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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

Comments

Admin (Jira)

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

Shai Gilboa_8ate5r

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_8t6buy

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.

Alae Loudiyi

Fully aligned with the project terminology.

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_nj7ooo

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

Liz 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.

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.

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.

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.

Sara Chieco_4ollu1

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.

Keith Jones_j90l63

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

If there was a way to make things worse that’d be it. Everything under one app, all called Spaces. As if people wouldn’t have something in Jira and Confluence currently with the same names. 😆

Chris Bezile

Definitely agree! We use Projects in Jira. Confluence has spaces. It's ok they are different. I'm sure some thought goes into change, however often it feels like things work perfectly fine, but are then changed just for the sake of doing something different. Please stop.

Imrul Afshyn

hear ! hear !

Rick Westbrock

I am with you here, for example a team might have a project to upgrade Windows 10 computers to Windows 11 but they are tracking the work in the Desktop Support space in Jira.

In the past we have had users confused about the Jira term "project" because they assumed it meant a time or goal bound project in the project management sense instead of what it really meant: a "container" with issues and configurations.

I have disagreed with some of the terminology changes made by Atlassian recently (e.g. issue -> work item) but I'm on board with the change to Jira spaces.

Michiel SCHUIJER

Also I don't agree with your opinion that Atlassian should revert back to the name Project. Sure, I was used to the name, but the confusion it brought was just as undesired. As some people mentioned in the comments here, which project a project was in, was a common confusion, as well as people believing a board was the thing containing the issues work items.

Some people in organisations I worked in already called them spaces or buckets, and the times I had to explain that a Jira Project was a collection of 'issues', which was also a confusing term, was tiresome. Issue sounds like a problem, ticket like a helpdesk, while mostly the 'items' people wanted to capture were about some type of work someone was trying to capture, so "work item" isn't so bad in my view. I've had many occasions where people wanted a project in Jira, for just a short project, because of the name, while this project could have easily be captured in an existing 'space' that team already worked in. Creating and managing all these projects was a huge burden on everyone. Even Team-managed doesn't solve the overhead, it just distracts from it somewhat imho.

Hence, I am pretty happy with the change from issue to work item, and space isn't a giant leap for me either, but I'd rather have chosen "Workspace" instead of space, because this type of space is meant for work, which is different than Confluence, where it represents a Space for Content, or Site perhaps.

So, work items are collected in a work space, right? Why not call it workspace then?

The new navigation has been the hardest for me to get used to, but here I have to admit as well that the top navigation was not sufficient any more either, with the expansion of menus due to features and apps, and the "More" menu option just didn't cut it. Also for this, many times people came to ask where something had gone, because they didn't understand it had gone into the "More" menu, or some browsers didn't render that option properly. Especially people working with small laptop screens didn't have a good menu experience, while this is solved with the new nav.

That's my view, based on my experience though.

Rick Westbrock

Workspace is a great idea! Too bad that ship has sailed though.

michelle_bachmann

I completely agree that the change doesn't make any sense!

For years, I have been explaining to new adopters the differences between the tools, how they work, and potential use cases. Jira Spaces have a completely different functionality and purpose than Confluence Spaces. So now, the same name is more confusing.

"Create a Jira for that" or "You'll need a Confluence to manage that" is the only way to clearly define the tools now. Sure Atlassian, you've made it so much simpler and cleared up any confusion.

Imrul Afshyn

Fully agree with you.

And, I do not believe that Atlassian have run trial of these steps themselves.

To Create the project that is now labelled as Space, someone has to go to 'Jira Work Management' ;
and then select the Template for 'Project Management'.
Clicking Ok, someone expecting this to show up as a Project, but only to their dismay (and in the middle of a very busy day), they will find this under new category called Space.

They do not seem to understand that, it is okay to have different names for different Platforms & Templates. They love Confluence so much, they could keep loving it, keep using their terms there.

Lets think this way, if Atlassian love United States and Australia so much, would they now start renaming France and Germany after these countries ?

Atlassian like over-complicating things so much that, they had to create an Atlassian University and Atlassian Degrees to make people understand what they have done with different things. Most People are simply trying to get some work done.

Microsoft Planner looks lot better, like many other alternative platforms currently out in the market. And they did not have to create Universities and degrees for using it.

Going back to the Terminologies,

Imagine, someone saying that they are working on Space. A lot might confuse that for Space Tech/Industry and ask them, so are you supplying to/working for NASA, Blue Origin or SpaceX ?

In a few months, Atlassian may also call one of their platforms as Doors and then start confusing all the Systems Engineers. Because these Engineers already use a systems integration platform called DOORS

Just keep things simple, Atlassian !

And If you have Too Much Resource, just go and Develop something that would help easily Train Doctors & Nurses. Most hospitals in the world are struggling.

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