Jiradeps

Graphically assess the dependencies of your Jira stories

About

Jiradeps is a Python tool to render the dependency graph of Jira stories (i.e., the "is blocked by" relations). It can also be used to track the progress during development.

Internally, jiradeps works in three stages to render a dependency graph:

1. First the selected Epics are loaded from Jira, based on the provided parameters. Then the stories contained in these Epics are loaded.
2. The story dependencies are translated into a graph representation (using the networkx library). Graph properties like the longest dependency chain are calculated from this graph.
3. A graphical representation of the dependency graph is rendered into a file (e.g., an SVG or PNG) via the graphviz library.

How to install

First, you have to ensure that graphviz is installed (e.g., via a manual installation, or via a package manager / brew on macOS / Chocolatey on Windows).

Then download or clone this project. Afterwards go to the resulting jiradeps directory (Python >= 3.6 is required):

pip install .

Then you can run jiradeps:

jiradeps --help

If you installed it in a virtualenv (which is recommended), then you always have to activate the virtualenv first.

After installation you must create a config file. Jiradeps will offer to create a template config file for you if none is found (which then has to be adapted by you). The config file is read from the current working directory, unless specified otherwise.

Usage

• Recommended flags for backlog analysis: -go (group by epic, open file)
• Recommended flags during development of the stories: -goas (..., align by sprint, show status)

Explanation of the numbers in parentheses for story nodes

You will notice that story nodes contain cryptic numbers like (2) or (2/3) next to the story title:

• The second or single number is the longest chain of blocking ancestors (including the story itself), so theoretically the sprint in which it can be started.
• The first number is the first sprint for which the story is marked (only shown if available).

For the example (2/3) this means that the story was scheduled for the second sprint, but it has a chain of two blocking dependencies before it.

Copyright & License

Jiradeps was conceived, written and executed by Niko Wilbert, Achim Herwig and Ingo Bürk.

© 2018 TNG Technology Consulting GmbH, Unterföhring, Germany

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 - see LICENSE.md in project root directory.