Releases
Overview
Releases in Avion are a collection of stories that—when shipped together—will deliver working, coherent software for your end-users. Depending on the maturity of your project, this could be an "MVP" or it could be a particular feature set, like "Ratings & Reviews". Some customers use releases for time-based delivery cycles, like Q1 and Q2, for example. However, it's worth noting that releases are not intended to be used as sprints in Avion. The story map is agnostic of your sprints.
Releases are powerful because they allow you to plan based on value to your end-users. They span horizontally across your backbone, cutting through the steps and forcing you to plan more holistically.
The order of your releases matters! The order should follow your delivery priorities, so the top release is the next to be delivered, or is already in progress.
Create releases
Hover above any existing release and you will see an Add release button. Clicking this will create a new release and open up a panel for you to fill in some detail about the release.
Archive releases
When you have completed a release and need it to be removed from the story map, you can archive it. Do this by clicking Archive release from the release details panel or by right-clicking on the release name and selecting Archive release.
You can view your archived releases by going to the story map Archive from the side bar. From here you can restore releases to view your previously delivered plans.
Unplanned release
The unplanned release is a special type of release that holds stories that are not yet part of your delivery plans. The unplanned release:
Will be present by default when you create a new story map
Will always be at the bottom of the story map, (as the priority of your releases run from highest, at the top to lowest, at the bottom)
Cannot be renamed
Cannot be pushed to integrations (although individual stories can be, if you want)
Cannot be archived or deleted
Best practice
Releases are a powerful tool for sorting by must/could/should have (MoSCoW). This can be a great way to come up with your initial MVP
Order your releases from most important and most clear at the top to least important and most hazy at the bottom. This is your development roadmap
If a release is too large, try splitting it down into two or three deliverable chunks. But make sure each chunk delivers value on its own. For instance — Ratings & Reviews Base, Ratings & Reviews Enhancements, etc
We recommend not tying releases to sprints. Check this diagram for a nice illustration of our recommended delivery model:
Aim to make releases valuable and measurable. Set out the metrics you intend to measure when planning the release
Use the collapse/expand release feature to make planning easier. You can right-click a release name to access this or click the release's horizontal line to toggle the collapse/expand state
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