Release notes process

Project overview

My role

Senior Technical Writer
Content Strategy

The challenge

There was no unified release notes process. Product updates were limited to high-level bulleted lists from developers or Marketing announcements for major features. Customers lacked a single, reliable source of truth for regular product improvements.

My approach

Audits & interviews

Audited existing channels: Investigated how product changes were communicated across the company, tracking down fragmented Slack lists and marketing email blasts.
Interviewed stakeholders: Interviewed product leaders to map how they handled updates. They all used JIra but all had different release timelines, Jira fields, and planning styles.

Create a simple process

Because teams complained about a lack of time and I needed to create release notes every two weeks, I designed a simple Jira process.

Custom fields: Created custom fields to mark, track, report, and review release updates across all product areas.
Review Dashboard: Designed a dashboard to provide a real-time release notes snapshot.
Writing in Jira: Wrote and reviewed content directly in Jira, waiting to pull for release, giving everyone more time to work.

Get buy-in

While the process was simple, it required every team to be part of the workflow. I met with every product leader across disciplines to listen to their concerns and adjusted the process to ensure full alignment.

Impact & takeaways

100% adoption: Every product area adopted the workflow, creating a single, reliable pipeline for release updates.
Client-facing clarity: Clients could finally follow, track, and understand ongoing product updates easily.
Reduced calls to Support: Proactively providing a clear list of changes reduced the number of customer support tickets originating from unannounced updates.
Most-visited documentation: Month-to-month release notes were the most visited content on the documentation site.
Internal clarity: Cross-functional teams across the entire organization were finally aware of product changes before they happened.

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