RANEPA experience: How the Academy migrated to Yandex Tracker in just 7 days

In April 2022, the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) successfully migrated all its software development-related activities from Atlassian Jira to Yandex Tracker. The new system adopted over 12,000 issues from across 25 queues. The migration also included integration with Active Directory, enabling seamless user authentication. For each queue, the migration team configured tailored workflows, with certain queues covered with visual representation using Agile boards.

The entire migration from Jira to Yandex Tracker was completed within seven days. Due to this move, RANEPA keeps advancing its software development operations, now on a domestic platform that offers broad scalability options combined with flexible customization capabilities.

One of Russia’s largest higher education institutions, RANEPA also serves as a leading research and development center in economics, management, social sciences, and humanities. The Academy comprises 47 regional branches, where more than 230,000 students are currently enrolled, offering over 4,000 educational programs through both degree-granting and continuing education formats.

The Academy’s entire educational process is fully automated: a proprietary 1C-based solution facilitates managing academic activities, from admission applications to issuing official graduation documents. This comprehensive automated system is integrated with the Academy’s digital services, website, document management system, and other in-house information systems, as well as country-wide platforms.

Previously, the Academy’s software development team used Atlassian Jira to manage and enhance these systems. However, the Academy’s management team decided to switch to a Russian-made alternative offering the same features and performance without disrupting the existing work principles.

The search was focused on finding a Russian system that could natively support development automation, offer a UI/UX similar to Jira, operate in the cloud, provide an accessible API, and ensure high-quality technical support.

Yandex Tracker met all these requirements. It delivers features comparable to Jira, includes an API for task management and data import, supports low-code customization, and offers out-of-the-box integration with Active Directory and other services for single sign-on (SSO).

In this migration, the Academy decided to rely entirely on its in-house staff, without any external contractors involved. Thanks to the team’s strong development experience, they were able to leverage the built-in APIs of both systems, Jira and Yandex Tracker, and develop custom handlers to bridge any functional gaps.

The first step involved exporting all data from Jira into an XML file. This included all projects and queues, issues, comments, and other related information. Once exported, the data was sorted and imported into a MySQL database for further processing. Next, the team manually created the appropriate queues in Yandex Tracker with matching keys. They mapped statuses and components accordingly, set up wokflows for each queue, and configured custom fields. At this point, the system had all required structural elements, but no actual data yet.

The second stage consisted in using the Yandex Tracker API to import all data from MySQL into the new system. They matched user accounts and configured Active Directory federation for SSO authentication. Access to the system was enabled in two ways: via internal email using SSO, and through accounts in the yandex.ru domain, reserved to external contractors.

Each queue retained its own set of workflows that had originally been defined in Jira. One of the core advantages implemented in Yandex Tracker is developing new features in the existing products.

When a request for a new feature comes in, from either business units or technical support, a new issue is created in Tracker. The analytics department gets involved, holds meetings with stakeholders, and develops a specification directly within the issue card. They allocate resources, set deadlines, and finally move the issue to Backlog. From there, the status progresses to To Do, then to In Progress. The issue gets assigned to developers from one or multiple teams, and the work starts. Once the feature is ready, the issue gets moved to Testing. Depending on the results, it either goes back for fixes or proceeds to the Release stage, where it waits for deployment.

More complex issues are grouped into epics and broken down into versions. The path to resolution can vary: for example, testing may be handled internally by the team or outsourced to contractors.

The entire process, from exporting the data dump, configuring the system, to transferring all information, took the team just seven days. The original data dump was around 3 GB, covering 15 queues and approximately 10,000 issues.

Following the migration to Yandex Tracker, RANEPA now has a fully functional system for managing its software development workflows. More than 60 users, including in-house staff and external contractors, are actively using the platform, with over 12,000 issues distributed across 25 queues.

The Academy has implemented requirement management within Yandex Tracker; a requirement is a distinct issue type created by analysts or project managers. These represent requests for modifications or new developments from in-house stakeholders.

For this specific issue type, the Academy team delivered and configured a dedicated workflow and status model, while Yandex Forms for Business and triggers that generate checklists helped them automate the requirement creation process.

Based on these defined requirements, actual development issues are then created.

Using Yandex Tracker, the Academy both maintains the existing services and creates new digital solutions, such as educational programs under the Russian National Demography Project and an online university for public employees. Also, RANEPA’s educational initiatives allow citizens to enroll in re-skilling programs remotely or develop in-demand qualifications completely free of charge. A team of 25 developers and engineers worked on the technology stack for these projects, completing more than 1,000 tasks. The entire development cycle was managed within Yandex Tracker, with the requirement management feature shaping the workflow significantly more synchronized and transparent.

Beyond the core features currently in use, the Academy also expects to introduce automatic deadline setting, based on task complexity.