A sneak peek into how we are making it easier to work across business projects

[#1]

Hi everyone,

We know it's common in business teams (like many other teams), to work across multiple projects at one time. Some people have even told us that the number of projects they are working on at any one time is in the double digits! This can lead to a number of different challenges, such as context switching, time management and prioritisation of the tasks you need to get done.

In Jira Work Management, we have been exploring this problem space and have a number of upcoming changes planned that will make it easier for you to navigate between and see work across your multiple business projects.

There are three main updates that I wanted to share:

Multiple business projects from the sidebar (currently rolling out)

We want to make it quick and easy to switch between your projects from within Jira Work Management. We have started rolling out a change so you will be able to navigate between business projects from the product sidebar. Up to 10 business projects will appear in this sidebar, with a link to the project page to find additional projects. These projects will be ordered by recency (the most recent project you have accessed will appear at the top of the list) and you can click on each project avatar to expand/collapse the side menu.

For more information, view our support documentation here.

The project view navigation will be moving (in development)

Following this release, we will be making another change to the sidebar. The sidebar menu items (including Summary, List, Board, Calendar, Timeline, Forms, Issues, Reports, Project Settings and any shortcuts or Apps you have set-up), which will now be sitting under each individual project, will move to horizontal tabs above your project view. Participants we user-tested this with found the design intuitive and familiar.

We know this is a big change to the navigation of business projects and hope that once you have adjusted to this pattern, that it will be quicker and easier for you to not only navigate between projects, but the views within those projects.

Cross project views (in exploration)

We know that getting a helicopter view of projects is important. In order to help solve for this, we are currently exploring cross project views, which would enable you to select one or more projects from within a Jira Work Management view. If you are interested in participating in user testing some prototypes for this feature, please reach out in the comments below.

We hope that these changes can make your day to day project and work management a little bit easier. Please comment below with any feedback or questions - we would love to hear what you think!

[Rachael Spalliera]

These would be much appreciated changes! Especially not having the Board view as the default for business projects. It would also be great if we could see tasks nested under their Epics in the Timeline view (like in the List view now)

[Loretta Brunette]

thanks for the feedback @Rachael Spalliera . Although having the ability to change the default from the board view is not planned as part of the above releases, the behaviour for clicking across projects will change. If for example, you select "list" in the top project view navigation, when you click to another project, you will also land on the list view. 

[Pedro Silva]

Hi.

Thanks for sharing this.

My company had been an early adopter of new Jira features. Until a few months ago, I was an active member of a Jira Product Discussion group where I had the opportunity to share my visions and experiences. 

For some reason I was removed from this group (probably because I was using a free license of Slack) and the person that joined me in the first place (Chase Wilson), left Atlassian in the meantime.

I would love to continue being part of the product discussion group and provide my contribution if possible.

There were several features that I proposed before, that I can see now flowing into the product and that's awesome.

Thanks.

Pedro

[David Morgan]

Interested to know more about the development of cross project views @Loretta Brunette - is there any news on this?

[Loretta Brunette]

Hi @David Morgan - we are actually user testing two concepts at the moment for this and will be moving to development once finalised. Let me know if you would be interested in participating in some user testing!

[Marion Richardson]

I'd like to be kept informed also. Any early development testing for improvements to Business project would be useful. This way I can communicate this to my company internally without them getting 'surprise' changes. Thank you.

[David Morgan]

@Loretta Brunette more than happy to assist, of course depending on how much time is required! Can you DM on this platform!?

[Ruvi Pitiyarachchi]

Hi all,

I’m Loretta’s design counterpart that will be running the research into this topic. If you’re interested, I would love to invite you to take part in an upcoming customer research study!

What’s involved in the research:

• Sessions are 1 hour and conducted over video-conference, so you can participate from anywhere around the globe.
• During the research, we'll start with a general chat to get to know you, then explore a prototype and complete some tasks.
• As a token of our appreciation, you'll receive an e-gift card worth $100 USD within 5 days of completing your session.

If you're interested in taking part, please use this calendly link https://calendly.com/rpit/crossproject or contact me on rpit@atlassian.com to schedule a time that works for you.

If you have any other questions at all, feel free to reply to this message or email me directly. We look forward to meeting you! 

Cheers, 

Ruvi

JWM designer