Jira Workflow

Release Cadence closes the loop between Jira Product Discovery and your development team — pull ideas from JPD, validate them with real customer feedback, define firm requirements, generate design documents, and push actionable work items back to Jira.

Prerequisites

Before pushing anything to Jira, you need:

• A Pro plan — Atlassian integration is not available on Free or Basic.
• An Atlassian connection at the organization level. An Owner or Admin must complete the OAuth connection first — see the Admin Guide.
• A project configured with Jira, Jira Product Discovery (JPD), and/or Confluence targets. This mapping is also done by an Admin — see Configure Atlassian in the Admin Guide.

Push Features to Jira Epics

Each Release Cadence feature can be synced to a Jira Epic. The Epic captures the high-level description and status of the feature so your engineering team sees it in Jira alongside their implementation work.

How to push a feature

1. Open the feature from your project roadmap.
2. In the feature detail panel, click Push to Jira.
3. Review the field mapping. By default:
   • Feature title → Epic summary
   • Feature description → Epic description
   • Feature status → Epic status (mapped to your Jira workflow)
4. Click Push. The Epic is created in your configured Jira project and the link is saved.

Subsequent pushes update the existing Epic. Release Cadence only sends changes — if the feature title and description haven't changed since the last push, they are not sent again.

Sync status

The feature detail panel shows a sync status indicator:

• Synced — The Epic in Jira matches the current feature.
• Pending — Changes in Release Cadence have not been pushed yet.
• Error — The last push failed. Check the error message and re-push.

Import Existing Jira Epics

If you already have Epics in Jira and want to manage them through Release Cadence, you can import them as features:

1. Go to your project and click Import from Jira.
2. Select the Jira project to import from.
3. Choose which Epics to import. Each selected Epic becomes a Release Cadence feature, pre-linked to its source Epic.
4. Click Import.

Push Requirements to Jira Stories

Individual requirements can be pushed as Jira Stories under their parent Epic. This gives your engineering team a structured breakdown of what needs to be built, directly in Jira.

How to push requirements

1. Open the feature and go to the Requirements tab.
2. Click Push Requirements to Jira.
3. Select which requirements to push, or push all at once.
4. Each selected requirement creates a Jira Story under the feature's linked Epic with:
   • Requirement title → Story summary
   • Requirement description + acceptance criteria → Story description
   • MoSCoW priority → Story priority label
5. Click Push.

Working with Jira Product Discovery (JPD)

JPD is where product ideas live before they become work. Release Cadence treats JPD as the starting point of the workflow — you import Ideas from JPD, enrich them with real customer feedback, and only then push actionable, well-defined work items back to Jira. The full workflow looks like this:

1. Create Ideas in JPD. Use JPD as your idea backlog. Capture opportunities, hypotheses, and feature requests from internal sources before anything goes to engineering.
2. Import JPD Ideas as Features. Pull Ideas into Release Cadence as Features. Each imported Feature stays linked to its source Idea so status flows back.
3. Validate with surveys. Create a survey linked to the Feature and share it with customers. Use responses to understand which problems are real, what users actually need, and what constraints matter. You can include Figma prototype links or Loom videos in surveys to get early feedback on proposed solutions before committing to implementation.
4. Define requirements from informed input. Use survey responses to write grounded requirements — MoSCoW priorities, acceptance criteria, and explicit "Must not" / "Should not" constraints based on what customers told you.
5. Generate a design document. Checkpoint the requirements and generate a design document. This gives engineering a clear, customer-informed brief and serves as firm instructions for a coding agent implementing the feature.
6. Push to Jira as actionable work items. Push the Feature as a Jira Epic and its requirements as Stories. Engineering picks up scoped, well-defined work — not a vague idea.
7. Close the loop after implementation. Once built, share a survey with a Figma or Loom link showing the implemented feature. Ask customers whether the implementation actually solves their problem. Use responses to inform the next iteration.

Importing JPD Ideas as Features

1. Go to your project and click Import from JPD.
2. Select the JPD board configured for this project.
3. Choose which Ideas to import. Each selected Idea becomes a Release Cadence Feature, pre-linked to its source Idea.
4. Click Import.

Pushing Features to JPD

You can also push a Feature from Release Cadence to JPD as a new Idea — useful when a feature originated in Release Cadence rather than JPD and you want it visible in your JPD board.

1. Open the feature.
2. Click Push to JPD.
3. Select the JPD board configured for this project.
4. Click Push. The Idea is created in JPD and linked back to the Feature.

Push Design Documents to Confluence

Once a design document is generated from a checkpoint, you can push it to Confluence as a page. See Design Documents for the full generation workflow. To push:

1. Open the feature and go to the Design Documents tab.
2. Select the design document version you want to push.
3. Click Push to Confluence.
4. Choose the Confluence space and parent page (pre-configured by your Admin).
5. Confirm and push.

The pushed page shows a byline in Confluence indicating the checkpoint status — whether the design document is current or if newer requirements have been added since the last push. The Atlassian Forge app must be installed for the byline to appear.

Attach to Jira Epic instead

If you don't use Confluence, you can attach the design document as a Markdown file on the linked Jira Epic. Click Attach to Jira from the design document view.

Checking Sync History

Every push is recorded in the sync history. To view it:

1. Open the feature.
2. Click Sync History in the Jira section.
3. Each entry shows what was pushed, when, and its result (success, error, or skipped because nothing changed).

Troubleshooting

Push fails with "Not authorized"

Release Cadence refreshes Atlassian tokens automatically, so routine token expiry is handled without intervention. If you see this error, it most likely means the refresh token was invalidated — for example, because someone revoked Release Cadence's access in Atlassian's connected-apps settings. An Admin should go to Organization Settings and reconnect the Atlassian integration. See Admin Guide — Atlassian.

Epic was created in the wrong Jira project

The project-level Jira mapping needs to be updated. An Admin can change the target Jira project in project Settings → Atlassian. Existing links are not changed — only future pushes go to the new project.

Requirements push fails with "No parent Epic"

Push the feature to Jira first to create the parent Epic, then push the requirements.

JPD Ideas not appearing in the import list

Confirm the JPD board is selected in the project's Atlassian settings. If the board was recently created in JPD, it may not appear in the list until you disconnect and reconnect the Atlassian integration.