Release plans (ie, ChangeLog tasks)
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Gentle Beetle
One really nice feature in Jira is "Releases" - which basically act as a 'draft' and release plan for a changelog. It's not so much the aggregation of development tasks that I'm referring to (which is already largely covered by the various project management integrations at the individual post level), but instead the "Related Work" section of a Jira Release that allows you to define (and link to) all the little supporting tasks that are involved in releasing software: writing help articles, publishing blog posts, drafting customer success playbooks, generating creatives for ads and socials, setting up product analytics, etc.
I'm not exactly sure which part of canny this best belongs in, but I could imagine any of:
- part of the changelog drafting UI, adjacent to 'Linked Posts' - in which case these supporting tasks could be simple checkboxes with (smart)links, or potentially make use of the project management integrations (jira, github, asana, etc) except on the changelog object instead of feature/post object.
- a similar approach could simply aggregate post level project management integration tasks from any linked posts on the changelog draft page. (this is simpler, since it's merely rendering existing data in a different place - though doesn't completely satisfy the intended purpose)
- it could potentially be a roadmap level feature, perhaps adding a markdown editor + 'related work' task list above the roadmap table - which could basically transform roadmaps from just a list of posts into a 'plan'.
- or potentially it could even be a completely new "Releases" or "Plans" feature that sits between Roadmaps and Changelogs... similar to the ideas above, this could be a UI to assemble links to both posts (and their linked external tasks) + supporting tasks, along with some space to write a Markdown description of the overall body of work. This could also be an ideal source/mechanism for AI generated changelogs.
Whichever manifestation, I can imagine something along these lines serving as a relatively simple but powerful capstone step in the product release process.
Sarah Hum
Thank you for posting, Gentle Beetle! I have a few more questions for you:
- What specific types of supporting tasks would you prioritize for inclusion in a release plan feature?
- How frequently do you anticipate using a feature like this in your release process?
- What integrations with other tools (e.g., Jira, Asana) are most critical for your workflow?
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Gentle Beetle
Sarah Hum - absolutely!
- I've attached a screenshot of the types of 'related work' tasks that Jira's Releases contain, which I think is a pretty comprehensive menu. As for me personally, specific examples would include:
- configure product entitlements in Stripe
- create/edit help center article
- record product demonstration video
- publish bloc post
- publish to socials
- send out marketing email
- setup A/B test
- get signoff from {team1} {team2}, etc
etc
- Often! Right now we 1) collect feature requests in canny, 2) [bunch of other stuff happens outside of canny], and then 3) I try to remember to write a changelog. There's just a lot of process fragmentation across so many products - something like this would really play a central role in release readiness.
- For 'project management' integrations, I think you already have the main ones covered (which is great - I often have to use multiple of those, so it's great that canny is agnostic to that). I can also imagine design integrations (figma, canva, etc) and documentation integrations (confluence, notion, google docs, etc) being really useful here - those might not even be integrations so much as just 'smart links'.