Repetitive Project Plan or Monthly Release Steps

Question

Hi! I am new to JIRA and am absolutely loving it. However, I have allot to learn. As the scrum master, I need to be able to quickly set up:

- Monthly Release Tasks - approximately 55 steps with one dependency

- Project Plans that Repeat Step by Step

Specifically my questions/needs are:

1.) For the Monthly Release, my predecessor used 'Create Hierarchy', is this the best solution?

2.) For the Project Plans where the milestones and subtasks remain the same, what would be the best method to create and duplicate? Clone an Epic? If so, can I use that method for the monthly release?

3.) For both of these, is there a way to color code the steps by SDLC, for example, yellow is one milestone consistently and green is another milestone always?

PS If there is documentation I missed, please kindly guide me.

Kelly

Kelly A_ Kline · Answer

Hi Yuri, That is precisely what I needed.

The pieces I was missing were the 'due date' for the milestone date - needed that! Yes, we have been considering the Relase Management App but wanted to get the essentials down first.

The workflow looks exciting and relatively straightforward, but I don't yet have admin access.

Repeatable project tasks: What perhaps needs some clarification is the 'create release issue type'. I have tasks and subtasks or dependencies but in the input via the 'create or modify hierarchy' for our monthly release, somehow, I cannot add another Epic. All I need is a project that repeats with 12 tasks preferably with two feature or Epics but is this the proper spot?

Yuri Lapin _Release Management_ · Answer

Hi @Kelly A_ Burnett ,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

Release Management is an exciting area:) Let's start with 55 steps. I presume some of those are actually steps in release workflow that are repetitive and you would benefit from creating a Kanban board showing how your release progress from left to right. Some others are traceable  milestones that you wanna see on timeline and understand if achieved/not/with-delay (especially if those are dependencies) and last not the least are actual tasks that needs to be performed and tracked.

Based on available functionality you can consider your options.

With standard release management functionality in Jira you have the following options:

* workflow is now limited to Released/Unreleased/Archived. So you take it as granted to convert steps into milestones/tasks or ... create a standalone jira project for managing release and create release issue type with your custom workflow and etc. The downside is .. this project will be slightly disconnected from actual work performed in other Jira projects your dev teams will be using. And you need some experience to configure it.
* milestones are not available and you should be using Jira issues for that with Due Date as Milestones Date
* the actual tasks you can track as Related Work for Jira Releases or specific Jira issues - could be regular tasks or specific Issue Types

You can also consider Marketplace Apps to cover the area of Release Management. For e.g. with our Release Management App you can create hierarchy of your releases, configure workflows, track intermediate milestones and manage related work/progress ... all this tightly integrated with actual development work performed in scope of your release. So, you have one stop shop.

Try it out!

Cheers,

Yuri.