Introducing Jira & Cubyts Integration: Streamline Your Workflow With Powerful Automation

1. Do designers execute their work in the same way engineers execute their work? No.

2. Is there a process associated with design execution (just like engineering processes and best practices)? Yes.

3. Is agile the best way to manage design execution? Most designers will say No (happy to have a conversation on this!)

4. Can product managers plan Design execution with the required authority? Mostly not 

5. Do product managers need insights into Design planning and Execution? Absolutely!

6. Should Design remain as a black box for product managers? Definitely No!

Therefore, a deep insight into Design planning and Execution is clearly the need of the hour for product managers (and other roles in a typical product conceptualization and development lifecycle) for successful product delivery.

1. Product managers get end-to-end visibility – from organizational objectives to product backlog to design initiatives. 

2. The design team can integrate with Jira to pull those activities into Cubyts as Design activities or Design initiatives, plan their design activities and execute as per their plan.

3. By pulling a simple Jira issue into Cubyts as an activity, the Design team gets a better canvas to play with (design activities are not typically linear, and Cubyts addresses the complex design execution workflow). In addition, the design team also pulls documents (e.g., intent documents, product background documents, etc.) from the Jira issue into Cubyts and keeps them in Cubyts for future reference (note: the contextual repository gets built in Cubyts for knowledge management).

4. The design team stays in the Design environment of their choice (Figma) and execution environment (Cubyts) during the course of design execution and uploads their outcomes to Cubyts to the associated Jira objects.

5. The design team can then push the final outcomes to Jira for downstream consumption.

How does this workflow benefit a Product Manager?

1. Get deep insights into the design process followed by the design team to execute a design initiative created as a Jira issue.

2. With other integrations offered by Cubyts (e.g., Slack), stay updated on the progress (on one or more design activities) associated with a Jira issue.

3. Sense anomalies early in the design execution cycle rather than waiting till the end. Hence, faster correction cycles.

4. Bring the design team closer to the other team members in the Scrum team (by allowing the designers to speak their lingo, present their outcomes with the much-needed freedom, and present their route to the outcomes rather than just the outcomes).

We are looking at improvising these workflows in the near future to make this collaboration (Product managers and Designers) even more impactful, e.g.:

1. Jira – Cubyts integration to manage design bugs (typically captured as issues under an Epic or Story in Jira).

2. Jira – Cubyts integration to integrate Product backlog and associate Design initiatives to track and trace the progress of design initiatives.

3. Cubyts into Jira with a Forge application, allowing all stakeholders to understand how design work is progressing from Jira (instead of getting into Cubyts).

Our intention of Jira – Cubyts integration is strategic to the Cubyts product roadmap; bridging the gap between the Design team and the Product team is part of that strategic intent. We see them as one team, and this integration should create that effect in a Scrum team.

This is only the beginning of the Jira-Cubyts integration journey. We hope you find Cubyts workspace a big improvement for your design team. 

This will help you better track your design work and provide visibility where you need it. But there’s only one way to find out: give Cubyts a try and let us know your thoughts. 

And if you have any tips, tricks, or suggestions, we encourage you to share them with us at info@cubyts.com or just connect with us on LinkedIn or Twitter.