Simple Release planning for JIRA Cloud

[Michael Wilkes]

Hi all,

I'm looking for recommendations on how to easily build up Releases inside our JIRA Cloud instance.

I want to be able to drag and drop a Story or an Epic into a Release bucket in order to plan the next several releases.

I tried out the Aha! product and I like the drag-and-drop Release builder (attached) but the product is overkill for our startup phase and it does not put Epics (their 'Initiative') on in the Features area where I can build a Release from them. 

I've also used Portfolio before but, again, the feature set is way deeper than what I want. I have only one team and one product for the near future.

I like the simplicity of Trello, but I can't tell if that integration supports updating Release versions through a Trello column change. 

But I will have quite a few releases over the next couple of years and I don't want to manage those in Confluence or by assigning fixVersion manually -- that's not a good way to visualize and discuss Release scope with management. 

We have both Epics and Stories (features) within a release because the work of breaking up an Epic into stories should be postponed until that is actually needed. 

Thanks for any suggestions. 

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Have you considered using a Jira scrum board? In the backlog board you will be presented with two collapsable sidebars: Epic and Versions. You can expand Versions and simply drag issue directly into any defined unreleased version. see example below.

[Michael Wilkes]

Thanks, Jack. I appreciate the screen shot. I've created one of these just now and that will due in a pinch.

I'm still hoping to find a tool or view that allows me to see the contents of multiple releases in as clean a way as Aha does. That view facilitates discussion of priorities without so much clicking back and forth. 

Update: I want to be able to add an Epic to a Release. This doesn't appear to be possible in the Scrum board (or in Aha). It's a core agile principle to postpone work until needed... and breaking down epics into stories just to fit into a tool runs cross-grain to that idea.

[Jack Brickey]

I'm not familiar w/ Aha. have you looked into creating a dashboard and leveraging gadgets and filters by version?

[Michael Wilkes]

I'll look into it, thanks. I've been away from JIRA for a year or so and switched from Server to Cloud. I probably have some catching up to do.

[Adalsteinn Ottarsson]

Hi @Michael Wilkes 
I am curious to know if you've found a good solve for this in the 6 months since you last left of this thread.   

I am very much trying to find a solution for this where I can do this release planning drag and drop in Jira. 

All the best,

Alli

[Kerrie McNeal]

I would also like to know this....