Good Morning Jira guys and gals. Did you have fun at Unleash? Unfortunately, I couldn’t catch all of it live, as this little girl decided it was an excellent time to get sick enough to warrant a visit to the vet.
She’s doing better now, and thankfully Atlassian lets us watch the keynote on Replay. And to be honest, it looked like everyone was having a blast over in Berlin. A suggestion, Atlassian – consider Atlanta next time? I mean, even the first four letters agree!
So, what did Atlassian “unleash” on the world while in Berlin? What looks like it’s set to take over the world, and what looks like it’s meh? Let’s dig into that today!
Jira Product Discovery
Atlassian announced Jira Product Discovery would soon be generally available on Jira Cloud. If JPD sounds familiar, I wrote about it a few months back when it entered Beta. It continues Atlassian’s trend of “Jira, but for,” this time including Product and Project Managers.
As part of JPD, you can not only list ideas for new features and development but also solicit feedback (in the form of votes and comments) from those on the frontline with customers – sales and support. This means that work that most directly benefits your customers should bubble up to the top – fairly important when deciding what to work on next.
You can also include information like Goals, Effort, and Impact to help further narrow down the stack of work into that elusive next big thing. The most exciting part of this Atlassian shared was the ability to include “Excel-like” formulas in a Custom Formula Field. Calculated fields have been popular features in several Apps in the Atlassian Marketplace, so it’s interesting to see them add the feature to the core product. Of course, I’d like to see if they include these calculated fields in more things – like Jira Software and JWM – as that could make for some interesting decisions down the road.
Another feature I mentioned last October that I think is still a game-changer is the Matrix View, which lets you compare different measurements against each other – like Impact vs. Effort shown below. Based on the screenshots shared, it looks like you can compare any two of these “Rating” fields against each other using this view.
But a plan in a vacuum is nothing, so Atlassian also included a way for you to put together a real-time roadmap that you can share with stakeholders. Which, if I might add, is Atlassian’s third attempt after Portfolio and Advanced Roadmaps (for Jira Cloud). And yes, I know Portfolio is now also called Advanced Roadmaps and shares many features with its Cloud Counterpart, but I’ve still been around long enough to remember when they were two distinct products.
One thing Atlassian pointed out is that you don’t even have to be a Jira user to see the Roadmap, just have access to the Public Share link. I’m of two minds about this. Every additional user is an additional cost in Jira Cloud, so I’m estactic I don’t have to support that extra cost just to allow someone to see a roadmap. But I’ve worked with several companies now that value secrecy in their development process, either as a means to limit competition or to preserve that “Surprise” and “Wow Factor” at a launch or announcement. Usually a combination thereof. So having your roadmap accessible by a link that can be so easily shared would probably be a massive no-no there. This is a feature I hope they allow Admins to turn off to prevent users from doing this.
Then there is the timeline view. This is how my team’s PMs like to view their pipeline, so I already know this would be a hit with them.
Lastly, Atlassian showed how the Goals shown on JPD can role up into Atlas, as will every Jira Product used by your organization…eventually.
Jira Work Management…for Free?
Next up, Atlassian announced something strange. They announced that Jira Work Management is free…
Well, that’s not the news. It’s been free if you have a valid JSW or JSM license since it was first introduced. The part that caught my attention was it was free until 2024, which strikes me as a rather cheeky way of announcing they will eventually charge for JWM and trying to pretend it’s good news because they aren’t doing so immediately. In fact, when they announced it, they almost said, “I hear you all chatting; I hope it’s about the fact that you never have to spend – not never, through 2024 – have to spend another penny on additional project management software for your management teams.”
Dark Theme for Jira
Not much to say here I haven’t already said on Twitter:
Project Template Gallery
I’m probably most excited about this. When Atlassian first interviewed me about what would become Jira Work Management, I let them know about this idea I had for a Project Configuration Repository where teams could submit their project designs and let others download and inject them directly into Jira for use.
This got a start within JWM, but it seems Atlassian is finally coming full circle, and I couldn’t be happier to see it come to fruition.
Progressive Delivery
If you’ve ever been a part of a software release, you know to call it “hectic” is an understatement. There’s a lot that needs to be done, and even more that needs to be tracked. Atlassian apparently has seen this, and gave us a single pane with which to have our “Go/No-Go” decisions.
I’d personally want to play with this a bit before I make any judgments. What every team needs before release will be individual to the team, so my hope is Atlassian has made this flexible enough that we can customize it. That being said, I do love the idea, and am eager to get a chance to look at it further.
One thing I do love is that you can still have Jira generate your release notes. A major pet peeve of mine is when a software company does a release, and their only release note is “general improvements” or similar. But, it appears this feature has been beefed up a bit, so no one has any excuse anymore.
So, what do you think?
Do any of the announcements make you excited? Are you already playing around or implementing anything from Unleash? I want to hear about it! Be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts either here or on social media. I definitely have a few I’m interested in, and might make a post or two on them based on what I find.
In speaking of Social media, you can find my links on my Linktree. Be sure to like, comment, and share, as it helps more people discover the content here. I’ve also started cross-posting my articles on LinkedIn, so you can get your TJG fix without leaving LinkedIn!
You can also subscribe below to get new posts delivered directly to your inbox. It’s yet another way you can guarantee you won’t miss a new post from me.
But until next time, my name is Rodney, asking, “Have you updated your Jira Issues today?”
The Jira Guy 