Announcing Jira Align version 11.X and updates to our release practices

We’re making some updates to Jira Align’s release numbering and practices. We're doing this as part of our commitment to consistently enhancing the stability of your cloud and on-premise environments. 

In this announcement:

• What’s changing
  • Hello version 11!
  • Updated version numbers
  • Introducing bug fix releases
  • New on-premise release timing
  • Communication changes
  • Table of changes
• What’s not changing
  • Jira Align release cadence
  • Enterprise Insights release cadence
  • Our commitment to stability
• Stay informed

What’s changing

We're making the following changes starting with the 11.0.0 release, scheduled for Friday, June 14th:

Hello version 11!

We’re ready to signal a new era by changing our major version from 10.X to 11.X. Jira Align has seen a lot of major improvements in the past year, with the launch of new navigation, new experiences like capacity planning, and ongoing efforts to modernize the look and functionality of the platform.

Updated version numbers

We're changing how we number versions to be more intuitive, so that it’s clear which releases impact your sandbox and production environments. The current numbering scheme of .0, .1, .2, and .3 will be replaced with .0 and .1.

• Versions with a .0 (e.g. 11.X.0) indicate deployments to sandbox environments on the continuous release track.
• Versions with a .1 (e.g. 11.X.1) indicate deployments to both production environments on the bundled release track and sandbox environments on the continuous release track.
  • On-premise environments will also use versions that contain .1.

Introducing bug fix releases

On weeks where there is not a planned feature release or maintenance release, we’re introducing optional bug fix releases, sharing the same terminology used by other Atlassian products.

Bug fix releases allow us to provide stability to sandbox, production, and on-premise environments through rapid updates. When needed, we will deploy bug fix releases on Fridays. This change sets the stage for continuous deployment in the future.

• Versions for bug fix releases will contain an additional identifier at the end, e.g. 11.X.0.XXXX. This number will increment if multiple bug fixes are deployed for a version.

On the rare occasion we need to immediately remedy an issue outside of our normal release cadence, we’ll ship a hotfix release to sandbox, production, or on-premise environments. These releases can happen any day of the week.

New on-premise release timing

To enhance stability for on-premise release versions, we’re shifting our deployments forward by one week.

• On-premise environments will receive a new version 12 days after the version is shipped to production environments.
• New on-premise versions will continue to be provided on Wednesdays.
• Any bug fixes deployed to cloud through the fourth week of our cycle will be included.

Communication changes

We’ll continue publishing updates to this Help site, through both our release calendar and release notes. We’re changing the following to these resources:

• New release notes articles and article updates will be published on Mondays.
  Update: We've heard from you that the publication of release notes on Fridays is preferred to help you prepare for changes found on test and production environments at the start of each week. Thank you for the feedback! We will continue publishing new release notes updates on Fridays.
• The main release notes section will be renamed to feature release notes, and the supplemental release notes section will be renamed to bug fix release notes.
• A release notes article will be published each time a new feature release is deployed. We’ll update that article with new fixes when a maintenance release or bug fix release is deployed. These articles can continue to be found inside our feature release notes section.
  • In the rare event a maintenance release contains a change that is not a bug fix, we’ll add details of the change to the existing feature release notes, and republish the article to provide an email notification to subscribers.
• A new release notes article will be published each time a new bug fix release is deployed. These articles can be found inside our bug fix release notes section.
• On weeks that a release is optional, we will discontinue posting “no release for version 11.X.X” articles when there is not a new version.

Table of changes

You can see how our release types work together and how info will be published in the table below:

What’s not changing

Jira Align release cadence

Our release cadence will continue to be a four-week cycle. A new version of Jira Align, if needed, will be deployed each Friday. New versions will continue to deploy to sandbox environments first to provide a preview of new features, and then ship to production environments two weeks later.

While this schedule won’t change now, we’re building new systems and processes in order to deploy daily, even continuously, in the future.

Enterprise Insights release cadence

Enterprise Insights (EI) releases will also continue to follow Jira Align’s four-week cycle. New versions will be deployed only when changes are available.

• Sandbox environments will see a new version of EI on the first week of the cycle, while production environments will see the new version on the third week. On-premise environments will see the new version 12 days after successful deployment to production.
• Version numbers will follow Jira Align’s pattern, but will continue to use simplified numbering when code remains the same between deployments. Examples:
  • EI version 11.0 will ship to sandbox on June 7, and then to production on June 21.
  • EI bug fix version 11.0.0.XXXX would be created if updates are needed between June 7 and June 21.
  • EI bug fix version 11.0.1.XXXX would be created if updates are needed in production before the next feature version is available.

Our commitment to stability

We remain laser-focused on providing stability to both cloud and on-premise versions, and resolving customer-reported and internally-found bugs as quickly as possible. We’re continuing to build on improvements shared in articles such as Addressing feedback and bugs quicker than ever before! and Jira Align is getting faster, faster. .

Stay informed

To keep up-to-date with enhancements and fixes we deploy regularly, we recommend the following:

• Subscribe to the feature release notes and bug fix release notes sections in Help to be notified when new articles or significant updates are published.
• Check back inside feature release notes articles each week for a summary of recent fixes.
• If a particular bug affects you, add yourself as a watcher to the issue inside jira.atlassian.com (JAC) for up-to-date status.