Often we go with the ticket type, so create a story / task / etc. as an issue is a common term in risk management 'an issue is an obstacle or challenge that's already present' but the more general term we use is ticket which is common across different systems and teams.
In fact, looking back at what I just wrote I used the term ticket naturally, so I think that is what we would want to use.
I am definitely not a fan of either Task or Work item.
Task is already taken as an "issue" type.
For me "work item" sounds goofy and I would debate that it doesn't improve on where "Issue" may fall short.
Maybe "Item" but to me that is so generic.
The challenge is that with Jira/JSM the options are so diverse that there is not a good one-size-fits-all solution, my mind has been trained to accept issue and I don't give it a second thought.
After working with Jira for more than 20 years and having worked with many similar systems, the term that makes the most sense in my opinion is "ticket".
It is generic enough to not cause confusion in the many context's that Jira is used.
I think Task is a terrible idea because it has different connotations in different contexts. It is just as bad as Issue.
Work Item could work but why make it a 2 word identifier when you can use a one word identifier like ticket.
Over the years of talking to hundreds of users of Jira across hundreds of organizations, the term that I have never had to explain is ticket. Users get it without explanation.
My vote is for ticket!
Now for the next topic, when are we going to rename Project to Container? :-)
Good move, Atlassian! We need more flexible terminology that both tech and non-tech teams can use for anything.
I like 'Work item' to replace 'issue' because I think it's broad enough without being too generic like 'item'. 'Task' is not a good choice because it's already an issue type in Jira, which would lead to confusion.
I really hope you'll also consider changing the term 'Jira Project' to something like 'Jira Workspace' in the future. Jira projects don't always align with the projects being managed within an organization. They are used to represent products, projects, teams, and much more, so calling them 'workspaces' would make sense to me.
I 100% agree with @Ahmed Nassar . Ticket is better than Work Item or Task
Task is reserved word for software Agile practitioners, so having Task be a generic term that can include Story, Task, Bug, etc would be bad
Work Item is 2 words, and 2 words ticket types are not ideal. That's the reason why Jira default to "Story" and not "User Story", to keep is short and easy to say
I would venture most people who user Jira now call them Tickets anyway.
Got a problem and call the helpdesk, "We'll put in a ticket" says the helpdesk operator (JSM)
Somebody is asking for a software change, "Do you have a ticket for the request" says the dev to anybody else (Jira)
I want an flyers for a conference to be generated, our marketing department asks me to "put in a ticket for the request"
We are preparing a proposal for a government bid, we need references from previous customers and graphics made, the proposal team says "we need to write tickets to make sure we track these needs"
We have a new employee that is starting on Monday, our HR department says to write tickets for HR to get their new employee swag together, for HR to add them to the benefits program, and add them to )35
Those are just a few example of everybody calling them tickets, whether they are technical (Helpdesk, IT, Devs) or not (Marketing, HR, visual designers). Tickets is a much better name
I agree the word "issue" is not a great word. Might have been correct when Jira was just a bug tracker, but not anymore. Good thing that renaming it is being considered.
As many pointed out, "Task" is not a great option as it conflicts with the issue type with the same name. Just imagine jira admins talking with each other: "hey, have you updated the workflow for the task type task?"
My preferred solution is to have this wording configurable globally (default) and also on a per project setting that would override the default.
Let's say for 80% of the teams at my company, "work item" might work, but then we have a couple of projects where Jira is used as a CRM. Maybe on those projects they would prefer that it's called "lead" instead. I know this is probably more difficult for Atlassian to implement, but since this change is being considered, why not putting the time and effort on doing it better in a way that would scale nice for any type of team? It's not like this is an urgent change anyway :)
This would cause a few other inconveniences, but IMO possible to deal with:
1. what would the rest api endpoints be called? /rest/workItem? it shouldn't matter much, as it's not user-facing 2. how about the users that, for their project only, renamed it to "lead" but are using features outside of their project scope such as creating filters, plans, etc? Well, they would see the globally defined word instead.
Please don't use "Task". That is already an issue type. If the point of implementing a change here is to avoid misunderstandings/confusions, conflating the terminology with something else is not going to help.
I'm also not a fan of making this a completely customizable thing. I appreciate that there is some common terminology that isn't different project to project or company to company. There is already enough to learn when beginning to work within a new instance. This level of terminology at least should be consistent.
I've read many of the comments and I agree with those that are saying the terminology should be "Ticket". Regardless of whether you are working in Jira, JSM, or JPD (or some combination of the 3!) you are dealing with tickets. This terminology is generic enough that it could be referencing an issue, work item, task, request, idea, etc.
Would it be possible to set up a voting mechanism? Based on the comments here so far (and their respective likes), there seems to be underwhelming support for "Task" and not much more for "Work Item." It would be great to see an easy overall tally, similar to the survey mentioned by another commenter, but with more options—and perhaps limited to confirmed users. Maybe this could appear as a pop-up when users log in? Ideally, it would be helpful if we could rank the options, include a free response field, and provide context to inform voters that this is aimed at reducing confusion, particularly in non-Task-oriented use cases.
Personally, I prefer "Item," but "Entity," "Object," and "Ticket" also seem like valid contenders. All of these (and probably others) seem better than "Work Item," while "Task" seems outright confusing. As many have said before, "Task" and "Work Item" become confusing when used to represent the status of people or things.
Although my initial reaction was to allow us to name it ourselves if it's going to change, the global implications of that could lead to even more confusion—especially when considering how people might phrase things in the community, documentation, etc. Atlassian would still need an official term. In my experience, outside of admins, users tend to be specific when instructing others to create an issue, e.g., "Please put in a Bug" or "Create a new Client in the Leads project," while otherwise they say generic things like "Put it in Jira."
Will this change also apply to Confluence, where the term is used in ways like "+ Jira Issue," "Jira Links > Issues," or the Jira Issue macro? And as others have mentioned, how will this affect the APIs?
Ugh, I just read the October recap e-mail which links here saying "Currently categorized as an 'issue', we're trialing its replacement by either a 'work item' or a 'task'"
I really, really hope that the new term is not Task because as so many others have already said that is already an issue type. Doesn't it sound dumb to say that "Task is a task type"?
While Work Item doesn't have such a conflict or collision I don't think it is any better myself. Ticket is generally the de facto term already used by so many customers I don't know why Atlassian isn't willing to make that an option for the beta using the Chrome extension.
In-house we just call it "Ticket" not Issue because it caused so much problem as people said "but I it is not an issue..". Is "Ticket" used somewhere else or is that can be a candidate? (like @ahmed.nassar mentioned before me)
I literally started calling issues "tickets" in order to explain to others how Jira is structured. In reference to @Stanislav Shumlianskyi : call them jickets 😁
After reading the comment from @David Vins, I would agree that "ticket" is not generic enough considering other uses for Jira issues. I find his suggestion of the term "item" very suitable and well thought out. For now, I will be incorporating this term whenever I need to explain Jira to others, thanks. :)
Generally speaking, users of project tracking tools that I know will mostly refer objects we manipulate as "a ticket". We never use the current term "issue" which has sometimes a negative overtone.
"work item" is not really meaningful and too long. Item may be ok but not really a keyword used today.
Task is really a bad idea as it is also an issue type.
I'm surprised ticket is not one of the default proposition here :) maybe we miss insights from Atlassian regarding the ticket term.
See that ticket is trending here but want to drop two cents in here again. Ticket is what we use colloquially over issue for most of our processes.
However, not all issues in Jira represent work to be done, e.g. a task, work item, issue, or ticket. Often times in Jira an issue also represents an asset, or some other object. The cognitive mismatch will remain, especially when you have work tickets in one project referencing an asset in another.
Therefore, I'll proffer and suggest again, the most generic term that is not work oriented is used -- item.
The natural progression of course after that will be a feature to customize the name on a per-"project" basis. But at least the API endpoints and its abstract nature will finally make sense.
And again, please, if there are any Jira product managers watching this -- add Gherkin syntax to code blocks!
"Ticket": but as others pointed out, it can sound work related, and not everything will trigger work.
No:
"Work item": not every issue is work related or will trigger work. And please don't create a new name using two words, it's just not needed.
"Task": that would be a catastrophe. It already has a clear meaning in numerous projects. And not everything is a task. A "story" is not a task. A "suggestion" is not a task either.
@Arbaaz Gowher Can you set up a poll with the obvious choices: "item" and "ticket".
One way to make this poll more meaningfull, is to send it to all Atlassian partners, as they tend to have more use cases in mind, since they administer systems from multiple different companies, following different approaches.
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