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What is the Better Commit Policy for Jira Cloud app?

The Better Commit Policy for Jira Cloud app is a powerful tool to enforce custom policies on Git commits and pull requests in Git repositories hosted on various development platforms. Commit policies define rules to ensure that every code change in the repositories meets your standards and includes necessary information for traceability and compliance.

The app integrates your Jira Cloud site with your Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitLab workspaces to enable these capabilities.

Watch the short introduction video to better understand the app features and benefits:

Getting started with Better Commit Policy for Jira Cloud
Getting started with Better Commit Policy for Jira Cloud

Benefits

In regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and aviation, traceability and compliance are essential for audits and safety. Poor traceability can result in failed audits, costly disruptions, and legal issues.

For instance, the 2024 CrowdStrike outage was caused by a poorly tested code change, disrupting services like hospitals and airlines. The AT&T Mobility outage stemmed from a configuration error that blocked 25,000 emergency calls. Without clear links between code and requirements, audits and incident response become much harder.

Our app helps teams:

  • Enforce consistency around source code changes
  • Guarantee traceability between code and work items
  • Catch violations early and prevent non-compliant changes
  • Meet security, compliance, and code change control standards

Real-world examples underscore these benefits:

  • EaglePicher Technologies, a manufacturer of mission-critical battery systems, leveraged Better Commit Policy to fulfill stringent FAA software requirements, ensuring that every code change was traceable and compliant with industry regulations.
  • Philips implemented commit policies to bring order to their development process, transforming a previously unstructured approach into a disciplined workflow where source code changes are consistently linked to Jira work items, enhancing traceability and reducing wasted time.

By integrating directly into the developers' workflow, our app protects your team from risky changes and ensures every commit supports business and compliance goals - with minimal effort to set up and maintain.

How does it work?

To implement commit policies based on Jira work item information in Git repositories hosted on Bitbucket, GitHub or GitLab, you need to use complementary apps on all sides that you actually use. These apps are designed to work closely together to ensure that policies function properly.

Out of the following apps, the connector app built for your development platform plus the central Jira app are required:

  1. Better Commit Policy Connector for Bitbucket (only if you use Bitbucket)
    This connector app, installed to your Bitbucket Cloud workspace, is where commit policies are configured and enforced. It hooks directly into the Bitbucket interface, offering a seamless developer experience that feels like a native feature.
    More about connecting your Bitbucket workspace to Jira
  2. Better Commit Policy Connector for GitHub (only if you use GitHub)
    This connector app, which will enforce commit policies in Cloud workspaces, is coming soon!
    More about connecting your GitHub workspace to Jira
  3. Better Commit Policy Connector for GitLab (only if you use GitLab)
    This connector app, which will enforce commit policies in Cloud workspaces, is coming soon!
    More about connecting your GitLab workspace to Jira
  4. Better Commit Policy for Jira (the central app)
    This central app, installed to your Jira Cloud site, enables commit policies to access Jira work items. It makes it possible to check whether the referenced work items actually exist, are in the required project, sprint, version, status, are assigned to the right person, and such.

💡 Are you using multiple developer platforms within your organization (e.g. both Bitbucket and GitHub)? Those scenarios are absolutely supported. Just install the corresponding connector app to each VCS workspace, and connect them to the Jira Cloud site, exactly like you do in the "single platform" scenario.

Next steps

Ready to get started? Here are your recommended next steps:

  1. Follow the getting started guide to set up your first commit policy. (It includes specific instructions for Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab, and other platforms.)
  2. Add commit policies to more and more Git repositories!
  3. Enjoy! 🙂

Questions?

Ask us any time.