Automated Release Governance
Time Frame
Role
2024
Business Operations Analyst
Context
The GA approvals process relied heavily on manual coordination between release stakeholder teams such as Engineering, Architecture and UX, this was causing delays, inconsistencies, and missed visibility across not only business teams but product teams as well.
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My challenge: How do we bring these workflows into Jira and make them smarter, faster, and more auditable through automation?
Goals:
Centralize Approvals in one place (Jira)
Automate
routine workflows and get out of manual email processes
Improve
visibility, compliance, and auditability
Actions
1. Mapping out Stakeholder Processes and Pain Points
The GA/GTM process requires alignment from multiple stakeholder groups to ensure every release meets compliance and readiness standards. With so many teams involved, approvals were often manual, slow, and fragmented across tools and emails. Partnering with these groups, I helped identify pain points and mapped where automation could simplify reviews.
2. Building Jira Workflows
To address the pain points I was hearing from different teams across the company, I decided to design some flow-charts to brainstormed how we could automate the same steps we had in the manual process and utilize Jira to automate all of it. I developed custom Jira workflows and automation rules that replaced manual handoffs with rule-based approvals, email notifications, and status transitions, improving speed and transparency.
3. Testing and Iteration
Once the automated workflows were designed, I partnered with three pilot product lines to test and refine the new Jira-based approval process in a live release environment. This phase was all about learning and identifying gaps, gathering stakeholder feedback, and fine-tuning automation rules to fit real-world scenarios.
Through iterative testing, we validated that the new system not only reduced approval time but also increased visibility and accountability across teams, laying the foundation for a full-scale rollout.
4. Scaled Company-Wide
After validating the new workflows through pilot testing, I led the broader rollout across 40+ global product and engineering teams. This phase focused on standardizing the automation framework and adapting it for other stakeholder use cases. By documenting templates, creating training materials, and hosting hands-on sessions, I helped teams adopt the new system confidently.
What began as a pilot evolved into a company-wide automation model that streamlined governance, improved traceability, and established Jira as the single source of truth for release approvals.
"I've been one of 18 GA Approvers for three years, and the process of GAing products has typically involved a lot of emails and coordination between teams. Shreeya, who leads GA, significantly simplified this process by launching a workflow pilot that moved approvals into Jira. This has been such a relief to have a more organized and simplified way to manage my approvals. The pilot was so successful that all teams have since adopted Jira to manage approvals and track GA tasks. I really appreciate any opportunity to streamline reviews and reduce the noise to enable me to focus on my other tasks."​
Business Operations Director @ FICO
Impact