During years of development projects management Panda Group has identified lots of issues occurring and disrupting the workflow.
We usually discover problems on project retrospections when discussing the workflow issues with each team member. It’s one of the methods for improving the process and enlarging our project management knowledge.
Many obstacles we are able to overcome by discussing and making slight changes. This way we achieve quite significant results lowering time consumption and improving communication during the project.
As we are tech geeks we try to use available tools to make life easier. For instance, some of the slight changes were achieved at Panda Group with Jira Automation, and this is what I presented during the Magento Meet-up.
During the presentation, I explained how much Jira can offer in matters of communication and repetitive activities automation. This way at Panda Group we managed to deal with:
- not responding decision-makers,
- overlooked task deadlines,
- “expired” Code Review,
- manual release creating,
- manual repetition of recurring tasks.
No-code Jira Automation
Automation helps teams to streamline their processes and keep Jira up-to-date without having to write any code. This frees more time for the tasks that can have an impact while allowing your team to remain organized and productive – all with just a few clicks!
Jira can communicate and transmit data between many different applications and data basis. It is based on data exchange meant to approach. Here on the diagram, there are just a few possibilities.
It’s no easy feat to stay on top of various data sources and keep everyone in sync, particularly during complex workflows with multiple inputs and outputs. However, it’s not impossible especially if you can supercharge Jira with automation. Here is where you can find the settings.
Jira automation options
What options did we use to handle the above-mentioned situations? You can build your automation by using those 3 simple components::
- trigger,
- condition,
- action.
Jira Automation – trigger
Igniting the rule engine is all it takes for a trigger to set your process in motion – whether you choose an event-based spark or schedule automation, igniting the power of triggers sends operations soaring. There are 45 new triggers. Among them are those connected to Issue creation, delete, update, transition, or movement to the project, and also to Sprint creation or accomplishment.
With the manual trigger option, users can take control of their rules – running them whenever they need! You have also an option to enable or disable groups that can run the trigger.
Jira Automation – condition
Rules can be executed according to the schedule after an action takes place in an integrated application, or manually. The rules can be accompanied by additional components which restrict the action by controlling, testing or allowing performance.
When a certain condition is met such as accepted or declined approval or a new version is released or updated, the action is allowed.
Jira Automation – action
Finally, there are 38 actions that can be taken as an automation result, among them creating, cloning, and deleting issues, creating subtasks, or assigning issues.
There is an interesting action that can be taken when the workflow progress and this one is crucial in project management – Notifications. The system can notify stakeholders using email, slack, MS Teams, and many others keeping all team members in the loop.
At Panda Group, one of the most important aspects of project management is notifications. Keeping everyone on our team informed and up to date can be achieved through the notification system which uses popular communication channels such as email, and Slack.
Our expertise has made it clear that having an optimized notification system is essential for ensuring efficient workflow.
Jira integration and automatic synchronization with external apps are game changers. It is possible to create branches at BitBucket, GitHub repository, or Gitlab project. It is possible to create a page in Confluence or run an AWS system Management document.
Automated issues assignement
We also used automated issues assignment after certain conditions as a trigger. This pushed the workflow and allowed for immense progress. This way we avoid losing control over the particular stages. Everybody is informed just in time.
For instance, when a developer moves a task to a progress state it is automatically assigned to him.
Notifications about the tickets waiting for the answer
We are all overwhelmed by the information coming and demanding our reaction. So do the clients. And what if the next step can not be done without a decision coming from the client? It is good to be sure the client is informed and aware of the issues that exist. Especially when you have more than one client and dozens of questions waiting for the response.
In this case, it’s worth creating an automated reminder – here you have an example
Deadline coming notification
We are aware deadlines are important for efficient workflow, also business goals often depend on deadlines. To avoid surprises with missed deadlines we introduced deadline coming notifications. The reminder every day can show the time left to the deadline and helps to arrange tasks left to accomplish the issue.
Expiring Code Review
A common practice at Panda Group is to revise a code to make double-check and make sure there are no malfunctions and errors before the live implementation. Code review is a task assigned to several developers and the one who is available at the moment takes care of the code review.
The problem was it wasn’t the highest priority task and sometimes had been neglected and the right code review was not accomplished on time. Time is here crucial to avoid amendments when the code is already implemented.
The automated reminder about the Code Review allowed us to make the process more fluent and avoid missing reviews at the last stage.
Manual releases
When the sprint ends up with a new release, the next step, and also the first stage of a new sprint is to create a space for changes to be included in the new release. When new releases are set up in the schedule the development process goes very fast and dynamically.
What we do to improve the process is the automation of each possible stage to make it more efficient and easier. The New release usually needs to be made manually after the accomplished sprint. And we automated the creation of the release according to the schedule to avoid manual work allowing the PM and developers to work in a well-prepared environment and focus on the development work.
Conclusion
Automation is an invaluable asset for managing large-scale, ever-changing projects. We’ve seen firsthand that incorporating automation into our project timelines can prove to be incredibly beneficial and yield great results!
Our clients continuously value our commitment to efficient project management, and we strive for continued excellence in this area.
If you are interested download the Jira Automation step-by-step Szymon Niedziela presentation PDF.
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