Integrating with backlog tools

Transcript

Most development teams are using an existing backlog tool to track work in progress. Avion is not supposed to replace these tools. In fact, it actually works alongside them. Let's see how Avion integrates with Jira and how you can streamline your Jira workflow by planning work in Avion first. Most of the principles outlined here apply to our other backlog integrations, such as Azure DevOps, GitHub and Trello.

Always test your Avion integration in a sandbox environment first. You shouldn’t connect Avion to your production Jira projects until you are 100% happy with how the integration works and how you can get the best from it. So make sure you create a test project in Jira first.

I’m going to skip the initial setup of the integration, as there are many options you can choose from and that deserves a video of its own. So we’re working from a point of having just set up an integration with Jira.

Before I show you the integration in action, it’s worth explaining how we expect the integration to be used. Avion is your planning tool. It should hold the entire scope of your product — also known as your product backlog. Tools like Jira are perfect for delivery. Jira should be the home to your sprint backlog and work in progress.

This is why when you create a story in Avion, we don’t automatically just create that story in Jira. This isn’t an oversight! This allows you to keep a very clean Jira backlog, that is focussed on delivery, whilst your Avion story map contains your upcoming plans. With that in mind...

Once you have a release full of stories that meet your definition of ready, you can use Avion to sync these stories with Jira. You can do this by right clicking the release name and hitting Push release to Jira. Avion will take the stories in your release, create corresponding user stories in Jira and then maintain a two-way sync for each story. This means you can make edits to the story in both Avion or Jira and always see the changes reflected in either tool.

Once you have your stories in Jira, you can proceed to plan these into a sprint and allow your developers to start working on them. Notice how when the status of the story changes in Jira, Avion automatically updates in the background.

Jira gives you a great picture of the progress of the sprint. Avion gives you a great picture of the progress of the entire release.

Once your release has been completed and has gone live, you can mark it as shipped in Avion and then archive the release so you can focus on the next release.