{"id":112059,"date":"2021-09-30T09:03:27","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T09:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.wingify.com\/blog\/jira-release-management\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T18:46:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T13:16:00","slug":"jira-release-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wingify.com\/blog\/jira-release-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Release Management with Jira Software"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As organizations increasingly adopt an Agile methodology<\/a> into their software development processes, this means that teams are now releasing more frequently in smaller batches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, changes are being merged into the mainline multiple times a day making it difficult to determine when changes are actually being rolled out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The developers usually aren\u2019t the only ones who need to know about the release of new changes or features. Product teams are also just as involved in the release process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we\u2019ve seen in our release management guide<\/a>, the product manager is the one who plans releases and will oversee the feature or product as it moves through the different stages of the software development life cycle<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With such frequent releases, things can become highly stressful. Fortunately, nowadays, teams can automate these processes, freeing them up to focus on more important and less repetitive tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such software is the Jira platform that can contribute to better, more efficient releases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this article, we will look into just how you can incorporate Jira software into your release management process to help improve collaboration and communication between your teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jira software overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

First, we will start with a quick overview of Jira software<\/a>. Created by Atlassian, this software helps you plan, track and release software in software development projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is one of the most popular tools used by Agile teams to manage their releases by offering all team members full visibility over the release process, enhancing collaboration between engineering and product teams to plan and track releases and increase productivity across the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, this software was developed to track issues and bugs and has since evolved into a work management tool for a wide range of use cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to product management, Jira can be used to build roadmaps for each project allowing teams to track and share their progress for the roadmap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jira takes a customer-centric approach when it comes to designing projects and it\u2019s highly customizable making it a popular tool among Agile teams to incorporate into software development processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting started with Jira<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You will start by creating a project, where you will pick a template depending on your team\u2019s requirements. You can choose from scrum, kanban and bug tracking. For every project, Jira creates a board to help you see a visual representation of your work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before you create a project, consider how you will organize your projects. The best way to do so is to organize your projects according to how your company runs; whether, for example, you\u2019d rather organize by product if you\u2019re constantly releasing software or if you\u2019d rather organize by team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To manage releases in Jira, the first step is to create a version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jira<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To do so, click on \u2018Releases\u2019 as can be seen in the image above, where you will be prompted to create name, start & end dates and description. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can then assign any issue type to the releases to track their statuses throughout their life cycle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The release could contain tasks with different statuses such as in progress or closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Better release management with Jira<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jira issues<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

An issue is a work item that can be tracked throughout its life cycle. It can, for example, be a product feature or software; issues are essentially the building blocks of your Jira software project. It can also be referred to as a task, request or ticket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jira issue allows you to track individual pieces of work that should be completed. Thus, it notifies your team of any updates by allowing them to track the issue and lets them know if there are any comments or of any change in update status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jira workflows<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Jira provides a way to customize the way issues transition through the development phases, also referred to as workflows. These can be customized to suit the needs of your project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the Jira platform is flexible, you can add more statuses to track which issues are included in a specific release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The default Jira platform has three default statuses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Jira<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A few more statuses can be added to help teams track the status of their work more precisely. Thus, more statuses can be added such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n