Marketplace app
It asks only for read access and keeps its records separately, so it can't change your existing projects. A sandbox is safest; production is your call. A sandbox is recommended.
It's free
Free through the whole beta, and three months free when it moves to paid. No card, no commitment — the only ask is your honest feedback.No card, no commitment.
Best on Jira Premium or Enterprise
A few features, like Ask Sapper, don't run on a Standard licence.
/ Highlights
A look around the app
Get free access for the beta. I'll send the install link the moment it's ready.
"I built Sapper PMO for the investment side of programmes, and I'm opening it to a small group who run governance for real. If that's you, I'd genuinely value your eyes on it."
— James Hallam, Softwired Digital
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