Using JIRA versioning as related to CI/CD within the construct of SAFe

Allen Filson October 3, 2018

Wondering if anyone in the community has experience with versioning in JIRA (fix/target/'custom') within a PI,  running iterations and versioning a subset of the feature sets completed/accepted within the PI for deployment within the CI/CD pipeline.  From that pipeline, another subset of features might be presented for customer use (released).

Presently we use fix versions for each iteration in the PI and then set target version for the customer facing releases.

Not sure what others are doing but would be curious to read,..

Thanks in advance! 

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Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]
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October 4, 2018

I have customers using fixVersions for PIs. They use sprints (from the scrum boards) for iterations.

Allen Filson October 19, 2018

Hmmm interesting,.. so you only set the fix version for a release to customer feature??  

Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]
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October 19, 2018

Everything in the PI, including stories, tasks, defects carry the corresponding fixVersion. Hope that is what you were asking.

Allen Filson October 19, 2018

ya,.. that's what we are doing,.. but when we 'choose' a feature to become customer facing (many different fix versions),.. currently we create a new fix version and affix the story, epic, sub-task with that new fix version. so what you get is story with multiple fix versions.  I would like to use 'target version',.. but that is not referenced in any of the 'releasing' features in JIRA.  Trying to 'scale-up' JIRA to address the concept of 'on-demand' releases from only fix versions seems to be 'hacky',.. was fishing around this community to see if someone had figured out a better way.

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Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]
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October 20, 2018

Have you tried leveraging the "Version Picker" custom field?

Allen Filson January 11, 2019

Does the 'Version Picker' custom field have visibility to the release hub in JIRA?

Nimalka Lucas October 8, 2018

Hi Allen 

We are also currently currently trying to configure the versioning for CI/CD for fix versions. Are you using any automated workflow post functions to populate the target versions and is that just a custom field?

Regards,
Nimalka

Allen Filson October 19, 2018

Nothing automated yet (but that would be pretty cool to try and implement)  Just setting by hand,.. kind-of-a-pain,.. :(

Edmond McLaughlin June 26, 2019

"Trying to 'scale-up' JIRA to address the concept of 'on-demand' releases from only fix versions seems to be 'hacky',.. was fishing around this community to see if someone had figured out a better way."

+1 @Allen Filson  @Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]  

We are trying to solve a similar problem and I'm curious to know what the outcome was of your experiments. 

We are using Jira, Portfolio and Zephyr (Enterprise) and what I am finding is that they all seemed to be geared toward planned releases, not the `on-demand` releases one wants with CI/CD.

What we are exploring is defining `working versions` for features and fixes that are in development, with the final release version applied to the stories through automation when the features/fixes are released. Jira has the ability to merge the multiple `working versions` into a `release version` and it seems like that could be useful, but it also requires a lot of manual updating of `working versions`. 

And, as noted above, this all hinges on the use of the single fixVersion field. And it is kind of hacky. 

If anyone has a working model they could share of their successful implementation of versioning as part of an `on-demand` CI/CD release pipeline in Jira, I'd love to learn about it.

 


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Mia Jones
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December 13, 2023

You're not alone in navigating the complexities of versioning in JIRA within a Program Increment (PI). Your current approach using fix versions for iterations and target versions for releases is a common, but not the only, way to handle it.


Alternatives:

Custom field for "Deployment Version": This allows separate tracking of release and deployment versions, providing more granular control. You can link features to specific deployment versions within the CI/CD pipeline.
Branching strategy: Use version branches in your code repository to represent PI and release versions. Features are merged into relevant branches depending on their target deployment.
Git tags: Leverage Git tags to mark completed work within the PI or specific features deployed to production.
Hybrid approach: Combine elements of the above methods, like using both fix/target versions with a custom field for deployment version.

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