Building blocks

The parts of Iron Octopus and how they fit together.

Everything in Iron Octopus is built from a few parts that nest inside each other. A workspace holds your projects. Each project is one app. Inside a project, features are the changes you ask for, and each feature is made of work items and defined by its requirements.

How they fit together

The building blocks

Workspace

Your company’s account: its members, projects and billing.

Project

One app: its code, architecture, rules and work.

Initiative

A larger goal that Iron Octopus plans as several features.

Feature

One change to your app, from its plan to its release.

Requirement

What done means for a feature. Each one is verified.

Work item

One piece of the work inside a feature, built and reviewed on its own.

Defect report

A problem you found, and the fix that follows.

Architecture

The blueprint for your app that every feature is planned to fit.

How work flows through them

1. You describe an idea in a project.
2. Iron Octopus plans it. A small idea becomes one feature. A larger one becomes an initiative with several features.
3. Each feature gets requirements that define done, and work items that make up the work.
4. Iron Octopus builds and reviews the work items, verifies the requirements, and the feature is released.
5. If you find a problem later, a defect report turns it into a fix, which is a new feature that goes through the same steps.