Has Jira work management now merged with Jira software?

Question

We have both a Jira (Software) and JWM installed but understand they have merged. I am trying to understand what this means exactly.

For example:-

How do users of one, say business users relate to users of the other, say the software development team. I am not talking about in user admin but when using the product.

How are releases dealt with. Does a ton of Software specific functionality start to show up for work management users.

Do JWM users now have access to multiple boards, non kanban boards and swimlanes?

I have many other questions but not seen clear explanations of the differences and the impact of merging in practical user and interface terms.

What does this mean for existing projects on. each, and what does ir mean for new projects?

Is this properly documented anywhere?

Any guidance appreciated.

Andy Heinzer · Answer

Hi @EnEm

Jira Work Management (JWM) is being unified with Jira.  This means that Atlassian will no longer be offering new JWM subscriptions

https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/jira-work-management#jira-work-management

Jira Work Management subscriptions can no longer be purchased. However, you can still access Jira Work Management features by purchasing a Jira subscription, and existing Jira Work Management subscriptions can be renewed up to the migration period to Jira (October 29, 2024 through December 13, 2024).

In the end, once the JWM license on your site has expired, those users will have to instead be licensed under the Jira product going forward.   I can see you appear to be on the free plan for both Jira and JWM at the present time.  But I can't see how many users you might have in each.  On the free plan both products are limited to just 10 users.  If you have a total of 20 different users, then eventually up to half of these would need to gain a Jira license to continue to use that product.

As for your other questions, many of the features of Jira (previously known as Jira Software) included the use of Agile boards (Kanban and Scrum), and agile reporting.  While it is possible for you to grant permissions to JWM users to see issues in those projects, those JWM users are not expected to have access to things like Agile reports or Agile boards like Jira users have.

Moving forward all users will be under a single product, Jira, and in turn they will have the product functionality of both JWM and Jira.

Jack Brickey · Answer

I will see if I can get someone from Atlassian to chime in. There could be better info out there.

EnEm · Answer

Thanks for the reply @Jack Brickey I have read as much as I can find on this before posting and will keep looking.

Is the difference now simply based on what project template you choose?

It all seems quite a puzzle and not just to me! As far as I can see it really is not clearly explained by Atlassian anywhere and out-of-date docs (from what I can see) don’t help.

We are now going to look for an Atlassian partner to help, but I would not expect to have to do this for software of this kind, being evaluated by an experienced software implementation team (even if not experienced with JWM). We are also going to review alternatives to Jira for work management, which is a pity.