ALM Works

Building upon the integration Adaptavist and ALM Works created between ScriptRunner and Structure, we are happy to share a collection of Structure-specific scripts in the Adaptavist Library.

Here’s some background: ScriptRunner allows you to automate manual work that can take up a fair bit of time, and do it without introducing human error.

For example, we recently had the opportunity to work with a customer who wanted to share the power of Structure from one business group to 50+ groups in his company. Instead of manually recreating the structures he’d already built, we worked with him to write a series of ScriptRunner scripts, which allowed him to replicate the structures across all the business groups by altering just one element of his Structure Automation Rules (in this case, the “project =” portion of the Inserter JQL).

This accelerated the rollout of Structure to the rest of the company’s project managers since each PM now had proven, tailored-for-them structures to work with. This also made it easier for them to conceptualize the power of Structure in a very tangible and relevant way. Through this roll-out process, they were able to get started with relevant, personalized structures with little-to-no effort, easily seeing what Structure could accomplish as they added additional custom structures.

Furthermore, the scripts served as an easy way to reset any (or all) of the structures that were built, since they could easily be copied, deleted or recreated at the press of a button.

Here’s how we did it.

We first took an existing structure and worked with our customer to identify the essential elements that he wanted to share with the other groups.

Next we looked at how he wanted to extend this further. In this particular case, he wanted to tie each Team to a Project. So we created a list to iterate through.

Then we used the Structure-scripts in the Adaptavist Library to build a single master script for this use-case, turning his structures into templates if you will.

We then tested his script on our own testing instance to make sure it worked as expected. Once everyone was satisfied with the work and testing, we rolled it into the customer’s production environment.

Now he has means to build and roll out more structures as new Teams and Projects get added to the company portfolio, or to share useful structures with the entire organization without needing everyone to manually rebuild them.

There’s more: The folks over at Adaptavist have written a deeper dive blog post about the Structure scripts in the Library with a few excellent use-cases of their own. We will continue working with them in the coming months to add new Structure-specific scripts to their library as each of us uncovers new customer use cases for ScriptRunner & Structure.

If you have script ideas you’d like to share, or if there are Structure/ScriptRunner uses cases you’d like to explore, you can reach me via email. I’d love to hear from you.

Check out the Structure scripts in Library for yourself.