How to Automate Your Software Development Process?

If your company’s development team works according to the Agile Methodology, it’s very likely they’re already acquainted with breaking down tasks into smaller pieces (subtasks). Agile Software Development is responsible for the scale-up of teams’ results and it’s great for establishing better workflows.

If you use Pipefy to manage any Software Development workflow you can easily connect your main processes (where your larger tasks are) to a secondary process (where the subtasks are) to centralize different types of information in the same place. Not only can you do that, but you can also create subtasks connected to the main task so that you can keep close track of the completion of the main task based on the smaller pieces.

Through Pipefy’s automation feature, it’s possible to move a step further, automating your software development process so that:

• When a subtask (connected card) is moved to the Doing Phase on the secondary pipe, the main task is also moved to Doing Phase on the primary pipe;
• When all subtasks (connected cards) are moved to Done Phase on the secondary pipe, the main task is moved to Live .

Doing, Done and Live are merely suggestions of names for active and finished phases, it’s possible to customize however you want.

How to create subtasks in your software development process inside Pipefy

First things first. Before we can automate your process, we need to connect your primary software development process to a secondary subtasks process. For that we’ll need:

• A Software Development Pipe (if you don’t have one yet you can create one based on our agile software development template);
• Another pipe with related subtasks (you can use our simple to-do list or task management templates).

Next thing you need to do is create a connection between those two pipes.

Open the development process’ settings by clicking on the gear icon on the upper right corner of your screen. Scroll down and click on  ‘connections’. Once you click the ‘Create new connection +‘ button we’ll start setting up the connection.

The first step is to choose a name for it. Here, we’ll call it ‘subtasks’. Next, choose the pipe we want to connect to and set up the connection function and the number of entries (click here to learn more). Click save to finish setting up the connection. Let’s move on to the next step.

How to automate your Software Development Process

Now that you’ve connected your primary (agile software development) and secondary (subtasks) pipe, we’ll move on to creating automations. To create the first one, click the “apps & integrations” option on the top menu of your company then access automations.

Let’s create the first automation. Click on “new automation +” so we can set it up:

Event: when a card is moved – in pipe: subtasks – to phase: doing;

Action: move the parent card – in pipe: software development – to phase: doing;

This automation states that, whenever you start working on a subtask (move it to ‘doing’ on the secondary pipe), the main card will be moved to the ‘doing’ phase on the primary pipe so that your team knows you’re working on it.

Let’s move on to creating automation number 2.

Event: when all connected cards are moved to a phase – in pipe: subtasks – to phase: done;

Action: move the parent card – in pipe: software development – to phase: live;

That’s it. After you’re done setting up the connection and both automation, it’ll be a lot easier to control your software development process and keep track of each epic’s stories.

This is just the surface of automation that you can set in Pipefy. They can get much more sophisticated according to your needs and the complexity of your Software Development Process. Pipefy can also run other common types of processes for R&D, such as Bug Tracking (which is great to connect with Software Development) and Product Roadmap.