Best options for tracking a release... going from Rally to Jira.

Question

We are just going live with Jira, from Rally, and I am struggling with how to track the releases. Let me start by saying I have had no Jira training, only learned things on my own from testing.

Here is my situation. I am a Program Manager and track many different products and releases. In Rally I create Milestones, which I assume will be Releases in Jira. From there I have to assign all my Epics, Stories, Bugs to the Release... is that correct? In Rally, if I assigned the Epic to the Milestone, all the children would be a part of it as well. It seems that Jira is very flat so I won't have that same option.

Our teams are Kanban and very established teams so they no longer do story points, estimating, sizing. In Rally, our tracking and progress is calculated based on the number of stories and bugs. I'm not sure how I accomplish tracking in Jira. We do have Portfolio and I am doing research and trying to learn that but it seems like I have to create a plan before I can get anywhere. I don't need to plan, don't need it to try to calculate our release date, I just want the reporting.

I'm am hoping that someone has a suggestion for us. Any help would very much be appreciated! Thanks!

unknown · Answer

Hi Cara,

Did you get info on how you can use Rally Milestone in Jira ? What is the equivalent ?

Thanks

Prem

Vlad[ALM Works] · Answer

Hi Cara,

I’m sorry we missed your post!

This is definitely a requirement that our app, Structure for Jira can help with. Structure helps Atlassian's largest customers visualize, track and manage progress across Jira projects and teams. It does this with adaptable, user-defined, issue hierarchies presented in a familiar spreadsheet-like view of Jira issues. In addition, structures may contain folders and other helpful organizational elements not found in Jira.

For instance, in this particular case, you could create a structure, Insert the appropriate Projects and Group by Sprint and/or fixVersion.

Furthermore, you could add a Custom Field to your project for release dates and a Progress (by status) column. (We are working on an improvement to make it possible to use “non-issue” attributes such as Sprint Start/End dates in Structure.)You could then Export the data to Excel or to a Printable page to generate a report.

The hierarchy is kept in both cases, allowing for better visualization.

These are just a few examples of what Structure can do. Please feel free to contact me directly at vlad@almworks.com with any questions or you can reach our support team anytime at support@almworks.com for assistance.

Best Regards,

Vlad

ALM Works

Sami Linnanvuo _Screenful_ · Answer

Hi Cara,

You may want to take a look at the Screenful add-on. It has reports for epics and releases, and can use a simple task count as the reported metric. You can check out the screenshots at the tour page to see if this is something that could help you with your reporting needs.

Best,
Sami