🔌 Plug into Jira: Release incrementally with confidence with Jira Software's Release Hub

[#1]

Hi Atlassian Community,

Previously in the Plug into Jira series, we shared how to keep track of feature flags in Jira Software and why Progressive Delivery can help teams ship fast without breaking things. Today, we are going to talk about how the Release Hub in Jira Software can be the single source of truth for software teams on their way to a release.

After months of planning, design, and development, you’re ready to release your latest feature. But you still have a lot to learn. Will customers use the feature as planned? You need to quickly get feedback from your users while minimizing the risk of exposing your whole customer base to a feature that’s not easy to use.

That’s where Progressive Delivery comes in. We’ve updated the Release Hub with exciting new features that help facilitate this release strategy. Let’s take a look at how it works: 

Add the driver of the release and contributors in the Release Hub

Know the complete development status of your release

It begins with the issues area. Here you’ll find every issue associated to a fixed version (a release) in an issue. You can sort them by multiple dimensions to find exactly what you need to evaluate the readiness of a release. The view shows not only each issue’s status, priority, and assignee but developer information as well including the pull request, deployment, and feature flag status. Above the issue list is the progress overview bar which breaks down the issues by status. 

Use JQL to execute detailed searches

Bring in multidisciplinary teams

Above the issues area is the related work area. When you’re working on a release, there’s more involved than finishing development work. Multidisciplinary software teams include other roles such as product managers, designers, and analysts. 

That’s why we added related work to the Release Hub. Here you can add everything from Figma designs to testing plans to user analytics. Then you can assign an owner to the linked documents and track progress to help you determine if you’re ready to release.

Bring Confluence docs from your Project pages into the Release Hub

Data-driven go/no-go decisions for incremental releases

To get fast feedback from your users while minimizing risk you can incrementally release to production. This process is called Progressive Delivery. Using feature flags you can deploy new features to specific cohorts within your customer base over time. 

Before every incremental release, hold a go/no go decision. The Release Hub is designed to facilitate this discussion. By including your analytics, the status of the launch blog, the deployments of issues, the feature flag rollout percentage, and more you have everything you need to know you are ready to move forward in one view.

The Release Hub in Jira Software is your software team’s best friend - the single source of truth that enables teams to see the big picture of a release. Enable the magical powers of the Release Hub by turning on Releases in Project Settings > Features and let us know how your team is using the Release Hub in the comments!

[Dan.Tombs]

I love the functionality around the release hub. It is really helping teams have more of a full picture of what is going on. less context switching and means all documentation can be properly tied together. The only downside is around the permissioning for releases. We should be able to assign these to other roles outside project admin.

[Amanda Barber]

I'm loving this series! I've been handling releases in my company for a few months, but just took over how the previous person was doing it. Because of this series, I've started tweaking the process slightly. Loving the release hub which has really changed my ability to see if a release is ready to go out. Thank you!

[Marjorie]

I like this series alot!  Keep the ideas flowing. I am integrating some of them

[Joanna Maciag]

Sorry for repeating this request across the series, but I see it very valuable and wish to put Release Hub as feature request for Data Center as well.

Brilliant Ideas !

That's one of our key focuses last years ... integrating JIRA with all surroundings to become center of the world :-) 

[Lucas Modzelewski _Lumo_]

I've seen some changes in the UI, but I haven't had time to explore them... They look promising, I can see how they could speed up our release process.

[Aaron Geister]

I see so many teams not use this feature and I find it to be one of the best options not only for software releases but for internal teams to move from one work picture to the next.

So even if we are not releasing software version we can use it for release of a good set of work. Love how Jira allows teams to build on process from its features it offers to gain efficiencies

[Guille]

Great! However, any options to actually have one release hub under a project that brings issues from multiple projects? Currently Fix Versions live within the project of that issue. Thanks,

[Mohamed Benziane]

Great feature !

[Mary Agueros]

I see how the Release Hub can be useful. Access to information is consolidated into a one-stop-shop of sorts. Delivery of consistent information to all parties. I am not directly involved in release management; however, I find the need to review release information of a recent release to a release from a few months in the past.  

[John Williams]

Is there a way to enable release management in Jira Cloud without having project administrator permissions?

[Rajesh Viswanathan]

These look awesome!

[Collista Lewingdon]

I am new to the release track and still learning about it but these articles are helping my understanding. 

[Utkarsh Singh]

[Aswin Raj D]

Great feature and nice article.

[patricia]

Thank you to share with us these topics.

[Mark Rekveld - Marvelution]

Thanks, I really like the series and new features coming.

[Josh Costella]

I've been absolutely loving the new features to the Release Hub! I would love some more improvements to searching for releases with JQL such as Release Date. I know there are plugins and there is a long-standing feature request but I will always bring it up. 😊