Streamline Your Sprints With 9 Jira Automations
Sprints are at the core of agile principles. And they’re how a Scrum team uses a predefined time period to work together towards an agreed-upon goal. A sprint focuses on interaction and collaboration to produce working software. A team has to do a lot of work to maintain their sprint workflows in Jira. Changing task statuses, notifying teammates to sprint changes, and keeping developers’ code changes in sync with Jira tasks can all add up to a lot of manual mouse clicks. 🖱
Many of these manual steps can be automated to save your team effort.
Help your Scrum team with Jira automations
Scrum is a framework for getting agile work done. The Scrum events are:
- Sprint: The time period in which the team works toward their sprint goal (e.g., completing a set amount of user stories from the product backlog). The next sprint starts when the previous one ends.
- Sprint Planning Meeting: A meeting that scopes the amount of effort required for backlog items prioritized by the product owner. The software development team commits to completing that amount of work.
- Daily Scrum: A brief meeting each workday when Scrum team members update each other on the progress of their work within the sprint. It's a time to lend support or unblock another team member who may be stuck on an issue.
- Sprint Review: A time for the Scrum team and stakeholders to review the outcomes of the completed sprint and discuss what impacts they have on future sprints.
- Sprint Retrospective: A meeting to find opportunities to improve on the team's agile processes and its interactions with each other.
Which Scrum roles are involved:
- Software Developers: They get the work done but don't want any sprint surprises.
- Product Owner: This person prioritizes the work and sometimes has to make unplanned mid-sprint changes.
Every player on the software development team, from startups to established companies, has repetitive tasks they need to perform throughout its sprint events. Because we're all human, when we're sprinting, we sometimes forget to transition the status of issues or do the little things in Jira that keep everyone on the team aware of what's happening in our sprint in real-time.
Automate your sprint workflows with Jira
Have no fear. Jira can help automate typical sprint workflows like task transitions and team notifications. 🤯 Agile project management within software development is a methodology that is conducive to automation. You can link behaviors in your Jira issues to trigger actions from tools like Slack and MS Teams, email, GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab.
You can use Jira automations to do things such as:
- Notify team members and stakeholders of any changes to a sprint
- Trigger actions based on task transitions within a sprint iteration
- Keep Jira task and sub-task statuses and story points in sync
- Connect code commits and build statues to Jira issues
Oh my!
If you didn't know these tools existed, here's your chance to learn them.
Automate your way to connectivity
Keep agile teammates in the know
When a sprint begins, it's important the product owner notifies team members if something changes. That way, you can make sure it won't negatively impact your ability to complete your sprint goal.
Communication within agile teams is paramount, and Jira provides ways to automatically notify your scrum team based on rules you set about your sprint. For example, you can send emails or Slack notifications when the status of a task changes.
Task and sub-task coordination
Sub-tasks are a handy feature in Jira. They help you break tasks into smaller steps and track their progress as they're being worked on. Scrum masters encourage this universally in agile, but it can be easy for sub-tasks to get out of sync with their parent tasks. We’ll soon learn a Jira automation to prevent this.
Connect developer code work to Jira issues
Your development team has a lot on its plate during a sprint. Not only does it have to complete all of its user stories — but there's also the mechanics of keeping code commits by developers synced with their associated Jira tickets. And, always remembering to keep these in tune with Jira tickets is burdensome. As you’ll see, there are ways to connect actions taken in GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab and update Jira tickets.
Jira automations FTW
Here are our nine favorite Jira automations that streamline our sprint workflow.
1. Notify teammates when a story is added to a sprint
Scope creep (adding new points to a sprint after it starts) is nobody's friend. However, there are times when a product owner needs to pull an item from the product backlog and add it to the current sprint. When this happens, it's best practice to inform the whole team that a change has been made. Use this handy automation template to send an email to your team when backlog items are added to a sprint.
2. Automatically assign a task when its status changes
Some team members need to be made aware when an issue transitions to being on their plate. When an issue’s status switches to In Review, for example, you can auto-assign it to a QA teammate.
3. Celebrate when your sprint is over by sending a Slack message
A lot of work happens during a sprint. Because your next sprint always begins immediately when the current one ends, it's often difficult to find time to celebrate wins. Use this celebration to send a fun Slack message to your team when the final issue in the sprint is completed. You can make sprints fun with automation!
4. Automatically put In Progress issues into the current sprint
There are lots of moving parts when trying to ensure that In Progress Jira issues are visible in the current sprint. Nobody wants hidden work. When a developer moves a task into In Progress, you can automatically assign it to the current sprint.
5. Sum the story points of sub-tasks and update the value of the parent task
Be sure that your story point totals are accurate by automatically summing the points of your sub-tasks and updating the parent task with the value. They'll never be out of sync with each other with this nifty automation rule.
6. Close an issue when all of its sub-tasks are complete
Some people like to work with sub-tasks, which is great. But it's easy to overlook closing a parent task after you've finished your work and closed all of its sub-tasks. Well … you can automatically close a parent task when all of its sub-tasks are complete so this doesn't happen. 🤖
7. Move a task to In Progress when a commit is made
Save your developers time by cutting down on redundant tasks. When a code commit is made, it means a task is being worked on. Connect Jira to your commit repository (GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab) so that when a code commit is made, the associated Jira issue moves to In Progress.
8. Add a comment to a ticket when a pull request is made
Adding details to a Jira ticket from a pull request can be a copy-and-paste job — but it doesn't have to be. Use a trigger to add the details from the request into a Jira comment.
9. Notify the development team when a Jenkins build fails
Certain issues can't wait to be realized by the whole team on the next daily stand-up. If your Jenkins build fails, this is an awesome way to let the whole team know by Slack, MS Teams, or email ... right away.
Make agile sprints easy
Automations in Jira make a sprint team’s life easier by cutting down on the manual work needed to keep the mechanics of a sprint running.
You can use modified versions of these automations with Easy Agile to make agile even easier! For example, celebrate roadmap wins by notifying your team when issues are completed in your Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira, or sync your Jira data fields with your roadmap. There are many ways to mix-and-match rules and triggers to make Jira automations work for you.
Related Articles
JiraWhat Jira Roadmaps Can Do for Agile
Just as you looking at a physical map before a road trip helps you understand the legs of each journey, roadmaps help agile teams understand their workloads for the upcoming months. Jira roadmaps offer further benefits, such as timeline visualization and the ability to share relevant information with external stakeholders.
In this article, we'll unpack the purpose of product roadmaps and whether they’re all the same, as well as why Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira is the simplest roadmapping tool for Jira. You’ll discover how roadmaps help Product Owners, agile team members, customers, and stakeholders. You'll also understand the difference between roadmaps and Gantt charts.
Let’s start with discussing the purpose of roadmaps for agile teams.
Why does an agile team need a roadmap?
Roadmaps help agile teams define their big chunks of work and when to complete them by. It’s an artifact to communicate with the team, customers, and other project stakeholders.
With roadmaps, agile team members have a sense of their journey for the next 3-6 or even 12 months. By understanding this journey, teams can better understand their product’s evolution.
If you’re a Product Owner, roadmaps are a great way for you to:
- Demonstrate that you understand company goals
- Show the C suite and the agile team that you're aware of customer needs
- Show you know how to deliver a valuable product to your customers while meeting your company's goals
Roadmaps are also a great way to remind you and your team how their work fits into the bigger picture. They give you an opportunity to motivate and help team members.
Also, by breaking down epics into user stories in the product backlog, Product Owners and the development team can better prioritize, schedule, and assign resources to those work items.
Now that we've covered the basics of Jira roadmaps, let's take a look at how to adapt them for different roles.
Tailoring roadmaps to meet specific needs
Different people on the team will need different views of roadmaps. Some roles focus on analyzing specific roadmap items of roadmaps, and other roles focus on different parts.
The development team needs roadmaps with expected release dates, milestones, and a detailed customer value explanation.
You may prioritize roadmap items by customer value, which makes sense when considering the customer-first agile methodology.
Often, development teams have roadmaps organized by sprints and work items arranged on a timeline. A work item can be a user story, a task, or a bug.
The C suite uses roadmaps to map the work of development teams onto company goals and metrics.
Those roadmaps display work items organized by month or quarter. This organization helps track progress over time and draw conclusions on goal achievement.
When roadmapping for the C suite, you don't need to worry about providing them with detailed work item descriptions.
The sales staff relies on roadmaps to learn about new features and customer value. That kind of information can help improve sales conversion. Roadmaps are a great way for the sales staff to understand upcoming developments they can get customers excited about.
You should also do your best to offer visually appealing and highly readable roadmaps to your customers. They'll look for a prioritized overview of new features.
Jira roadmaps might help you deliver these different types of roadmaps.
Jira roadmaps
Atlassian included roadmaps in next-gen Jira software. Jira roadmaps allow you to define and organize items in a timeline and keep them up-to-date. You can even share the work status with stakeholders.
But the coolest thing about roadmaps in Jira is that it syncs with the developers' work.
As the scope of a project can change while agile teams are working, it can get tricky to maintain an up-to-date roadmap, especially if you’ve been using a static tool like Excel or Confluence. Thankfully, Jira roadmaps allow you to quickly and easily update the work status and item priorities.
Agile teams can attach user stories to the Jira project on which they're working. As a result, Jira software updates the actual work in their roadmap.
You can also use Jira software to break down roadmap items, or epics, which means dividing work into small chunks. And as if this wasn't enough fun, you can use Jira Software's drag-and-drop functionality to adjust item priorities in the timeline. Consequently, Jira Software automatically adjusts the dates in the epics.
These are a few more reasons why Jira roadmaps are worth checking out. They offer:
- Stakeholder collaboration in creating and maintaining the roadmap
- The ability to share information with external stakeholders
- Increased availability and visibility to team members
- Tight links between a team's work and the roadmap
- Seamless item update ability
- Project status visualization
- Both high-level and detailed item descriptions
- Connections between Jira issue dates and dates on the roadmap
Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira can help shape your roadmap as a timeline with swimlanes based on work themes or teams. Drag and drop items on the timeline to set when the team will begin and end working on them. You can also:
- Define milestones
- Filter the roadmap’s view
- Track epic completion progress
- Share a PDF version of the roadmap with stakeholders
Before you go, we should get on the same page about Gantt charts vs. roadmaps.
What are Gantt charts?
When we say “Gantt charts are useful for agile teams,” you might immediately think, “That can’t be right!” 😮 However, Gantt charts can be useful in the right context. They’re just not very agile.
The Gantt chart, named for the chart’s creator, Henry Lawrence Gantt, provides a graphic schedule for planning and visualizing tasks organized by project stages.
Project managers use Gantt charts to manage task dependencies and the critical path. This path is the sequence of tasks that team members must execute on time to not compromise the project’s end date.
Simply put, if you’re building a data center, you have to define the order in which the team must execute tasks. Basically, the team can’t start some tasks before completing others.
Now, let’s clarify why roadmaps are agile, whereas Gantt charts are not.
Why Gantt charts and roadmaps are not interchangeable
At first glance, Gantt charts seem similar to roadmaps. However, at their core, they serve different purposes and audiences.
Gantt charts assume that team members will complete work in a linear fashion. This means that the execution of some tasks depends on the execution of other tasks. And any modification to the schedule can compromise the project’s end date, so you should avoid task rescheduling and frequently track the execution of tasks.
This is why the linearity of Gantt charts goes against the very principles of agile. 🛑
The agile methodology originated from the need to address the inefficiencies of traditional project management practices in software development. One of those methodologies is the waterfall methodology.
Agile teams do adaptive planning and deliver outcomes on an ongoing basis. They also focus on continuous improvement. That’s why no Gantt chart would fit into an agile workflow.
Gantt charts follow a linear delivery model with lots of task dependencies, which tends to be slow. 🐌
On the other hand, the agile workflow has shorter development cycles — iterations — with frequent deliveries and the bare minimum task dependencies. That speeds up continuous improvement. Additionally, agile teams adapt their roadmaps very well to ever-changing priorities and requirements.
Roadmaps are good, but Jira roadmaps are awesome
Jira roadmaps like Easy Agile Roadmaps help order work items by priority and update their statuses. Stakeholders can make collaborative edits on roadmaps in Jira, which is very convenient.
Perhaps the greatest feature of Jira roadmaps is that developers can both track work in Jira Software user stories and through the tasks on those roadmaps. From the Product Owner's perspective, the benefit is how they visualize the developers' work and communicate it with stakeholders.
It’s really important to make sure that both the C suite and the agile team buy into the roadmap. If they don’t, you might not be aligning your team’s work with company goals and customer needs.
Keep in mind that roadmaps’ benefits work two ways: Team members better realize how they contribute to achieving company goals, and you can monitor that process.
Try our Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira. Whether you’re following the Scrum framework or the Kanban framework, it’ll help you organize your team’s work items in a timeline, define milestones, and track progress.
ProductIntroducing Easy Agile Personas for Jira
We’re excited to let you know that we’ve released a brand new app for Jira in the Atlassian Marketplace: Easy Agile Personas.
Customer focus isn’t easy.
- It’s easier to work on the things we like to work on.
- It’s easier to do what’s up next on the to-do list.
- It’s easier to delay the complex work until next month.
According to HubSpot, 96% of growing companies say that customer satisfaction is a key driver of their success.
Do your teams have a deep understanding of who your customers really are?
A good measure of customer focus is that everyone in a company can talk about key customer personas.
While some teams have talked about Personas in the past, we found that many do not store them in a central location and keep them updated as customer preferences evolve.
Even worse, software development teams working in Jira have limited visibility of how the issue they’re working on adds value.
That’s why we built Easy Agile Personas for Jira. (now available for a 30 day free trial on Cloud and Server)
The top 3 things you can do using Easy Agile Personas for Jira:
- Create and maintain customer personas in Jira, where the entire team can access them
- Use custom fields to link user stories to customer personas and rank the importance of the work
- Plan your backlog based off customer value, not opinions.
After just a few weeks in beta, Easy Agile Personas has been installed over 40 times and is now the #1 Personas App on the Atlassian Marketplace.
Our goal: customer focus made easy.
P.S. Like what you see? We’d love some feedback. Please let us know your thoughts on the latest Easy Agile app by emailing us at hello@easyagile.com****
JiraThe Best Jira Tutorials, Training, and Certifications
There are infinite learning opportunities available when it comes to using Jira to help you make the most of the tool. From Jira tutorials to Udemy courses to an Atlassian certification, you can continue to hone your skills and learn from others.
There’s always more to discover. Brush up on skills, advance your career, and gain certificates that can land you your dream job. Continued learning can make you an indispensable MASTER of all things Jira within your organization and around the world.
Read our list of recommended Jira tutorials, training, and certifications that will start you on the path to Jira mastery.
Why agile teams choose Jira
Jira is an agile project management tool developed by Atlassian. It began as a software development application for devops teams but has evolved to help modern workplaces practicing agile methodologies augment their process.
The software is widely used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and addressing performance improvements based on real-time data. And the online functionality reduces the physical dependencies of managing a project as a team — something that grows more important to businesses every year.
Fun fact: The name Jira is the truncation of Gojira, the Japanese name for Godzilla. Atlassian recommends yelling it loudly as if you were charging into battle!
Jira is widely used by nearly every development team because it takes a customer-first approach to designing products. Jira allows for extensive customization to help teams meet the needs of their customers.
How to choose the Jira learning that's best for you
Follow these tips when selecting how to receive further Jira training and education:
- If you are pursuing training to advance your career, you may want proof of course completion, either from an Atlassian University training course or a Udemy course, to provide potential employers.
- If you are interested in becoming an Atlassian Certified Professional, you’ll need certification through Atlassian University.
- If cost is a barrier, begin with the free tutorials available from Atlassian University.
Jira tutorials, training, and certifications from Atlassian
Our list will begin with learning opportunities from Atlassian University (since they know Jira best), and then we’ll expand to tutorials, training, and courses from other online sources below.
Atlassian University
Atlassian offers several free Jira tutorials for both beginners and pros, so you can gain confidence with product skills that cover exactly what you need to get started and beyond. The Jira tutorials are clearly labeled with a timestamp to help you plan your schedule.
Each short Jira tutorial is grouped into a series based on a range of topics, beginning with the very basic to the more specific, including:
- Getting started with boards in Jira Software
- Jira Essentials with Agile Mindset
- Getting More from Jira Workflows
- Automating Jira
Some tutorial series are short enough to complete on a lunch break, whereas others will take a few hours. So instead of doomscrolling while you eat your sandwich, pull up a quick tutorial to advance your skills! 🥪
If you hope to earn a certification, but you’re not entirely sure which specific training courses will get you there, Atlassian has role-based learning paths to guide you on your way.
Atlassian University — Jira certifications
To finally and officially cement yourself as a Jira Jedi Master, you can become an Atlassian Certified Professional and the go-to expert for all things Jira. Plus, all Atlassian certifications are globally recognized, so wherever you find yourself, Atlassian will be with you.
A number of different certifications are available depending on your chosen skillset. To achieve a certification, you’ll need to take the courses available through the above training link, gain real-world experience, and take an exam.
Other Jira tutorials, training, and courses
While Atlassian University is filled with learning opportunities, plenty of other resources will help you grow from beginner to expert and from expert to master.
Top Udemy Jira courses
Udemy Jira courses offer a wide variety of topics at a range of prices for those just starting out with Jira and old pros. Students can access broader topics like agile and project management as well as Professional Scrum Master (PSM) courses to prepare you for your certification.
Courses come with a rating based on the experience of past students. And considering that over 200,000 students are learning Jira on Udemy, you’ll be able to see which courses are well-reviewed to help you decide.
From beginner crash courses to more advanced or niche topics, there’s something for everyone. They also offer free “bite-sized” Jira lessons with videos 3 to 11 minutes long, so you can fit them into any busy schedule. Plus, all courses come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Expium’s Atlassian courses
Expium offers workshop-based Jira training for enterprise Atlassian customers. The courses aim to equip students to competently configure Jira with a range of workshops covering beginner basics to more specific topics.
The hands-on learning is available for public, private, or online classes. Expium is a Platinum Solution Partner, which means, according to Atlassian, they meet the highest training criteria and have a proven practice that can scale from small to large customers.
Guru 99 Jira tutorial: How to use Jira software for beginners
Guru 99’s free online resource is for beginners as well as those who need to brush up on the basics. It provides a step-by-step guide for using the Jira dashboard.
The resource outlines detailed use cases with annotated screenshots from the Jira tool. The detailed imagery shows the basics of creating issues and managing issue attributes as well as more specific uses, like how to set up workflows, clone issues, and create custom fields.
Guru 99’s Jira tutorial includes:
- Jira issues and issue types, such as new features, sub-tasks, bugs, etc.
- Jira issue attributes, such as in progress, open, closed, resolved, etc.
- Jira components
- How to create issues in Jira
- How to create sub-tasks, workflows, plugins, epics, and clones
- Security schemes and permission schemes
- Jira reporting and burndown charts
- How to generate a pie chart of priorities
Now it’s time to get out there and learn! Successful people know that learning never stops.
Bonus resource: Continue learning on the Easy Agile blog
And hey, we’ve got extensive learning resources on our Easy Agile blog, too! From understanding the difference between Kanban and Scrum, using epics to maximize performance, and knowing best practices for Jira workflows; you're in the right place.
Easy Agile is dedicated to helping teams work better with agile. Our apps for Jira are designed to keep the customer top of mind through every step of the product development process. They’re simple, collaborative, and made by a development team that lives and breathes Jira.
Contact our team to learn more or request a demo tutorial to see our plugins in action.