Launching Advanced Edition for our Apps: Release Management for Jira, Advanced Kanban & Agile Boards

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In this article, we will share why we decided to join the Early Access Program (EAP) for Apps Editions with Atlassian, how we launched the first versions of our Apps’ Advanced Editions, and what the journey ahead looks like.

Why consider it?

As with any other app on the Atlassian Marketplace, we grow mostly organically, with a backlog that consistently includes a mix of our own ideas and client requests. As more enterprise clients join the Cloud, we increasingly see enterprise-grade features appearing on our team's board.

We often face a dilemma between implementing certain features and the potential audience size for these features. Advanced functionality may not suit every client, leading them to question the rationale for paying for it. However, for more mature clients, these features are becoming crucial for purchasing the app, and they can clearly articulate the value.

Thus, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution; your ‘Apps Editions’ need to be flexible to meet market demand.

Excellence in execution

We need to acknowledge that Atlassian has done a great job providing us with the technical capabilities to enhance our ‘Apps Editions’ with seemingly no additional overhead.

In particular, we are pleased with the ability to show a differentiated list of features for Standard and Advanced Editions, complete with short descriptions. Additionally, the flexibility of having segregated pricing plans for Standard and Advanced Editions makes it easy to develop pricing strategies.

Regarding technical implementation, we were pleased with the range of options available to segment functionality and feature visibility through configuration.

For instance, in our Release Gadgets Apps, we were able to easily hide or show complete gadgets (e.g. Release Frequency Gadget) thus segregating gadgets between the Standard and Advanced Editions. We also successfully implemented extra advanced features in existing Gadgets, providing enhanced options to outline selected Sprints and Epics on Release Calendars and Roadmaps together with Releases itself.

For another Advanced Kanban & Agile Board, we successfully implemented a number of enterprise-grade features (namely Flow Efficiency Calculation & Alerts, Multiple Board Views) that we had delayed for some time due to value and cost considerations.

  

We took the same approach with Release Management for Jira to include client requests that are more applicable for enterprise-grade setups in our Advanced Edition. Thus, we are shortly delivering Global Milestones, Global Properties for our Release Boards, and Access Token Management to use our Rest of APIs seamlessly.

 

Of course, we need to wait for the official launch of ‘Apps Editions’ for the complete marketplace. But as it stands, we are confident that we now have the right tools in place to inform our product and business decisions. 

The new interesting challenge?

While it might seem easy to add all new enterprise-grade requests into the Advanced Edition, the real challenge lies in effectively promoting Advanced Features within the app, better segmenting features between the Standard and Advanced Editions, and determining whether to split existing functionality.

To answer these questions, it is essential to understand your customers' journey with your app and have sufficient product analytics data. This knowledge helps you identify which features are utilized, how deeply, and how broadly, enabling informed decisions about feature segmentation and timing for promoting advanced capabilities, including usage-based limits.

We believe we are well-equipped with tools like journy.io and amplitude.com. Only time will tell how effective these will be.

Take out

If you are a Marketplace Partner, we encourage you to consider the differentiated value propositions of Apps Editions that you will be able to offer to customers and partners. Apps Editions is right now in EAP and will soon be available for all partners.

If you are a Solution Partner, although it might appear as an additional moving part, your customers will gain more flexibility to receive the right solutions at the right price, supported by Marketplace Partner capabilities.

If you are a Customer, there’s a great opportunity for your requests to be addressed more quickly, giving you the flexibility to choose the specific features you need, much like selecting from a menu. During EAP Apps Editions are available for customers on the new billing system only and during the EAP, customers can raise a request to get upgraded.

If you want to try out our Apps Editions please submit a request here.