Recently we had a customer looking to solve the problem of visualizing the entire delivery value stream for Features (Jira Epics) and Stories in Jira Align. We explored the path of turning on the Labs feature to see 'In Delivery' and 'Delivered' states but because it's in Labs, issues found may not be supported. Since integration to Jira will heavily rely on this working correctly 100% of the time, we opted to wait until that feature is GA'd. With that said, we have explored integrating to Jira with Jira Align Process Steps and found a few snags. Below is the summary of the testing we did and bugs Atlassian identified in this process. We would LOVE to hear how others are solving this problem and what paths you went down to get there.
Summary
Testing was performed on Jira Align features (Jira epics) and stories in 4 parts:
- Align Process Steps updated for features and stories to confirm Jira Align Lifecycle States were updated as expected (no integration with Jira).
We did this testing to ensure the Process Step / State mapping was not an underlining issue with the Jira integration. We did find and issue (see JAC ticket below).
- (Recommended Approach) Jira Status updated for features and stories to confirm Jira Align Process Flows and Lifecycle States were updated as expected.
- Jira Align Process Step updated for features and stories to confirm Jira Statuses were updated as expected.
No issues found when moving forward though the process but we did find issues moving backwards after the work had been accepted (see JAC ticket below).
- Jira Align Lifecycle States updated for features and stories to confirm Jira Statuses were updated as expected.
The underlining issue we found in process step - state mapping does hurt us here. Also we had the same issue moving backwards through the lifecycle states.
The results for each part confirmed many bugs in Jira Align (all with workarounds either leveraging Jira or another option in Jira Align) with the exception of #2. Updating your statuses in Jira when Process Steps are configured correctly, presents no unexpected behavior according to our testing in Jira Align v10.104.1. integrated with a Cloud instance. The problem we have is that there is no way to stop an end user from updating the Process Steps in Jira Align. If these steps are updated after acceptance on the Jira Align side, the integration doesn't work and upon the next Jira sync, it will change the Jira Align item back to the State and Process Step it was in prior to the change in Jira Align.
Bugs found
JIRAALIGN-3898
JIRAALIGN-3705
