This blog is part of our series on how to use Atlassian features, automations, and integrations to take time back to ship better code, faster. Click here for the full list of 12+ new features or follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date!
Our recent DevOps Trends Survey found that an increasing number of teams practicing DevOps needed 5 or more tools to understand the status of their projects. In some ways this isn't surprising – there are many teams and moving parts involved in a DevOps workflow which can lead to cognitive and collaboration overload.
But teams shouldn't have to cut down on the number of tools to get their work done and stay up to date, the tools just have to integrate better. We want to make it possible for teams to work where they work best, allowing them to use the tools they prefer but lose the messy process. With Jira as the single source of truth for work and integrations with your preferred choice of tools, it's easy to ship value to your customers and keep teams updated as you code, automatically.
Read on to learn how we're giving developers time back to focus on code by spending less time in meetings and dealing with manual processes, all while giving project managers confidence to know the status of work with automated, real-time updates.
DevOps automation triggers for Jira Cloud
The newest addition to Jira Cloud's no-code automation engine, DevOps automation triggers, can be set to perform an action whenever a certain event occurs in your favorite code hosting tool like Bitbucket, GitHub, or GitLab. These actions aren't limited to Jira either – they even work across other third party tools like Slack, Jenkins, and more.
For developers these triggers are useful for keeping Jira and your team up to date on status as you work. A workflow such as "transition a Jira issue to In Review when a pull request is created in Bitbucket" can reduce the need for update meetings and manual processes, keeping the team updated on progress in Jira while allowing them to stay focused on their code in one tool.
These triggers also give project managers more confidence that Jira is always up-to-date without having to ask for updates and reducing the number of tools they need to visit to understand progress. In particularly time-sensitive situations – such as dealing with a critical outage – workflows can be set up to immediately notify a team that a fix is ready to be deployed.
In the above rule, when a pull request is merged the associated Jira issue is transitioned to the Waiting for Deploy status and, with the additional condition check, if the issue has the label HOT a Slack message is sent to a specified channel. The Jira ticket is updated and the team is notified that a priority fix is ready for release, simply by merging a pull request.
Stay in the flow with Bitbucket Cloud and Jira Cloud
Manual process and context switching often slow developers down, hindering their ability to focus on their work. The DevOps automation triggers remove the need to manually keep their teams up to date and allow them to stay focused on their code, but they often context switch in order to understand what to work on next. The improved integration between Bitbucket and Jira aims to solve this problem for developers by bringing Jira into Bitbucket, making it easier to understand what's on deck without having to leave the UI.
The Your Work dashboard brings all of the most important information together for a developer to answer the question "what should I work on next?". Front and center are the pull requests that require review and attention, and the new addition of Jira Issues means it's easier than ever to get started on the next piece of work assigned to you. Clicking on an issue brings up the issue details inside Bitbucket's UI so you can get more context on the work required. And using the aforementioned DevOps automation triggers, creating a branch from this view can automatically transition the issue to the In Progress status.
For developers who manage a library or microservice it's sometimes useful to understand the context of work in progress that's related to a given repository. That's why we're rolling out the ability to view Jira projects related to a repository right from within Bitbucket.
Mobile meets DevOps with Jira's native apps
With Jira as the source of truth for work and automated triggers in place to ensure issues are always up to date, developers and project managers have the confidence to react to problems and deploy releases to customers at a moment's notice. And we're improving development-lifecycle visibility by introducing release and development information into Jira's native apps for iOS, Android, and macOS, giving managers insight into releases and developers updates on build status anywhere, anytime.
Developers can now receive updates on their build status in Jira. By opening a single Jira issue they can view critical development information like branches, commits, and pull requests instantly, and also respond to issue comments faster.
Project managers can stay up to date with exactly what's being released and when. They can track development projects on Jira's board or backlog at a glance, making it easier than ever to provide updates to stakeholders from a mobile device.
And for release managers, knowing what's ready for release (and what's not going to make it) is only a tap or swipe away, making it easy to communicate updates to key stakeholders.
A better way to work starts today
It's easy to benefit from practicing DevOps without suffering collaboration overload, and it doesn't require sacrificing your preferred tools for an all-in-one solution in the process. By using Jira as your single source of truth and focusing on the flow of information between teams and tools, developers and managers can spend less time keeping teams up to date and more time shipping value to their customers.
