Atlassian fix Jira 'issues'

Plus new navigation, customisable templates, and more

Jira works on its ‘issues’… issue / atlassian.com

Every product team’s favourite platform is out there makin’ moves.

Atlassian just wrapped up their yearly conference and we’ve got new templates, new features, and new products to discover. I recommend watching the conference highlights.

Atlassian’s all grown up

Before diving into Jira specifically, it’s worth highlighting the slew of products parent company Atlassian has added to the stack:

  • Rovo (you must read this name in an Australian accent to get the full effect), an AI assistant that helps you search through company data, automate repetitive tasks, and solve complex problems. Rovo had been in Beta since May 2024.

  • Dev agents, an AI assistant for… devs. These agents can write code, review code, generate PRs, and more. Dev agents are currently in Beta.

  • Focus, an enterprise strategy planning product aimed at aligning the entire company under clear goals.

And… Jira!

The new Jira is here

And the vision is clear: Jira is no longer just for product people.

[Jira is] a shared place for every team to align on goals and priorities, track and collaborate on work, and get the insights they need to build something incredible, together.

Dave Meyer, Head of Product at Jira

Ok, so what’s new exactly?

Jira is broadening its capabilities to become suitable for any team. This means more customisable navigation, better search, projects, goals, fancy backgrounds, and more.

Custom Jira background / atlassian.com

They’ve also gotten rid of ‘issues’, a long-standing (and sometimes controversial) name for any Jira task. You can now give your issues a different name such as Task, Launch, or… Issue.

Will the word ‘backlog’ get the boot next?

Finally, Jira are also launching custom project templates. Pre-configured workflows, fields, permissions, etc. can be scaled across multiple teams or projects easily (another clever way to encourage non-product teams to use and scale with Jira).

With custom project templates, it’s easy to scale processes you want to standardize – from marketing campaigns, to HR onboarding processes, and more.

Dave Meyer, Head of Product at Jira

Of course, no 2024 product announcement would be complete without a healthy sprinkle of AI:

  • Highlight a piece of text and turn it into an issue in a single click, thanks to AI.

  • Extract tasks from Loom videos, thanks to AI.

  • Break a large piece of work down into management tasks, thanks to… AI.

Finally, once your SLT has wrapped up all their fancy goals for the year using Atlassian’s new Focus product (see above), you get to be reminded of these goals everywhere you look:

Company goals visible in Jira / atlassian.com