A couple of years ago, in Atlassian's annual flagship event formerly known as Summit and now known as Team, I was training a room full of people on Advanced Roadmaps for Jira. If you've never attended one of these in-person events, the Kickoff Keynote is always a sight to see. 

One year, Atlassian founders Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes dressed as Daft Punk and mixed music as DJ Kanban (I still nerd out on that one). They then proceeded to share announcements about new products, including the addition of Jira Align to the Atlassian product suite. I was floored because, at that time, Praecipio had been looking for a more powerful agile-at-scale solution like Jira Align for some of our largest clients. 

What is Jira Align?

After implementing Advanced Roadmaps for Jira (then known as Portfolio for Jira) to support SAFe® and becoming the "voice” of the tool within the Atlassian community, I was in love with Advanced Roadmaps. And I still am. 

Jira Align, however, brought forth a whole new realm of possibilities. Jira Align is a powerful platform that can help to close the gap between strategy and execution by providing a way to increase visibility, coordination, and adaptability across an organization’s people, process, and technology. 

Bringing robust framework expertise and combining it with an easy-to-use interface, Jira Align supports any agile-at-scale framework — from a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe® ) to a Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) framework to any custom or hybrid framework. 

Essentially, Jira Align is THE solution for enterprise organizations looking to scale agile practices. Don't believe me? Atlassian is considered a Leader in the Gartner Enterprise Agile Planning Tools Magic Quadrant. Third-party accolades aside, let's take a closer look at how Jira Align works.

How Does Jira Align Work?

Many of our enterprise customers come to us looking to become more agile so they can thrive in today’s fast-moving business landscape. Jira Align empowers business leaders to make data-driven decisions and enables the organization to quickly adapt. 

Atlassian’s dynamic enterprise tool aggregates work being done across all levels of the enterprise, making it easier for teams to manage and communicate work (i.e. programs, portfolios, themes, strategies) to stakeholders. Leaders also understand how work tracks against strategic outcomes in real time, allowing them to make better decisions regarding resource spending and financial investments. 

While Jira Align is indeed a powerful enterprise agile platform, it’s not for every company. It’s no silver bullet and your organization must be ready to embrace change if you want to see true agile transformation with the platform.

Similar to the financial commitment you made to Jira Align, you need to be as equally committed to training your people and properly configuring the platform to support your processes.

What Are The Benefits of Using Jira Align?

Jira Align is truly the ultimate enterprise tool. When configured correctly, Jira Align brings information and teams closer together and provides timely business intelligence that empowers business leaders to make smarter financial decisions. And the proof is in the pudding: Jira Align has helped organizations achieve up to 340% ROI. 

Whether you're just starting out with a single Agile Release Train (ART) or are running multiple ARTs, Jira Align provides the Program Room for each ART. This is the central hub for tracking the current Program Increment (PI) and planning the next one. Sprint Progress, investment runway, intra-ART and inter-ART dependencies, PI Burndown, it's all centralized within the Program Room. This provides Business Owners, RTEs, and Program Managers a clear view of the progress of the work in the PI.

Jira Align also provides the Portfolio Room and Strategy Room. These rooms display the progress towards Strategic Themes, Portfolio investments, progress toward long-term goals, and real-time status updates. When properly connected to Epics in the Program Room, Teams and ARTs can open the "Why?" tab on the Epic and see how their work is contributing to the overall strategy. 

This is where the magic lies in Jira Align. With greater visibility into how work is connected to strategic initiatives, teams understand why their work matters, and leaders have greater context into how workflows, teams, and projects are tied to organizational performance. 

Jira Software Integration

How you set up Jira Align to integrate with Jira Software at the beginning of your Jira Align implementation will determine your future success with the platform. Jira Software and Jira Align are designed to integrate bi-directionally, which means that data can flow back and forth between the tools.

If you have a straightforward Jira instance and follow Atlassian best practices, then the integration with Jira Software is pretty simple. However, after working with enterprise clients over the years–especially those with thousands of users–their Jira instance is anything but straightforward. 

You need technical expertise to support the configuration and integration into your existing ecosystem. Implementers who don’t understand the integration often configure it improperly, resulting in syncing issues, improper data models, and inaccurate reporting, just to name a few.

Jira Align vs. Advanced Roadmaps for Jira

There are a handful of tools within the Atlassian ecosystem for project/product portfolio management like Structure and Big Picture, but the most common agile-at-scale product comparison we get asked about is Jira Align vs. Advanced Roadmaps for Jira. 

Advanced Roadmaps is a great way to bridge the gap for small-to-medium-sized organizations with fewer than 500 agile team members executing their work in Jira Software. You can plan based on capacity, track dependencies, manage competing priorities, and explore alternative scenarios with a single source of truth into the current and future health of your initiatives. 

Jira Align, on the other hand, is capable of supporting hundreds to thousands of users at multiple levels within an organization. With Jira Align, leadership can get a quick, real-time snapshot into the work across every level of the organization, from individuals on teams up to the portfolio and executive levels of your organization. More than just a planning tool, Jira Align is a transformation platform.

Jira Align vs. Other Software Platforms

When it comes to comparing Jira Align with other alternatives on the market, Jira Align is in a league of its own. I’ve seen customers show interest in lower-cost alternatives, such as Planview, Tasktop, Aha!, and Hive, but these platforms don’t match up to Jira Align.

For starters, because these tools are outside of the Atlassian tech stack, they don’t integrate well with Jira Software. Also, some of the alternatives to Jira Align aren’t even agile tools, or they are agile but they only support specific agile frameworks.

Now, let’s say you do find an alternative agile tool that supports the framework(s) your teams run on, but you find that it lacks flexibility or it doesn’t comply with security standards. Or it turns out that the tool’s complicated interface has led to a poor user experience for your team members.

With Jira Align, you get it all: seamless integration with Jira Software, endless reporting options, meets the highest security standards, and more. Bottom line, when implemented properly, no platform on the market supports enterprise agile planning like Jira Align does.

How To Get Started With Jira Align

You’ve probably noticed a common theme with this article:

a successful Jira Align implementation is anchored in proper configuration.

It’s important to work with a partner who has extensive experience with Jira Align and understands both the platform's nuances and agile-at-scale best practices.

Specializing in agile-at-scale with Jira Align, Praecipio is here to help set you up for success with our proven approach. Book a technical call to discuss how we can tailor Jira Align to meet your organization’s specific needs.

Want to know more about bridging the gap between leadership and delivery? Download our whitepaper on Jira Align, "The Connected Enterprise: Close the Gap Between Business Strategy & Execution.” You can also watch this on-demand webinar about connecting business strategy to work execution with Jira Align. 

To keep up with the fast-paced digital landscape, businesses depend on software for carrying out day-to-day business operations, connecting teams, and simplifying workflows. This probably explains why the global application development software market is anticipated to reach $733.5 billion by 2028.

After helping some of the world’s leading brands drive business innovation with our custom software solutions, we've learned a thing or two (or six!) along the way about building custom software that keeps teams and their tools connected. Specifically with Salesforce, our applications and integrations (whether those be specific customer use cases or general ones via the Atlassian Marketplace) have brought systems together, increased productivity, and empowered sales teams to win more deals. 

Through our experience with developing custom solutions for the world's leading CRM platform, we've identified some key things to consider to help get you started when building Salesforce apps.

#1 – Hit the Trail(head)

Salesforce is a big, well-established environment. There’s a lot you need to know about the REST API, the development process, and packaging and distributing your applications. The Salesforce Developer Training available at https://trailhead.salesforce.com provides free training courses along with sandbox environments to do the exercises. It’s a great way to quickly come up to speed on the topics you need to know more about.

The courses are not limited to development topics. If you need to learn more about using Salesforce or just want to understand the ins and outs of the Partner program, the Trailhead is the place to go.

#2 – The REST API is nice

The Praecipio development team does a lot of integration work, helping our customers improve their workflows by connecting different systems together. We work with many platforms, and have seen many APIs that are REST in name only. Often these are thin wrappers over an older XML API, or they don’t handle relationships in a RESTful fashion. Salesforce gets it right. The API is clean, consistent, and easy to use.

The API also provides a lot of useful metadata, which can help you make your software exceptional. When working with any object, you can get a list of all of the object’s fields, the labels for those fields (which may have been customized or localized), each field’s type, and whether a field is required or not. For any field whose value is selected from a list, there is an API call to return the list of valid values for the field.

#3 – Leverage a library for your stack

While the API is well-designed, it is large and feature-rich. Starting from scratch can be daunting, and you might not even be aware of some of its features. Instead of rolling your own code, take advantage of open source projects that wrap the API in your language. To achieve this, we use the Restforce Ruby Gem. Simple Salesforce is a well-regarded Python customer, and jsforce is available for JavaScript developers.

#4 – Deploy with the force (CLI)

Books, tutorials, and Trailhead courses on Salesforce development typically have you developing in the Salesforce GUI. There are times when that is valuable. The Developer Console provides a REPL that is handy for testing out ideas and debugging problems.

However, if you are like most developers, you have invested a lot of time getting your development environment just the way you like it. Fortunately, it is possible to integrate the Salesforce development process into just about any workflow. The folks at Heroku, a Salesforce company, have developed a Command Line Interface called Force, that allows you to interact with Salesforce using an API, instead of the GUI. You can upload and download templates and code, test snippets, view logs, inspect and change settings, plus much more. You can do just about anything you could do in the Salesforce GUI and while doing it in a scriptable, repeatable way.

#5 – Not all Salesforce instances have API access

Salesforce offers a number of editions, each with different pricing and features. One of the features that is not available on the lower cost plans is API access. Trying to access the API of an organization with the Contact Edition, Group Edition, or Professional Edition will raise an error. It’s also possible for the administrator of other Editions to turn off API access. Full details can be found in this article.

However, it is possible for a developer to get API access in these editions, which bring us to our final expert tip.

#6 – Managed packages and unmanaged packages. Choose wisely.

One of the topics that can be confusing for new Salesforce developers is Packages. It’s an important topic to understand because your choice can limit who can use your application and how.

Packages are ultimately bundles of customizations created by you that other Salesforce users can install into their organization. You customize a Salesforce instance and then, using a Salesforce-provided tool, you package up those customizations and publish them.

Once you have created a package, you can simply share a link to it. This is then considered an Unmanaged Package. Alternatively, you can submit that package to Salesforce for review, after which it will be published as a Managed Package, available in the Salesforce AppExchange.

Pros of Unmanaged Packages

• Free to create.
• Can be released at any time.
• You can sell them directly to your customers.

Cons of Unmanaged Packages

• Not in the AppExchange, you have to market directly to your potential customers.
• Some companies will not install Unmanaged Packages, preferring only Salesforce approved applications from the AppExchange.
• As noted above, API access is unavailable in some Salesforce Editions.
• No automatic upgrades. If you make changes, your customers will have to manually install the new version.

Pros of Managed Packages

• Customers can find you in the AppExchange.
• Automatic upgrades are available.
• Salesforce manages payments and licensing.
• Full API access for all Editions. Editions of Salesforce that are not normally allowed to use the API are granted access for Managed Packages.

Cons of Managed Packages

• Setup cost. The review process for a Managed Package includes a security review, which is expensive and time consuming. If your application will be free, this fee is waived, but you still must complete the security review.
• Review time. The initial review process can take several months.
• Salesforce takes a percentage of all sales through the AppExchange.

Ultimately, it’s a business decision. If you want to be in the AppExchange or have API access to all Editions of Salesforce, then you will need to have a Managed Package. However, if you want to move fast, sell directly, and avoid upfront costs, then an Unmanaged Package may be for you.

What's Next?

Still feel like you need some guidance on your custom development initiative? The award-winning team at Praecipio can bring our Salesforce expertise and software development best practices to your next project. Let us know how we can support your organization and help design innovative solutions that scale with speed of your business.

Workato is a powerful iPaaS (Cloud-Based Integration Solution) tool that enables your organization to integrate your go-to applications and automate workflows seamlessly. An easy-to-use, block-coding approach to building recipes allows you to unlock the ability to create limitless integrations and automation.

Building Blocks

Automations in Workato are defined by a recipe that contains step-by-step instructions on performing tasks or processes. A recipe is made up of two key components: a trigger and one or more actions. But before we can start looking at triggers and actions, we must first learn about application connections.

Application Connection

An application connection contains information that Workato uses to connect and authorize the use of an application. For each application, you need a new connection that has credentials to connect to the application. Workato uses the application's API to change its objects; therefore, it may require OAuth-based authorization, API keys, or other authorization methods.

First, make sure that your account has the necessary access to make changes within the instance.

For example, a connection made to Jira Cloud will require your email and API key, and a connection made to a hosted Jira environment will need your username and password. Once you make the necessary connections and Workato can access the application, a trigger can be configured to kick off the recipe.

Trigger

A trigger is the starting point for any Workato recipe, and almost any application can be configured to act as a trigger. Note, for all new applications, a new application connection is required. For example, a trigger can be a newly created issue in Jira. In this case, anytime a new issue is created, the recipe will start, and all of the tasks that you define are automatically executed.

Sometimes, triggers can be generic and could cause the recipe to run during unnecessary events. In this case, a trigger condition can be applied to eliminate excessive noise. To continue with the previous example, if you want to perform tasks on a newly created issue from only one project in Jira, then apply a trigger condition to ensure that the recipe starts when a new issue is created for that specific project.

Once the recipe's starting point is defined, you can add the subsequential actions required to complete—and eventually automate—your process.

Action

Before you start a recipe, you first need to define the process. This is done with the help of actions. An action is a single operation performed within an instance. For example, you can create issues or comments in Jira, post a message to Slack, update the standard of custom records in Salesforce, and much more.

Actions can also be logical elements such as conditions, loops, or error monitoring to help you create the desired automation. This can help perform more complicated processes and save time and resources for your business. For even more complex requests, you can run Ruby or JavaScript code as an action to help fill in the gaps between the built-in actions.

Next Steps

Workato is an effective tool when appropriately leveraged, unlocking the full potential of each device. Many of your day-to-day tasks can be automated to reduce human error and increase efficiency so your teams can instead focus on more critical tasks. For comprehensive information about any application connection, please refer to the Workato Documentation.

Our consultants are experienced in integrating a wide variety of technology platforms. Check out the press release on Praecipio Consulting receiving 2020 Workato Partner Award for IT Automations. We are ready to answer any questions you might have.

Contact us to learn more and see how you can maximize Workato to connect your go-to apps and align your entire organization with digital business goals.

Atlassian's Confluence is a powerful collaborative tool for teams to track information and content that may not make sense on a Jira ticket. One of the most powerful pieces of functionality in Confluence is the ability to use templates. While there are many templates provided out of the box, you also have the ability to create your own templates either globally or at the space level. Today we'll focus on creating a space template, and show you a few tips to get you started.Let's walk through some basics so you can hit the ground running on a space template.

Creating a Space Template

Before we talk about best practices, here's a quick overview on creating a space template.

The required permissions for creating a space template are Space administrator or Confluence administrator

An easy way to get to your space templates is to select the plus sign on the left navigation while viewing the space where you'd like to create the template.

Then simply select "Add or customize templates for the selected space" and it will bring you to the space administration page to work on your template.

Getting Started

Confluence is a great collaborative tool for sharing information, and templates should be used to make sharing that information easier.  When creating your templates a good best practice is to start with the end in mind.  When a page is created from the template, the page should be easy to read and the most important information should stand out. 

Now that you've got a blank template in front of you, think about how you want it to be used:

• What is most important about this page?  
• What info do we need to share/display?  
• Who is the intended audience?  
• Where would you expect to find the info you are looking for?

Once you've considered the above, we recommend starting with the layout. The template can be very easily organized using the page layout to space out information differently. Creating sections in the layout to divide up the information can be helpful when starting. You might end up combining some of the sections in the future, but this will give you some buckets to start sorting information into. On a similar note, we also have the Panel macro at our disposal. The panel macro provides a visible container for the information, and allows you to use color coded boxes and icons to call out specific information on the page.

Once you've sorted the information into sections, you can start guiding the user on how to fill out the template. We like to do this by using placeholder text. Placeholder text is only visible while editing the page created from the template, and can be used to provide tips to users (how to insert a macro, for example), or act as more detailed guidance on the purpose of the page.

Placeholder text can be added by selecting the + sign in the template editor, and selecting Placeholder text. Once inserted, it will appear as grey text, as we see on the right side of the page. 

Below you can see what that same page looks like when published - the placeholder text doesn't appear at all. 

Now what do I do?

The hardest part is over - you don't have a blank page anymore! Now you can explore things like macros, tables and labels to spice up the template even more. If your team is working with Jira data, don't forget you can use a Jira Issues macro to display it in Confluence. If you need to think bigger, check out our blog Five Ways to Make a Collaborative Team Space in Confluence.

And if you still have any questions on anything Confluence or Jira, or want to find out how to make your company the best version of itself, contact us, and one of our experts will get in touch!

As companies grow either organically or inorganically, many are faced with the decision of whether they should consolidate or keep their Jira instances separate. Today I'm going to address one specific flavor of this conundrum that I am often asked about, specifically with regards to separate instances of Jira Software and Jira Service Management. Some organizations choose to have separate instances for Jira Service Management and Jira Software, but I am here to tell you that is probably not necessary!

Although Jira Software and Jira Service Management are different products, there is no need to keep them separate. The most efficient companies use both in a single instance, so that teams can collaborate much more easily. As organizations adopt DevOps or start to think about it, one of the first things that is looked at is how IT interacts with the development organization. If these two groups are working in separate Jira instances, collaboration and clear understanding of ownership and handoffs is much more difficult. For example, It is much easier to link an incident that was submitted to the service desk to an associated bug if all of those tickets live in the same instance. While you can link to tickets in other instances, that requires users be licensed in both and have a clear understanding of where the work lives. Working in a single instance removes the need for potential duplicate licenses and ensures teams can communicate clearly. 

Occasionally teams use separate instances due to security considerations. However, in almost all situations your security concerns can be addressed by project permissions, application access, and issue security. There are few cases that Jira's native security features won't account for. 

Finally, let's look at this from a user experience perspective. One of the most prominent complaints that we see as organizations undertake their digital transformations are that users have to keep track of too many tools, a pain that I've felt in my career as well. Trying to remember where to log in for a specific subset of your work can be a headache. If your Jira Service Management and Jira Software instances are separate, they'll have two separate URLs that users have to navigate to. Signing into multiple locations and using different URLs adds an extra step where there need not be one.

Since you've already made the great decision to use both Jira Software and Jira Service Management, you might as well reap the benefits of the easy connection between the two so your teams can focus on what matters, rather than managing their tools. 

Are you looking to merge your Jira instances? Contact us, we know all about how to do that, and would love to help.

One of the most powerful integrations in the Atlassian ecosystem is the native link between Jira and Confluence. For users working in both tools, the transition can be seamless if you do it right, but clunky if you don't. 

Now, what if I told you there was just one Confluence macro you could start using today that will immediately make reporting in Confluence easier and help you (and your team) keep track of your work? The Jira Issues macro is the go-to when reporting in Confluence.

Here are some tips to get your team to live their Atlassian life-to-the-fullest.

Insert an issue count for a Jira filter

Let's start small. Insert a link to Jira with the number of issues returned from a Jira Query Language (JQL) query.

This is useful to pull up basic metrics for a high-level overview. The macro becomes a link to the filter, so if you want to review the issues in-depth, you can quickly hop over to Jira's issue navigator. The table below is an example of how our marketing team tracks employee blog post submissions.

To insert an issue count:

1. Insert the Jira Macro
   1. Select the  in the top menu bar and select Jira Issue/Filter, OR
   2. Type { on your Confluence page, search and select Jira
2. Enter in your JQL query
   1. To input an existing filter, type "filter = "Filter name", OR
   2. Type in the JQL directly
   3. Be sure to click on the Magnifying glass to execute the query
3. Select 'Display Options' at the bottom of the dialog box to expand the options.
4. Select 'Total issue count'
5. Click Insert, and Voila!

Insert a single issue into Confluence

This macro can also link to a single Jira issue to a Confluence page. That means not only can you see what issues are important (and what status they're in) in your documentation, but you can also see who's talking about the issue when you're in Jira.

Take, for example, this blog post. My progress is tracked on a Jira issue, linked to this very page in Confluence. Below you can see how it looks on the Confluence page I'm writing in. 

If I click on that link, I'll move over to Jira where I can see all of pages in which the issue has been mentioned under Issue Links. Right off the bat, I can see that the issue has been mentioned on this page as well as another tracking Blog Content. 

To insert one issue:

1. Insert the Jira Macro and enter in your query (steps 1 and 2 above)
2. Select one issue from the list
   1. If you know exactly which issue, you can simply type the Issue Key into the search bar and hit enter. 
3. Expand the Display Options and select 'Single Issue'
4. Select 'Insert'

Use the Jira macro to insert a list of issues in a page in Confluence

Remember that filter you entered in above? You can insert that filter into your page, too. Filters inserted with this macro are dynamic - that is, as the issues are updated in Jira, the Confluence page will reflect the most up-to-date information. You can customize which columns appear in the macro just like you can in Jira. To head into Jira, you can select the individual issues, or click on the total number at the bottom ('2 issues') to pull up the query in Jira.

To insert a filter:

1. Insert the Jira Macro and enter in your query (steps 1 and 2 above)
2. Expand the Display options and select 'Table' 
3. Edit the maximum issues and columns to display.
4. Select 'Insert' to add to the page!

Create a Jira Issue from a Confluence page

If your issues don't exist in Jira yet, don't worry. This macro can create new issues in Jira if inspiration hits while you're editing a Confluence page. The issue will be created and you won't even have to leave the page. 

Additionally, you can also create issues from Confluence while viewing a page - simply highlight some text and then click on the Jira icon that appears.

1. Insert the Jira Issue Macro
2. Select 'Create New Issue' on the left panel
3. Complete the form
4. Select 'Insert'

This one macro can solve many of your reporting needs in Confluence. What's more, you can provide context around the data instead of just straight data. The Jira Macro is a great way to keep team members informed without navigating from Confluence to Jira and back again. 

Do you have any questions about how you and your team can best utilize your Jira and Confluence tools for maximum benefit? Find out more about how Praecipio Consulting can help by visiting our Atlassian Hosting page or by contacting us directly.

Want some more Jira tips? Check out our blog: Guide to Import Linked Issues in Jira from CSV.

HipChat has long been the beloved messaging application for Atlassian users, developing integrations with Confluence and Jira to increase the seamless nature of the SDLC process with notifications and team and project-specific rooms. With the success of these integrations, Atlassian is raising the bar for HipChat functionality, offering up their API for other software producers to code their own connections to allow even more tools to team with HipChat. Recently, Atlassian held a HipChat Dev event in San Francisco for a handful of popular and innovative tech companies to dev and demo their HipChat plugins, opening the door for an all new level of HipChat functionality. New Relic, Salesforce, Tempo and other Atlassian-inclined software makers came together to tweak the HipChat API to get their products talking for an even more robust integration offering in the messaging system. With many new options becoming available, excited HipChat users can expect to see these plugins available soon, making HipChat a real-time communication hub for all aspects of the software development life cycle.

HipChat, Meet New Relic

New Relic, maker of integral tools to gain insight into the operation of your business processes, becomes a critical component of IT management when paired with HipChat. Using New Relic products like APM, Browser and Synthetics, companies gain real-time analytics for their SaaS applications to ensure that their platforms are running optimally for the best user experience. When integrated with HipChat, New Relic provides teams regular status updates, allowing issues to be addressed efficiently and expediently. Create a HipChat room for New Relic applications and stay up to date with your application performance leveraging the constant monitoring of New Relic with the constant communication of HipChat. 

Build Your Own Add-Ons

Atlassian enables users of Jira, Confluence, and yes- HipChat, with the ability to build customized add-ons for Atlassian tools and corresponding applications. The provided documentation allows the use of any web framework and any programming language to build with Atlassian's REST API to get the applications talking with remote operation over HTTP. With the unlimited possibility of integration, HipChat becomes a true force of functionality as more and more applications are tied into the tool. Give each dev team their own HipChat room built around their products to get the latest updates on their in-flight projects. Create a marketing room to allow your bloggers to see immediately when a new page view or comment comes through. With HipChat customized add-ons, your teams get the information they need, when they need it. 

Video courtesy of Atlassian

It's in the Numbers

Need more reasons to expand your company's collaboration beyond just Confluence and Jira? Atlassian has the stats the make the case for HipChat!

Statistics courtesy of Atlassian

Chatting cuts down on unnecessary, efficiency-draining emails, enhances collaboration between teams and delivers a platform for easy communication. Using Atlassian HipChat, your teams run at the speed of business with application integration, video chatting, and file sharing -- everything they need to work smarter and faster! 

Get Chatting

Revolutionize the way your teams work with HipChat! It's as easy to get as it is to use; simply contact Praecipio Consulting to learn about our extensive HipChat services, including: managed services and hosting, implementation, customization and licensing. HipChat is your central source of better business practices and Praecipio Consulting is your one-stop-shop for all your HipChat needs. Collaboration has never been easier, so get HipChatting today!

Altassian’s Jira is perhaps the best issue tracking and software development management platform around. While Jira can be used in many, many ways, it’s found a sweet spot in the gaming industry.

This post assumes the reader has a reasonable understanding of Jira. The post highlights how Jira and Greenhopper – which collectively make up Atlassian’s Agile approach – can streamline game development. Check it out:

Quick-start projects. In Jira, you can start a new project in less than five minutes. That’s great for developers, since new projects can spawn at anytime during the production process.

Attach files for visual reference. Most developers use Adobe software to design game interfaces. During the development stage, there are usually multiple people designing and updating prototypes – so it’s easy to get off track. With Jira, designers can attach the a screenshot of the latest prototype to a project page, so every one involved with the project can see where the interface is at and stay on the same page. And since Jira allows users to attach files to projects, tasks, time log items, and more, it’s easy for designers to offer team members a visual reference of where they’re at – even if they’re not in the office.

Support and ticketing. Jira helps IT support organizations handle hardware and software support more methodically. Support tickets can be submitted by anyone within the company. From there, they’re assigned to a qualified expert, and either resolved or escalated. This obviously benefits all businesses and not just those in the gaming industry. But for game developers on a tight schedule, hardware performance is critical – and a fast ticketing process ensures minimal downtime.

Bug tracking. Bug tracking is critical in the gaming industry. Jira’s organized, intuitive bug tracking system allows game developers to track the details, status, etc of every kink in the development process – ensuring better performance.

Document repository. Jira can also act as a document repository for files of all types. With a powerful search feature and page indexing capabilities, game companies can ensure quick access to important files – so long as they’re organized responsibly.

Crucible. A web based code review tool, Atlassian’s Crucible (a “friend” of Jira and Greenhopper) allows multiple people to review code online instead of having to crowd around a desktop or overhead projector – the “Google Docs” of code-writing. For game developers, that kind of collaboration is worth its weight in gold.

Greenhopper task tracking. Drag-and-drop task management that associates tasks with Jira projects, items, files, etc, etc. Completely intuitive, remarkably fast. We needn’t say more.

Customize to your heart’s content. Jira is easily and extensively customizable. Most of its customizations don’t require technical knowledge – so designers and developers with different skillsets can configure Jira with ease.

Insanely easy workflows. You don’t have to be a programmer to set workflows up in Jira. Develop workflows quickly to automate repetitive tasks.

Integration with non-Atlassian tools. Jira users can develop their own plug-ins to import and export data to and from Jira. This is crucial, since no software can tackle every need within an organization, and since game developers usually need to leverage multiple tools throughout their production.

That’s how game developers are leveraging Atlassian tools to streamline operations and production timelines. Again, it’s worth noting that much of what’s covered above applies to business of all types – not just those in the gaming industry. Check out our Jira blogs to learn more about how Jira (and “friends“)  can boost your operations.

Special note: If you’ll be attending South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin in March 2011, stop by our booth at the SXSWi Trade Show. We’ll have a Jira demo live, and have our developers behind the table!