Situation:
As the product owner and Jira expert in my organization, I was tasked with implementing a change management workflow to address the challenge of tracking changes going into our production site on an Organisation level. The problem we faced was that when a bug occurred after a production deployment, it was difficult to track down the responsible stakeholder. This lack of transparency led to delays in resolving the issue and increased the risk of future bugs and customer escalations.
Task:
To address this issue, I needed to develop a deployment workflow that introduced more transparency regarding the changes that are deployed into the production site and also introduce lead approval stages based on the impact of the particular feature deployment. Using my expertise in Jira management, I set out to create a change management automation that would solve these challenges.
Action:
First, I created a workflow that automatically created a change management ticket for each feature that was going to be deployed. This ticket linked to the feature's user story ticket and the change owner would attach the relevant documentations to the change management ticket. The change management ticket would then go through approval stages within the Jira workflow, including approval from team leads and management boards, depending on the severity of the impact if deployed in the production site.
I also created automation that triggered emails to the DevOps team when approvals were taken for the change management ticket, notifying them that it was ready for deployment. Additionally, I developed automation that provided the status of the deployment in the production site, making it easier for stakeholders to track the progress of the deployment.
Result:
By introducing this robust review process and making it easier to track changes in the deployment workflow, the time to deploy to production was reduced by 50%. Furthermore, bug escalation post-deployment decreased by 70%, as each deployed feature was easier to trace back to the team responsible for the change. This provided clarity on who to contact in case of escalation, reducing the time to resolve issues and ultimately increasing customer satisfaction.
Throughout the project, I utilized Jira for creating the deployment workflow and Draw.io for creating user flow diagrams to help stakeholders better understand the proposed changes.
In conclusion, as the product owner and Jira expert, I successfully implemented a change management project that addressed the challenges we were facing with tracking changes in the production site. The new deployment workflow introduced transparency and lead approval stages, which led to a significant reduction in time to deploy to production and post-deployment bug escalation. The use of Jira and Draw.io allowed for efficient communication and collaboration among stakeholders, ultimately resulting in a successful project outcome.