Build the thing right

Elements.cloud for  Salesforce DevOps

You want to ensure your Salesforce development teams are effective and building the right things. Elements.cloud drives more rigorous business analysis so that the user stories are complete, easily understood, and risk assessed. Eliminate miscommunication because the business analysis is always connected to the user stories. 

Armed with this intelligence, your teams can build the right thing faster.

Until we had Elements we didn’t have end to end DevOps.

John Eichstead III – Salesforce Solution Architect & Platform Owner

Yin and yang

Build the right thing. Build the thing right.

Elements was designed to be the perfect business analysis platform that dovetails with DevOps tooling. It is the platform for rigorous business analysis shared between the business and development stakeholders. The business and metadata risk analysis linked to user stories ensures communication is maintained. Knowledge of the risk of a release enables better resourcing of the development teams, and low-risk changes can be accelerated.

Unambiguous user stories

The user stories have the business analysis artifacts connected, giving rich input to the development teams and reducing ambiguity that leads to rework.

Metadata conflict checking

A release is a set of user stories. Within a release, you can see the conflicts with metadata changes. Discovering this in the analysis and design phase

Visualize dependencies

Impact and dependency analysis ensures development teams understand the risk and scope of any change.

icons / large / sync

Jira and DevOps tooling sync

User stories in Elements are kept in sync with user stories in Jira and DevOps tools. In addition, the Elements user story right panel is a popup to access business analysis documentation.

The top trend in the State of DevOps Report 2022

The 2022 DevOps report identified three trends. Trend 3 highlighted that organizations were 39% more likely to hit their goals using “Agile Planning” alongside DevOps. Elements provide the Agile Planning for DevOps.

Shift Left

Build the right things—the first time

Elements make “Shift Left” a reality. It provides rigorous business analysis and conflict checking earlier in the development cycle when it is cheaper and quicker to resolve. It also lets you know what should be built, saving time in rework and building trust with your business users.

Conflict checking at design, not build

The impact analysis of metadata provides insights into the risk and conflicts of user stories. The org impact and dependency analysis enable development teams to understand the risk of any release. They can allocate the right level of development and testing resources. They can drive releases through the DevOps pipeline that matches the risk and fast-track low-risk releases getting results faster.

Complementary to DevOps Tooling

DevOps Integrations

Elements have developed tight integrations with the key DevOps tooling vendors and Salesforce, who have just launched DevOps Center. The key integration point is the user story (or work item). Elements user story documentation is visible as a right-panel popup.

Jira integration

User stories are kept in sync after they’ve been created in Elements or Jira. The right panel popup shows documentation and impact analysis.

Salesforce DevOps Center

Elements was the launch partner. The deep integration with DevOps Center provides a Jira integration, impact analysis for conflict checking, and the ability to link work items.

Copado

The integration point is the user story synchronized with Elements, Jira and Copado. In addition, Elements surface the business analysis and metadata impact analysis in the right panel popup. 

Gearset

The integration with Gearset is in development, and the ability to see the impact analysis of metadata enables better allocation of development resources.

Jira integration

The Elements user story right panel is shown inside Jira. The integration keeps title, description, status, and Jira custom fields in sync with Elements.

DevOps Center integration

Salesforce DevOps Center is the new, free DevOps tooling. Elements overcome most DevOps Center limitations that will hinder wide-scale adoption; Jira integration, managing linked work items, and aggregated view of metadata across work items for conflict resolution and management of releases.

Alongside Salesforce, Elements wrote the DevOps Center Implementation Guide.

Frequently asked questions

What are the top DevOps tools for Salesforce?

They all vary in scope and therefore cost. Salesforce DevOps Center is the free replacement for ChangeSets. The top 6 paid DevOps tools are Copado, Gearset, Flosum, AutoRabit, Opera, and Prodly, and there are a growing number of new entrants. There is an analyst who covers Salesforce DevOps.

Does DevOps need Elements?

The benefits of better user stories and understanding the risk of making changes to metadata are clear. Without Elements, there is more rework and rollbacks, which burn up time and resources.

If we already have DevOps tools like Jira, do we need Elements.cloud?

Elements is complementary to DevOps tooling. That is how we designed it. And we have integrations with all the leading Salesforce DevOps tooling vendors, including tight integration with Jira.

If we are not using a DevOps tool, can we benefit from Elements?

Absolutely. Many of our customers still use ChangeSets rather than a paid DevOps tool. They are now looking at Salesforce DevOps Center as the first step to a more formal DevOps process.

Where can I learn about DevOps, CI/CD, source control and release management?

The first stop is Gearset’s free DevOpsLaunchpad and you can find more information about this, here

Can I trial Elements?

Yes. Talk to us.