Zenhub today announced it is adding an issue management module that makes it simpler for stakeholders to collaborate with developers on application development projects without having to log into a GitHub repository.
Fresh from raising an additional $10 million in capital, Zenhub co-founder Aaron Upright said Zenhub Issues is a plug-in for a project management application the company developed for GitHub environments to better streamline software development life cycles. The issue is that many application stakeholders, such as marketers, are not especially pre-disposed to logging into a repository for managing software components, he said.
Zenhub Issues provides an alternative means for collaborating with developers that doesn’t require stakeholders to log into GitHub, he said. In addition, organizations no longer need to acquire additional GitHub licenses for those users, noted Upright. Many of those end users wind up with read-and-write access to software components, which creates unnecessary cybersecurity risks should their credentials be compromised, he noted.
In some cases, organizations will also be able to eliminate the need for the project management applications many of those stakeholders have adopted because they can track issues via Zenhub Issues, he added.
Many organizations’ entire business strategies now revolve around accelerating the rate at which software development projects can be completed. Many elements of those projects, however, can’t go forward until a specific component upon which it depends is completed, so project management has become a critical function. Investors are holding business leaders more accountable for software delivery timetables that have direct implications on revenue generation, so that pressure naturally falls on DevOps teams.
It’s not surprising that there aren’t a wider range of end users of project management applications as various stakeholders seek to keep closer tabs on how updates to schedule impact their planning cycle. Everyone from the sales team to the board of directors now wants more visibility into the rate at which software development projects are being completed. The challenge DevOps teams face is that software development is an inexact science. Application development projects can just as easily fall behind schedule as they can leap ahead depending on how well code is written.
Regardless of how application development projects are managed, the relationship between DevOps teams and the rest of the organization has fundamentally changed. Unfortunately, expectations are not always realistically aligned with available development resources. A project management application that is widely employed across an organization should make that apparent to all interested stakeholders. In theory, at least, that should result in either the hiring of additional developers or a reassessment of the business strategy.
One way or another, project management applications designed for managing software development projects now play a pivotal role in business planning. The challenge is finding a way to populate those applications with the data needed without requiring developers to help enter data that can already be easily pulled from the DevOps tools and platforms. Otherwise, instead of being viewed as a benefit, the entire project management process becomes one more tedious task that development teams are not going to prioritize over writing code.