For Technical Writer / Documentation Specialists ·
What you'll accomplish
By the end of this guide, you'll have a repeatable workflow that converts your sprint's JIRA tickets into polished, customer-facing release notes in under 20 minutes — replacing a 2-hour manual process.
What you'll need
You need the tickets in text form — not screenshots.
From JIRA:
Alternatively: Select all completed ticket titles in the sprint view, copy them, and paste as plain text.
Quick method: Run the JIRA query project = YOUR_PROJECT AND sprint = [sprint name] AND status = Done in JIRA Issues and copy the ticket list from the results.
What you should see: A list of 10-40 ticket titles and descriptions that represent your sprint's completed work. Troubleshooting: If tickets have too much technical jargon, that's fine — Claude is good at translating developer-speak.
Create a standard prompt you'll reuse every sprint. Customize the CCFR format and your header style:
Convert these JIRA tickets into customer-facing release notes for [Product Name] version [X.X.X].
Format:
## What's New
[New features — what users can now do]
## Improvements
[Enhancements to existing features]
## Bug Fixes
[Issues that were resolved]
## Deprecations
[Anything being removed or changed]
Rules:
- Plain language — no technical jargon
- Focus on what the user can DO, not how we built it
- Each item: one clear sentence, present tense ("You can now...", "Fixed an issue where...")
- Skip internal tickets (database migrations, refactoring, infrastructure changes) unless they affect users
Tickets: [paste JIRA tickets here]
Save this template in a document so you can paste it quickly each sprint.
What you should see: A formatted release notes section with tickets sorted into appropriate categories, rewritten in plain language.
Review the output for:
Expect to spend 10-15 minutes editing — not rewriting.
For major releases, you want a short highlight at the top. Ask Claude:
From these release notes, which 1-2 items are most impactful for end users? Write a 2-sentence summary of what's new in this release that I can use as an introduction.
Release notes: [paste your release notes draft]
What you should see: A brief, non-technical summary of the most important things in the release — suitable for an email announcement or in-app notification.
What you should see: A polished release notes page ready for the engineering or PM sign-off step.
Standard sprint release notes:
Convert these JIRA tickets into customer-facing release notes. Group: New Features, Improvements, Bug Fixes. Plain language, no jargon. [paste tickets]
Single feature announcement:
Write a release note for this new feature: [describe feature]. Include: what users can do now, how to access it, and whether any action is required.
What changed summary (for in-app notification):
Write a 2-sentence "What's new" notification for users based on these release notes: [paste notes]. Max 50 words. Friendly tone.
Technical to plain translation:
Rewrite this technical change log in plain language for end users. Focus on what they can do or what's better, not how it was built. [paste technical log]
Breaking changes section:
Write a "Breaking Changes" section for these items that require user action: [list changes]. Include: what changed, what users need to do, deadline if any.