Please change Space Back to "Project" on Jira Work/Project Management; and User Interface

[Imrul Afshyn]

Hi Jira Development Team,

Hope you are well. I have some feedback for your team.

Please change the name of Space back to "Project" on Jira Work Management / Jira Project Management 

• Terminologies matter.
• We do Project Management, Not something called Space Management.
• Using the term, Space, could work for your other platforms but not for Work or Project Management.
• When Project teams work on fast paced Project and Program Management environment, they are not going to look for Space and Space filters.  They will be looking for Projects and Project Filters.

Please think about the International Project Management community, not just one specific Country or Region, when you make these decisions and spend money & time to materialise these changes.

You do not need to Change things just for the sake of it or to validate addition of a new team at your end.

The new User Interface is also very poorly laid out at the Top and Left Panes. They were very good previously for people accessing Jira Clouds on Laptops.

• A lot of Project Managers are always on the go. 
• They will need to be able to use Jira Cloud from different locations.
• Please change the Top Pane back to the way it was, when filters, dashboards and Project could all be accessed from the Top Pane

Thank you.

Imrul Afshyn

Program Lead

WASP Ltd, Collins Aerospace

[Admin _Jira_]

Absolutely agree with you! Project is understandable and more convenient for our jobs. 

[Shai Gilboa]

Second that. 

[Herman Zuurhout]

Agreed, we have IT PROJECTS in jira not IT Spaces.

[Jean Gordon]

Totally agree.

It seems that Atlassian dont have a clue on why or how their customers use Jira for projects.

The terminology of Space is not used in any of the qualifications/certificates for Testing or Project management so it is definitely a strange term. I wonder if their pants AI Rovo thought of it.

In the context of agile development, SPACE stands for Satisfaction and well-being, Performance, Activity, Communication and collaboration and Efficiency and flo.

[Graham Douglas]

I'll be honest, I disagree. For me 'Projects' was more mis-leading than 'Spaces'. A project is one use of a 'Space', but not the only one. Maybe having the name configurable for an instance? I also prefer the new user interface

[Dusty Brossart]

I completely agree. Of all the users and admins I've chatted with, both the new navigation renaming of Projects have been very poorly received. I'm not sure what focus groups Atlassian used to decide these changes were a good idea, but they are clearly out of touch with the majority of the user base. 

[John Funk]

Dude, this is not going to change. I like the Project name better, too. But let's face it, Project is not an accurate way to describe it either. A project by definition has an identified start and end date. Nowhere can you do that with a Project/Space - never could. But you can do that with Epics. So Epics more accurately operate like Projects. And Spaces (now) operate more like a Product or a Team in nature. It never ends until it ends and is no longer needed. My two cents, but my suggestion is to get used to it and adapt in this case. 

[Nar Kumar C_ - Narva Software]

Hey John,

You finally made me understand why Project term was removed, which Atlassian failed to explain in simple term like you just did.

[Denise Prickett]

@John Funk Logical argument about Project/Space, thanks. Reminder that Epics are no longer called "epics" though :wink

[Elizabeth Nixon]

Light bulb moment!

@John Funk , thank you so much for your clear explanation of project/space. I totally agree with @Nar Kumar C_ - Narva Software. I don't believe that Atlassian ever discussed the change in this way. And while a wish the change wasn't made, I also accepted that the change would not be reverted. Though I do wonder how much time and money was spent to make the change because it feels somewhat trivial.

It's true, folks. It won't change back (the terminology or the navigation), so I recommend that everyone adapt and move on.

[John Funk]

Thanks everyone for you kind words and I am glad it was able to help bring a little clarity. 

[Alae Loudiyi]

Fully aligned with the project terminology.

[Robert Konopka]

DISAGREE, A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. It can involve anything from the glamorous events of Fashion Week to humanitarian aid efforts overseas. More specifically, a project is a series of structured tasks, activities, and deliverables that are carefully executed to achieve a desired outcome.

[Tim Eddelbüttel]

I think everyone would partially agree that project can often be mixed in the sense of project management where it has a fixed end. But project was still more on point then spaces. Spaces is related to Confluence and not Jira. 

The term project was needed to be moved because they didn't found a proper name for Goals, etc. https://support.atlassian.com/platform-experiences/docs/follow-goals-projects-teams-and-topics/

But anyway, "spaces" in Jira is confusing. Specially with the new navigation i'm often not sure if i'm currently in Jira or Confluence.

[Keith Jones]

I'm glad that they moved away from Project - it was always confusing to talk about which Project the Project was in. I suspect that eventually we'll see Jira and Confluence as a single application - hence the move to Spaces. 

[Norm Lee]

So Jira is a project management tool yet they don't want to call them "Projects" and decides to use "Spaces" which is what Confluence also uses. Meanwhile, JQL hasn't changed and you still need to user "Project =" to reference the Space you need.

If you're going to make changes, don't do it half way and don't pick a name that another one of your products are using.

Regardless of what people feel is the definition of project, it's the execution that is the fail here and confusing to users.

[Sara Chieco]

AGREED.

[Gary W Alvord]

While "Project" has always been confusing to those Processes we run in Jira, Spaces is so much worse! It took me a bit to realize I was still in Jira and not in Confluence. Maybe we could choose to have multiple categories of projects: Projects, Processes, Products, .... but Spaces is the worst! At least they avoided the dreaded word "Schemes!" (with a nod to my UKish colleagues)

[Anne Saunders]

It took a couple years for them to change it back the last time they tried this nonsense. I'm not holding out as much hope this time.

[Imrul Afshyn]

Atlassian needed to take a deeper look into the Philosophy of Change Management. 

This Organisation has become too big to hold on to a Plot that make sense.

It is turning into a Tragedy. And lot of people will leave this platform when they see it is not adding the kind of value it was supposed to.

[Susheela.Kushwaha]

I completely agree with you. As a Jira admin, I find that we also struggle to explain to end users why these changes are occurring. We receive many complaints and expressions of frustration from users in our organization. The previous top navigation was sleek and user-friendly. If Atlassian is trying to optimize screen space, they could have made the top navigation bar collapsible, similar to the menu options in the classic ribbon style of Word or Excel. The new left navigation is confusing and not user-friendly.

The term "Space" has not yet been rolled out on our Jira production site, but I can already imagine the chaos it will cause.

Please, I urge you to roll these changes back to the original design.

[Nathan Panuco]

+1 Please change this back - I can't imagine why someone thought this was necessary. I wonder if any actual customers were consulted on this change. 

I've got a JSM space called Technical Support. I also have a Confluence Space called Technical Support. I now have to add the word "Jira" or "Confluence" onto any mentions of these to designate if I'm talking about the Confluence Space or the JSM Space.