Atlassian is trying to improve the developer experience across several of its products — including Jira, Compass and Bitbucket — with the latest round of updates.
The first update is the ability to connect Compass components to Jira software. This gives developers better visibility into the health and performance metrics of their applications without having to change tools.
It provides visibility into things like card health status, compliance, ownership information, documentation, and CI/CD events.
The company believes that by allowing access to Compass components from within Jira, it will reduce context switching for developers.
“According to the latest Stack Overflow Developer Poll, more than a quarter of developers spend an hour or more each day searching for answers or solutions to problems. This not only means less time to deliver great software, but also an interruption of the flow state where developers are doing their best,” Atlassian wrote in a blog post.
Next, Jira Software introduced Jira Work Suggestions, which identifies bottlenecks developers face when switching from task to task and is another way the company plans to ease the burden of context switching.
According to the company, developers can plan their work in Jira, but then get sidetracked when other unexpected tasks arise — such as pull request reviews, fixes to build, or security vulnerabilities to address — that are handled by other tools.
Now Jira provides an overview of those tasks managed by other tools, providing a central place to look to determine what needs to be worked on.
Finally, custom merge checks have been added to Bitbucket, allowing developers to easily ensure that their merged code complies with company policies.
Normally, Bitbucket’s checks are a static list, but the new custom checks will allow developers to customize them based on their company’s specific policies. For example, it can be updated to require that specific security scans run, require that code cannot be connected after hours when on-call personnel are not available, or require a minimum level of test coverage.
“Together, these improvements in Jira, Compass and Bitbucket help development teams streamline information and bring teams together to improve the experience and focus on the work that matters most,” the company wrote.