Automation and Integration

This might seem obvious - to reduce the manual overhead that's inherent in repetitive, automatable tasks, or in context switching between systems.  This answer is missing a lot of the complexity inherent to the question, however.   Every automation or integration comes with costs associated with it - not only the software and labour involved in implementation, but importantly the additional operational management overhead in maintaining and incrementally improving the service being offered.  Given the long and storied history of Atlassian tools, it is not uncommon for businesses to find they have automations and integrations that are poorly understood, but appear vital to day-to-day operations - an obvious risk.  The reality is that in many cases, benefits are assumed without quantification, and costs are approached naively, ignoring labour and ongoing maintenance costs.

To answer the question fully, it should be stated that we do this to reduce the manual overhead that's inherent in repetitive, automatable tasks, or in context switching between systems, but only in a way where the cost of implementation can be shown to be lower than the business benefits provided by the process.

The key to ensuring a successful rollout of any integration or automation is to first understand, in depth, the business benefits of implementation, the teams responsible for maintenance of the tooling, and where extention points need to be for future potential growth.  Only once these are fully understood can you approach an integration or automation project from the right starting point.

The team at Echidna Solutions have had great success engaging customers in Analysis and Design engagements to facilitate these rollouts.  These engagements can be scaled flexibly to account for the size of the project, and result in a comprehensive analysis of the current business and technical state of the customer, a future-state design that has been agreed upon by all parties, and a full rollout plan for the project.  Further details on Analysis and Design engagements can be found in the Atlassian Implementation page of our site.

Normally one would expect this page to say something along the lines of The team at Echidna Solutions have decades of experience building some of the most complex integrations and automations around - although this is true, it's not what we're proudest of.  Instead, the more important credential that our team brings is a history of working with businesses with apparently complex needs, and helping them to clarify and simplify their requirements to the point where the implementation (and the subsequent maintenance) is rendered significantly easier than expected.

Yes, the team at Echidna Solutions can help you to build a big, beautiful, complex ScriptRunner for Jira integration or automation that would make a creature from the Cthulu mythos blush - but we'd much rather help to understand your needs and build something that is necessary and sufficient to provide the business value you are trying to extract.

If you'd like us to take a look at your own unique requirement, and help you to avoid the beasts from the great dark beyond, please contact Echidna Solutions today to organise a chat.