Agentic Design Patterns — Jira Orchestrator

Agentic Design Patterns — Jira Orchestrator

Patterns from "Agentic Design Patterns" (Gulli & Sauco, 2025) applied to enterprise Jira workflow orchestration, 81-agent hierarchy management, sprint planning, and issue lifecycle automation.

Applied Patterns

1. Routing

Relevance: With 46 commands, 16 teams, and 81 agents, every incoming Jira request must be classified and routed to the correct agent team without human disambiguation. Current Implementation: /jira:triage classifies issues by type (bug/feature/epic/task), complexity, and domain to determine the optimal workflow path. The /model command routes to haiku/sonnet/opus based on task complexity. Enhancement: Formalize intent extraction as a structured routing schema: { issueType, complexity, domain, urgency, assignedTeam, estimatedAgents }. Run routing before any Jira operation to log routing decisions alongside issue history for analytics.

2. Planning

Relevance: Sprint planning, epic decomposition, and issue breakdown require hierarchical planning that mirrors Jira's own hierarchy (Epic → Story → Subtask). Current Implementation: /jira:prepare decomposes issues into subtasks with enriched acceptance criteria. /jira:sprint-plan generates capacity-aware sprint plans. /jira:release coordinates multi-project release planning. Enhancement: Adopt ReAct-style planning with explicit Thought → Action → Observation cycles logged to Temporal workflow state. Each planning decision references the Jira issue it modifies, creating a full audit trail.

3. Multi-Agent

Relevance: The 81-agent hierarchy — organized into 16 specialized teams — is the core architectural pattern. No single agent has sufficient context or authority to handle complex enterprise workflows alone. Current Implementation: Teams include Code Team (6 agents), QA Team (6 agents), Security Team (4 agents), DevOps Team (5 agents), Analytics Team (4 agents), and 11 additional specialized teams. Each team has a coordinator agent. Enhancement: Implement a Coordinator-of-Coordinators (CoC) pattern where team coordinators report status to a central orchestrator via the blackboard. The CoC resolves cross-team conflicts (e.g., QA blocking DevOps deploy) and escalates to HITL when consensus is not reached.

4. Memory Management

Relevance: Jira projects accumulate months of context — sprint history, team velocity, recurring bugs, architectural decisions — that must be retrievable across sessions. Current Implementation: Neon PostgreSQL stores persistent state; Redis caches active session data; knowledge-graph skill maps issue relationships. /cc-memory provides three-tier memory for Claude sessions. Enhancement: Implement a Jira-aware memory layer that indexes issue history by project key, team, epic, and recurring pattern type. When starting a new sprint, the memory agent surfaces: velocity trends, unresolved blockers from previous sprints, and recurring defect categories.

5. Reflection

Relevance: Code review loops, sprint retrospectives, and quality gate checks all require iterative improvement through structured self-critique. Current Implementation: /jira:review applies multi-agent code review with security, performance, and quality dimensions. /retro facilitates retrospective analysis. The cc-council pattern provides multi-perspective reflection. Enhancement: Add a Reflector agent to the Code Team that receives every PR diff and produces structured feedback: { correctness: score, security: score, style: score, critique: string[], suggestedRevisions: string[] }. Failed reviews automatically create child Jira issues with the critique embedded.

6. Parallelization

Relevance: Sub-issues within a sprint can be executed in parallel by independent agent teams. Sequential execution wastes velocity. Current Implementation: /jira:work orchestrates parallel sub-issue execution across agent teams. Temporal workflows manage parallel branch coordination with join synchronization. Enhancement: Implement a dependency graph extractor that reads Jira issue links (blocks/is-blocked-by) and fans out only independent issues. Blocked issues wait in a dependency queue rather than failing or stalling the orchestration.

7. Exception Handling

Relevance: Jira workflows involve external systems (Harness CI/CD, Atlassian APIs, Neon DB, Redis) — all of which can fail. Robust orchestration must recover without losing work. Current Implementation: Temporal workflows provide durable execution with automatic retry for transient failures. /jira:cancel saves checkpoint state. The self-healing protocol captures tool failures to lessons-learned. Enhancement: Build a typed ExceptionClassifier that categorizes failures: { type: 'api-timeout'|'auth-expired'|'conflict'|'validation', severity, recoveryStrategy }. Each failure type maps to a specific recovery playbook: retry with backoff, refresh OAuth token, resolve conflict with HITL, or escalate to team coordinator.

8. Human-in-the-Loop (HITL)

Relevance: Production deployments, release approvals, SLA escalations, and destructive Jira operations (bulk delete, board reset) require human sign-off. Current Implementation: /jira:approve manages approval workflows for PRs, deploys, and releases. Enterprise notification system routes approvals to Slack/Teams/email. SLA escalation paths include human escalation. Enhancement: Serialize agent state at every HITL checkpoint — the full context of what has been done, what is proposed next, and why. Present a human-readable summary with explicit approve/reject/modify options. On resume, inject the human's decision as a typed directive into the agent context.

9. Evaluation and Monitoring

Relevance: Agent trajectory quality, sprint velocity, SLA compliance, and code review effectiveness all need continuous measurement to drive improvement. Current Implementation: /jira:metrics generates real-time dashboards with SLA tracking. /jira:quality produces tech debt analysis. Session analytics track agent cost and token spend. Agent trajectory analysis is referenced in orchestration docs. Enhancement: Implement an Evaluator agent that scores each agent action in an orchestration run: { agentId, action, relevance, correctness, efficiency, score }. Aggregate scores per sprint to identify underperforming agents and trigger retraining or prompt revision.

10. Prioritization

Relevance: Backlog ordering, sprint candidate selection, and in-sprint issue sequencing all require principled prioritization that balances urgency, value, and effort. Current Implementation: /backlog-groom applies prioritization logic. /jira:sprint-plan uses capacity-aware scoring. /jira:intelligence provides AI-powered predictive prioritization. Enhancement: Formalize a Priority Score agent that computes (business_value × urgency) ÷ (effort × risk) for each issue using Jira field data. Re-score the entire backlog after each sprint close, incorporating velocity actuals and changed business context.

11. Goal Setting

Relevance: Sprint goals, release targets, and SLA objectives give agent teams a measurable north star. Without explicit goals, agents optimize locally at the expense of team outcomes. Current Implementation: Sprint goals are referenced in /jira:sprint and /jira:release. SLA targets drive /jira:sla monitoring. Portfolio objectives are tracked in /jira:portfolio. Enhancement: Formalize a Goal object at sprint start: { sprintGoal: string, successCriteria: string[], keyMetrics: { velocity, defectRate, slaCompliance }, deadline: date }. The Evaluator checks goal progress after each daily sync and surfaces blockers to the Coordinator.

Pattern Interaction Map

Incoming Jira Request
        │
        ▼
    [Routing] ──────────────────────────────────┐
        │                                        │
        ▼                                        ▼
  [Goal Setting] ←── [Prioritization]   [Memory Management]
        │                                        │
        ▼                                        │
    [Planning] ──────────────────────────────────┤
        │                                        │
        ▼                                        │
  [Parallelization] ──→ [Multi-Agent (81 agents)]│
        │                      │                 │
        │              [A2A via Blackboard]      │
        │                      │                 │
        ▼                      ▼                 │
  [Exception Handling]   [Reflection] ←──────────┘
        │                      │
        ▼                      ▼
      [HITL] ←── [Evaluation & Monitoring]
        │                      │
        └──────────────────────┘
                   │
            [Feedback Loop]
         (Retrospective → Backlog)

Key Synergies

• Routing + Prioritization: Route only after priority is established so the highest-value work reaches agents first
• Multi-Agent + Exception Handling: Team coordinators handle intra-team exceptions; CoC handles cross-team conflicts
• Memory + Planning: Historical velocity and defect data inform sprint capacity planning
• Reflection + Goal Setting: Retrospective reflection updates next sprint's goal criteria
• Parallelization + Evaluation: Score parallel branches independently so the best approach wins

Quick Reference: Pattern → Command Mapping

Pattern	Primary Command	Jira Entity
Routing	/jira:triage	Issue classification
Planning	/jira:prepare, /jira:sprint-plan	Epic/Story/Subtask
Multi-Agent	/jira:work, /jira:orchestrate-advanced	81-agent teams
Memory	/jira:setup (Neon/Redis)	Cross-session state
Reflection	/jira:review, /retro	PR review, retrospective
Parallelization	/jira:work	Sub-issue fan-out
Exception Handling	/jira:cancel + Temporal	Workflow recovery
HITL	/jira:approve	Deploy/release approval
Evaluation	/jira:metrics, /jira:quality	Sprint/agent scoring
Prioritization	/backlog-groom, /jira:intelligence	Backlog ordering
Goal Setting	/jira:sprint, /jira:release	Sprint/release goals

References

• Gulli, A. & Sauco, M. (2025). Agentic Design Patterns. O'Reilly Media.
• Repository: github.com/Mathews-Tom/Agentic-Design-Patterns
• Atlassian Jira REST API: developer.atlassian.com/cloud/jira/platform/rest/v3/
• Temporal Workflow Docs: docs.temporal.io
• Related Skills: skills/structured-reasoning/SKILL.md, skills/sprint-intelligence/SKILL.md