As a platform for helping development teams to plan, track, and release software, it’s no wonder that Jira is such a popular Agile Planning tool in the software delivery toolchain today. But if you’re part of a large and complex organization, Jira probably isn’t the only tool you’re using to plan, build and deliver software at scale.
The use of multiple, non-integrated tools creates a fragmented workflow, constraining efficiency and data integrity across the software delivery value stream — and across the rest of your business. That’s why thousands of global enterprises know it’s critical to integrate Jira to overcome these challenges.
Through our work with the Fortune 100, we have identified six popular use cases for integrating Jira with other best-of-breed tools used to plan, build and deliver software at scale.
But First, Why Integrate Jira?
When you integrate Jira with other tools, you allow your developers to spend more of their time on doing the work that creates value for the business, and less on time-intensive work required to keep tools and colleagues in sync. We’ve estimated that on average, integration and automated data flow can save each practitioner (developer, tester, project manager, ITSM etc.) up to 20 minutes per day on tedious manual overhead — that works out at a whopping ten working days a year.
High quality, enterprise-scale integration means:
- You don’t need to login to multiple tools to do your work! All the information you need is right there in Jira, including all the fields, descriptions, attachments, and comments.
- You don’t need to enter the same information in multiple tools! Any update you make in Jira automatically flows to the right place in other tools and vice versa.
- You don’t need to communicate about an issue in chats, emails, or status meetings! All communication can take place and be seen within Jira comments, even when colleagues enter their replies in other tools.
- You can seamlessly collaborate across multiple Jira instances and versions, like on-prem and cloud instances.
The Top 6 Jira Integration Patterns
While there are many use cases for integrating Jira, below are the top six most popular integration patterns as collected by Tasktop from an analysis of hundreds of enterprise toolchains.
#1 Test Management to Jira: Improve Defect Resolution
Integrating test management tools such as Micro Focus ALM (HP ALM), Tricentis Tosca, or QASymphony with Jira improves alignment between software engineers and test engineers. Defects opened in test management are automatically created in Jira as new issues in the appropriate project’s board. Changes made to the defects’ status in Jira are visible to the QA engineer in test management.
Here’s an example of this pattern between Tosca and Jira:
Learn more about how you can improve tester and developer collaboration by integrating Micro Focus ALM and Jira.
#2 Jira to Test Management: Improve Product Quality
One of the most effective ways to improve product quality is to improve the quality and scope of tests. This integration pattern involves QA engineers into the process early on, by flowing Jira stories to test management tools, like Tosca, ALM and qTest Manager. QA engineers and test automation engineers can easily communicate with software engineers about the story, each from within their own tool.
#3 Jira to Agile Issues & Tracking: Improve Performance Management Across Multiple Tools
It’s not uncommon for an organization to have multiple Agile issues and tracking tools, with some teams or roles using Jira and others using another tool, like Azure DevOps, VersionOne, or LeanKit. This integration pattern creates one master view of the activity across all Agile tools, by flowing the epics, stories, bugs, sub-tasks and other artifacts into one of the tools as ‘master’. Reports are run off the master, encompassing data from all Agile tools.
Here’s an example of this pattern between Jira and Azure DevOps:
#4 Jira to Jira Integration: Improve Performance Management Across Multiple Jira Instances
We also frequently see teams or roles using Jira with other Jira instances. Lots of enterprises face situations where Jira has grown by grassroots adoption such that there is not just one Jira, but multiple Jira instances. Each instance is customized slightly differently, resulting in a very critical need to integrate to create a single source of truth.
Like the previous integration pattern, this pattern creates one master view of the activity across multiple Jira instances, by flowing the epics, stories, bugs, sub-tasks and other artifacts into one of the instances as “master”. Reports are run off the master, encompassing data from all Agile tools.
Here’s an example of this pattern between two Jira instances:
#5 Requirements to Jira: Improve Traceability and Product Quality
Product owners and business analysts gather, articulate and prioritize requirements in requirements management tools, like Jama, Targetprocess and IBM DOORS. This integration pattern flows requirements into Jira as epics and user stories, creating a traceable link between the requirement and the implementation.
The product team can easily provide the engineering team with all the details they need, while maintaining visibility on the progress as stories get worked on in Jira.
Here’s an example of this pattern between IBM DOORS Next Gen and Jira:
#6 ITSM to Jira and Test Management: Improve Ticket Resolution
This integration creates a visible and traceable defect reporting and resolution process. Trouble tickets opened in an ITSM tool like ServiceNow or Remedy are automatically created in Jira as a new issue or story. When it’s ready for test, the issue flows to test management. When the issue is indeed fixed, it closes in Jira and ITSM is updated. The support engineer in ITSM has visibility on the status of the ticket resolution at all times.
Here’s an example of this pattern in ServiceNow, Jira and Micro Focus ALM:
Learn more about what it means to use Tasktop for your Jira to ServiceNow integration.
Learn More About How to Integrate Jira Using Tasktop
Whether you need to integrate Jira with your test automation tools, other Jira instances, requirements software, ITSM software, or all of the above, Tasktop’s model-based integration is 4x faster to set up and 10x easier to maintain than any other solution.
See Tasktop’s Jira integrations in action through a live, customized demo.
https://blog.tasktop.com/blog/architect-your-software-delivery-value-stream-for-speed-and-quality-with-integration-patterns/
https://blog.tasktop.com/blog/drowning-jira-rest-software-delivery-stream/
