How does the Jira Product Discovery team work?

[#1]

Hi everyone!

A few of you asked how we work and how we use the product. We plan to communicate more around that in the future. In the meantime, I've recorded a Loom to take you through all this. It's a bit long (23min) but it tries to go through:

• How the team is set up
• The rituals we have
• Where we get feedback from
• How we use Jira Product Discovery
• How we communicate progress to the rest of Atlassian

As with everything like that: it works for us, but it doesn't mean it'll work for you of course. 

Cheers,

Tanguy

[Martin]

Très intéressant Tanguy. This brings me a few ideas and use case in our environment. Thanks for sharing.

[Sara Di Meglio]

Thanks for sharing! Would love to see how you use JPD for the link with Delivery also :) 

[Chris Timms]

@Tanguy Crusson thanks for the video. It looks like you have some very strong feedback loops set up. It was especially validating to see someone caveat their roadmap commitments 19 times a video like I do!

Regards,

- C

[Tanguy Crusson]

@Sara Di Meglio we actually don't 🙂

Here's how we do it instead: https://www.loom.com/share/ef09e4f455264e3d8d7f7a22c30a8ebf 

[Sara Di Meglio]

@Tanguy Crusson Thanks a lot, that's super interesting,

What we are missing in our team that you describe in the Confluence page is the different milestones for the shipment of a feature. We use EPICs for that but I have been struggling to keep everyone aligned as they "are just" issues linked into an EPIC 

So it helps a lot :) Merci encore!

[Tanguy Crusson]

@Sara Di Meglio Awesome, I'm glad that helps! yeah the problem is it's an infinite game of nesting tasks if you want to capture everything, and that slows everything right down, plus you don't know everything upfront anyway. Once you let go of that and agree on what you're trying to accomplish instead, and review this together frequently using super small increments, I found that everything gets much easier, and that you can move MUCH faster (and it's painfully obvious when things are slow). 

[Jan-Hendrik Spieth]

@Tanguy CrussonI totally dig getting such insights into your work. One of the best things about many of your posts and loom sessions is that we see actual work data (?), so things feel totally "real". Thanks for being so transparent! :-)

Questions:

• So you really ignore the status system field, and workflow, completely? Doesn't that feel "strange", as it's so prominently displayed in the idea screen/sidebar?
• Do you make use of the Jira integration? And if so, do you wire up phase and Jira status, or is that just a totally separate thing?

[Tanguy Crusson]

Thanks @Jan-Hendrik Spieth . One of Atlassian's stated values, and one of the two I value the most - alongside "be the change you seek" - is "open company, no bullshit". Basically: I don't ask myself "should I share this?" But "is there any reason I shouldn't?". This is what makes this place pretty special to me (I've tried quite a few other companies before, the culture couldn't compare).

On to your questions:

1. The reason we have the status field there, and added by default in the template (you can remove it) is because it's very familiar to Jira users. I personally think strict workflows have no place in a PM's discovery and roadmapping tool. I find status useful for engineering work in Jira Software, as long as it's automated (feature branches, status syncing based on pull request status, VSCode integration with Jira, feature flag integrations, etc) so as not to burden engineers, because I know when I can test stuff, and when I can announce that something is ready to users. PM work is not as predictable, it's chaotic, we're not building bridges, we deal with uncertainty all day long. The answer, to me, is not to make it look predictable, it is to embrace it. I actually look at formula fields (very popular!) with a lot of skepticism as well, for this reason. This tweet is tweet of the year for me: https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1639675283593900032?s=20
2. We don't use the Jira integration - see the Loom I shared earlier in the comment thread about that (I show what we use instead)

I recognize that this seem a bit strange, the reason we built Jira Product Discovery this way is we recognize every PM, company and their collaboration culture, are different. So we built many features we would never use (sometimes with a very strong "no way"), and let you create your project to match your environment. The timeline view is a good example, my initial position was "over my dead body". But then, it made sense for the customers who convinced me I was wrong, for them - not for time based roadmap communication, but for prioritization discussions that take time into account, and need a visual way to do so.