Release planning and continuous deployment with Zoho Sprints + Jenkins

Software development has evolved into a fast cycle of planning, developing, integrating, testing, deploying, and supporting new versions of software for increasingly complex platforms. At Zoho, this has been our craft and passion for the last two decades.

We're delighted to introduce a release planning module in Zoho Sprints that helps software development teams accelerate their time to value. From writing the first user story to deploying incremental improvements to your software, release management is all about coordinating several aspects of the software development lifecycle into one integrated outcome. 

Release iteratively 

Release management is inherently an agile process where the focus is on delivering incremental value to your customers. It involves communicating and collaborating with several cross-functional teams before, during, and after a release. Any weak links like a miscommunication or misunderstood priority could result in half-baked software that your customers will not appreciate.

From our experience of developing 50+ products, we realize that one release plan template doesn't fit all. The release module in Zoho Sprints allows you to customize the stages of your release plan. The release details view classifies all the work items tagged to your release. You can also view a summary of the commits and pull requests of a release when you integrate with source code management tools like GitHub, Gitlab, or BitBucket.

 DevOps with Jenkins

DevOps, the collaboration between your development and operations teams, offers structure and speed to your delivery lifecycle. With modern businesses moving at the speed of cloud, DevOps methods keep businesses prepared to embrace change and deliver with greater speed and quality.  

"Automate everything" is one of the core principles of DevOps. From merging commits to testing and deploying it in the production server, several aspects of the development lifecycle can be automated. Jenkins, an open-source automation server, enables developers to build and automate their Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline.

Deploy continuously

We are excited to release the Zoho Sprints-Jenkins plugin to help teams view the status and stability of their builds without leaving Zoho Sprints. This plugin fetches build details like the name of the job, the user who triggered it, and the time since the last success or failure. It also helps you maintain audit logs to improve security and compliance.

The success and adoption of any software release are determined by several factors outside the development cycle. Whether you're updating the documentation or training support teams, your customers look forward to the value you deliver in your releases. You can configure your pre- and post-build actions in Jenkins to post a status in your project feed or add new work items to your backlog . This helps cross-functional teams to collaborate and ship products your customers will love.

We are committed to releasing successive iterations and delivering valuable enhancements, and we hope this release is valuable to you and your teams. Start planning your releases in Zoho Sprints with our Jenkins plugin today,  and let us know your feedback in the comments below.