When an organization grows and Jira Software scales to include more teams, striking a balance between administrative control and team flexibility can be tough. On the one hand, teams want the ability to modify their processes quickly to fit their evolving needs and stay ahead of development trends. On the other hand, system and global admins want to ensure everything runs smoothly, they have full visibility into changes and the right level of control to minimize risk.
In Jira Software Server 7.4 we’re making it easier to strike that balance. We’re adding more flexibility for teams to work the way they want and for admins to manage change at scale. In Jira Software Data Center, we’re continuing to focus on streamlining system upgrades with zero downtime, so admins and teams alike can get their work done without interruption.
Kanplan for Jira Software Server
More than 500 of you told us that working in Kanban would be much easier with a backlog. Well, we hear you loud and clear: Kanplan has arrived!
We know development teams practicing agile often don’t fit into the strict category of either Scrum or Kanban. Teams practicing Kanban for the flexible planning and full transparency still want a place to plan and capture issues that are outside their scope of work. As a result, these teams use their to-do list as a makeshift backlog. This column can get lengthy, and as it grows it becomes impossible for users to see and organize issues on their board.
Now teams working in kanban get a dedicated backlog view, allowing them to plan and prioritize with the structure of scrum, but move issues through development with the fluidity of kanban. For more flexibility, and a bird’s-eye view of dependencies and blockers, teams can see sub-tasks in the backlog view and move them individually into the kanban board view. Teams get a planning space fit to the way they work, instead of the other way around, and can keep their kanban board a distraction-free work zone.
More power to the project admins – own your issue screens
In the latest release of Jira Software, we extended more power to project admins by reducing the overhead that comes with making workflow changes at a project level. As promised, we’re continuing to invest in making delegated permissions easier to manage. In Jira Software 7.4, we’re introducing the ability for project admins to edit fields in their default Issue Screen. Specifically, they have the ability to add, remove or reorder fields and tabs within their screen, without having to ask a global admin to make the change for them. This allows teams to iterate fast and stay productive without letting the process of, well changing their process, get in the way.
New project level permissions are also available in Jira Service Desk and Jira Core
To mitigate risk, project admins cannot make edits to the issue screen if it’s shared with another project. And if necessary, global admins have the control to turn off delegated project administration per permission scheme.
For global admins that want to be hands off but retain visibility into project changes we’ve added new extended search and filter capabilities to the audit log. Global admins are able to search and/or filter by project and user so they can confidently delegate project admin permissions, but have quick access to all changes. Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it too?
Upgrade to Jira Software Data Center 7.4 with zero downtime upgrades
In Jira Software Data Center, we continue to focus on organizations for which Jira software is mission-critical to team productivity and success. In our 7.3 release we introduced zero downtime upgrades, so system admins can perform maintenance updates without taking the system offline. Now, system admins can upgrade to Jira Software Data Center 7.4 from version 7.3 or higher. Upgrade during working hours while your teams continue to work without interruption, and keep those summer plans intact.
Want to see what else we shipped in 7.4? Check out the release notes.