Epics ~ our thoughts

In both classic and next-gen projects, Avion offers you the choice of what you would like to map your Jira epics to. Traditionally you might see Jira epics as mapping directly to an Avion journey. But some people would prefer to map them to Avion steps.

Both are indeed possible with our integration, but we also offer a completely new approach that we think is going to change the way you see epics. We offer you the ability to map your Jira epics to Avion releases. This is our recommended approach, but it may require a slight change in the mindset of your team, depending on how you track epics currently.

To evaluate the choices, let's take a look at some descriptions of the elements involved.

Jira Epics

In Jira, epics are just issues. They can be shown on a kanban board and can even have a status. This allows them to be marked as “done”.

Avion Journeys & Steps

In Avion, a journey is a description of a user journey. The step inside the journey is a step that a user could take to undertake the journey. As we see it, user journeys are ongoing; they are never “done” in a software delivery sense. Sure, they will evolve over time, perhaps changing their name, order or purpose, but they are always present.

Avion Releases

In Avion a release is a selection of stories that should be grouped together based on the desired outcome to the user. A release’s stories could — and likely will — span across multiple user journeys and steps. A release can be “done”. Once all stories are completed and delivered to a live environment, the release is done and dusted — share the achievement with stakeholders, archive it and move onto the next release.

As such, we feel that Jira epics make a perfect mapping match for Avion releases and we proudly offer you the ability to do this in our integration! As far as we know, this isn't possible with any other toolsets or integrations. We would love to know what you think about this — 👍 or 👎?

Finally...

As a side note, we have noticed that Atlassian have even decided to display epics in a roadmap view in next-gen projects. So it would seem that they also are moving in this direction.

Jira's next-gen project roadmap screen (these are epics)

An update

We've recently also added the ability to map Avion stories to epics. More options to consider! You can never have too much choice. Check out the docs.