Project portfolio management

Jira release management for software teams

Software development moves quickly when teams use the DevOps management framework. Fortunately, specialized tools can help product managers monitor progress and maintain control.

Atlassian’s Jira is one such application. It leverages advanced release management tools to track development KPIs and address common release challenges. Here’s everything you need to know about how to manage releases in Jira. 

Understanding Jira release management

A software release and a version are synonymous terms that refer to a collection of changes – bug fixes, new features, and enhancements – that a development team rolls out to customers in a single update. 

Depending on the organization, developers typically categorize releases into 

• Major releases, which deliver significant updates to functionality.

• Minor releases, which add minor features or enhancements.

• Maintenance releases, which primarily fix bugs and update infrastructure.

Deployment is a crucial stage of the release management lifecycle for developers that use an iterative delivery framework. Developers deploy releases to one of two environments:

• Staging/Testing environment: A non-public server mimicking real-world conditions, allowing developers to test their updates. 

• Production environment: A publicly accessible server where customers can download or log into the product’s latest version. 

Benefits of versioned software releases

By using versions and release management tools, product managers gain the following benefits:

Easier maintenance

Versioned software releases require a system to . A highly organized team and workflow provide visibility into maintenance efforts, ensuring long-term product stability and reliability.

Clear communication

Delivering software updates via releases clarifies delivery milestones, creating a transparent, incremental approach to planning and execution that product managers can easily communicate to stakeholders.

Better user experience

Staggered releases ensure the development team has sufficient time to gather customer feedback, identify potential improvements, and test hypotheses before release. These essential steps ensure each version delivers a better user experience.

Continuous improvement

An uninterrupted deployment pipeline allows the development team to constantly refine, improve, and evolve the product and its features. 

Essential elements of Jira release management

Jira’s release management workflow ensures a smooth deployment process. Here’s what it has to offer:

Jira release planning

Before deploying the latest program version, product managers can conduct release planning in Jira by creating a Release in the Jira project and defining epics, stories, bugs, and other updates. They can then establish release schedule milestones and timelines using Jira’s scheduling tools.

Jira Data Center and Jira Cloud Premium offer the Jira Plans functionality to create cross-project roadmaps.

Progress tracking

Atlassian’s convenient tracking tools allow leaders to monitor the development team’s activities within the Jira platform.

• Release burndown charts illustrate team progress against a release’s . 

• Kanban board releases visualize workflow and bottlenecks using Jira’s Kanban boards.

• Release reports provide insights into the release process, allowing the product manager to make informed decisions. 

Deployment tracking

Atlassian Jira incorporates continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools into the platform. These provide real-time insights into deployment status across multiple environments and track where teams deploy specific issues.

KPIs for monitoring release management

Product managers use key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate release workflow effectiveness and identify opportunities for improvement. Release management uses four basic KPIs, but teams can add more to suit their needs.

• Frequency: Frequency tracks how often new releases go live. Some development teams have a monthly release schedule; others deploy once per quarter. Consider the type of release when determining frequency. For example, a high frequency of patch releases may indicate an issue with the quality of work delivered to production. 

• Cycle time: Cycle time defines the period from the start of software development until deployment to the production server. A long cycle time may indicate faulty release management processes.

• Success rate: This is a developer’s go-to KPI. Success rate measures release quality by tracking the number of defect-free deployments. The development team must determine its definition of done (DoD) to calculate the success rate.

• Rollback rate: This is another quality measurement. It counts the number of times the development team reverted a release due to issues with quality, security, or infrastructure instability. A high rollback rate indicates problems with the release management process. 

Practical steps for effective release management in Jira

Tracking updates to new environments is crucial in release management. Software developers control deployment, so they must inform the team and stakeholders about what updates are going to customers and when.

Automating this process minimizes the risk of human error. Here’s how to automate version tracking in Jira:

1. Define changes using Jira issues

Typically, developers manage changes using feature branches, which they merge to master using a Pull Request. However, developers may identify bugs or minor updates after merging the initial Pull Request. In this case, they must create multiple Pull Requests for the same change, which is hard to manage.

Grouping Pull Requests into a single unit of change – tracked by a Jira issue – makes them easier to follow and notifies stakeholders of any updates. Stakeholders can monitor issue status changes from the dashboard.

2. Establish a release management workflow

By default, Jira workflows have three statuses: To Do, In Progress, and Done. Developers can update the release workflow with three additional statuses to aid in release management and track which issues are included in a specific update.

• Awaiting release: The development process is complete, and updates are ready to ship.

• Released to staging: The update transitioned to the staging environment for testing.

• Released to production: The update is publicly available for users. 

Here’s how to add new transition steps and statuses to the basic Jira workflow:

1. Click “⛭” > “Projects,” then select your project.

2. From the Administration page, select “Workflows.”

3. Click the “Edit” icon at the top right of the box to create a draft and scheme of the new workflow and associate issues within the project with the new workflow.

4. Click on a status or transition to open the editing options panel and make the necessary changes.

5. Select “Publish Draft” to save the new workflow. Jira also allows you to keep the original Jira workflow as a backup. 

3. Configure agile boards

Next, activate the new workflow within each development project’s configuration. If the team uses Kanban boards, you must also add the new workflow statuses there. Here’s how:

1. Open the project board’s configuration screen.

2. Click “Columns.”

3. Drag the new statuses to the Done column.

When developers drag issues from “In Progress” to “Done,” Jira will prompt them to select the correct release status.

4. Map Jira issues to releases

If the development team builds its releases using a git repository, the commit history can identify which changes make up the release by prefixing commit messages with an issue key, like so:

$ git commit -am ‘PROJ-1: change publish button color to red’

Prefixing contextualizes the changes and makes them easier to trace. If the team also names the issue branch with the same key, it simplifies identifying merge commits later.

5. Identify related changes in the next release

Use a git command to tag the commit with a version number so you can track changes to a specific release. For example:

$ git tag -s -a 6.0.0-OD-2016.12.1-1106 && git push $remote 6.0.0-OD-2016.12.1-1106

The git retrieves all the commits logged since the previous release tag, allowing the user to identify keys to create the issue history.

You can identify issue keys using a JQL query like so:

issue in (‘CONF-41003’, ‘CONF-40973’, ‘CONF-38645’, ‘CONF-40446’, ‘CONF-41014’, ‘CONF-41035’) and status = ‘AWAITING RELEASE’

After creating this list, you can manually update all the issues in the current release using Jira’s Bulk Update feature.

6. Complete the release and inform stakeholders 

The release is now ready to deploy to the new environment. Once complete, transition all related issues to the appropriate release status. Users can use a JQL search query to identify issues included in the release:

fixVersion = “6.0.0-OD-2016.12.1-1106”

Finally, use the Bulk Update feature or REST API to transition issues to the appropriate status.

Developers should notify stakeholders after deploying the release to the staging or production environments.

Addressing common release management challenges in Jira

Even when applying every Jira release management best practice, things may still go wrong. Here are some common challenges and methods to address them:

Managing multiple versions and releases

• Avoid confusion by implementing a standardized version naming convention. 

• Track version progress and status across multiple projects using Jira’s Release Hub.

• Use Atlassian’s Jira Plans or Jira Align to manage complex cross-project releases.

Monitoring dependencies and roadblocks

• Link issues and dependencies using Jira’s roadmap feature to identify potential bottlenecks impacting tasks and issues.

• Remove roadblocks by reviewing and addressing task or issue dependencies early in the release cycle.

Implementing last-minute changes

• Manage last-minute scope changes by developing change management protocols within Jira.

• Ensure the process includes impact assessment, approval workflows, and communication plans to avoid impacting the release schedule.

Jira release management with Tempo

Tempo’s solutions upgrade Atlassian Jira’s basic release management capabilities. Tempo offers valuable insights into key release metrics with real-time tracking and visualization. organizes release tasks and issues and helps teams monitor project progress. Finally, illustrates the development process using an intuitive format that highlights dependencies and roadblocks.

Tempo streamlines your workflows so you can focus on what truly matters: delivering quality updates to your customers.