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Reimagining ‘work’ in Jira to better represent all teams

70 comments

Nico
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February 20, 2025

Yeah whatever, we'll keep calling them "ticket" anyway. I'm not even sure how they're officially called in the french version but everyone says "Jira ticket".

Also I realize these things are handled by different teams, but it's always a bit sad to see how lacking the Atlassian suite is in terms of basic features, and those posts make it sound like their priority is to rename things and add new icons that nobody asked for.

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Dimitri Spolspoel
Contributor
February 21, 2025

In the Jira Service Management portal, once you opened a request category, the following text is shown at the top of the request list: "What can we help you with?"

This might also be considered as if our customers are contacting us for an issue or problem they might have, which is often not the case. Maybe better to change to: "What can we do for you?" or even better, give the possibility to configure these texts in the portal configurations.

 

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Yatish Madhav
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February 21, 2025

Thanks for this post @Josh Sherwood 

1. I am assuming this is also going to move through the Chrome plugin for testing > Beta > Enabled on nominated sites > Interviews > GA? (similar to the new naviagtion) Is that right? Or is it rolled out with the new navigation?

2. If so, is there an estimated rollout plan or date for this?

3. I would also like more clarity on what is replaced exactly on the interface of Jira, JSM, Confluence, Bitbucket, etc? Ie. screen shots or exact indications of everywhere the "find and replace" will occur. That would be really helpful, wouldn't it?

4. Lastly, referring to this 

"Q: Can admins choose what term replaces 'issue'? Will this be a site or project-level setting?

No, admins will not have the option to decide what term replaces ‘issue.’ By default, ‘issue’ will be replaced with ‘work item’ for all Jira customers at the site level"

And on here https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira/work-your-way - it seems that admins can and should have the flexibility to chose - so I suggest this becomes something configurable instead of it being changed for us.

Thoughts?

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Mark B Wager
Contributor
February 21, 2025

Dear Atlassian,

I like your product. Really. But this change.... really?! This is the hill you're choosing to die on?  

We are SO SO busy already. Changes like this add a LOT of overhead to our daily admin work. Because of your changes, We'll be forced to do HOURS and HOURS of extra work: explaining, training, documenting, apologizing for the change, begging users not to shoot the messenger, begging for them to stay on the platform even though "Atlassian decided...." (again). 

Change causes a LOT of frustration with the users.

I get it, you (Atlassian) don't like the term "issue", but the rest of us have been using it for YEARS!  

WE DID NOT ASK FOR THIS CHANGE.

Could you have phased it in (side-by-side)? And you're making this change so quickly and stacked on top of OTHER changes (e.g., "new look and feel")

I hear about 'research', but NO ONE ASKED ME or anyone I know.

Why do you keep insisting on making changes for which we DID NOT ask, INSTEAD of FIXING the things that are BROKEN and improving FUNCTIONALITY of the EXISTING platform
Seriously, why?

Disappointed and dismayed,

Mark

 

P.S.  Oh, and the Chrome Extension in your FAQ does not exist. :(

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Chris Brock
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February 21, 2025

This seems so trivial, but it's an indictment on Atlassian's product research teams' cluelessness around how the application is actually used. The word "work" is beyond dumb and confusing. Item or Record would have been infinitely better choices. 

Those dime a dozen PM tools are looking better and better by the day.

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Rick Westbrock
Contributor
February 21, 2025

@Yatish Madhav I totally agree that this should be configurable however despite the article you linked in the past few months Atlassian has been rolling out global changes with no option for configuration which seem to alienate at least half of their customers (for example the change to the JSM resolution transition comments from public to internal only).

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Allie Stewart
Contributor
February 21, 2025

1. What about automations with if/else statements using "issue type"?  Will we need to update all of those to use the term "work type"?  

2. Secondly, I see a comment with new icons that will be rolled out, is that correct?  I just want to make sure my users are aware of the update when their icons change.  Thank you.

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Aaron Geister_Sentify
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February 21, 2025

I like this change. It aligns with Atlas changes and the whole idea of projects in Jira now being workspaces and in workspaces you have work items. It all makes sense to me. This way project in Atlas aren't confused with Jira projects. 

Jeremy Steuhl
Contributor
February 21, 2025

I've commented before on this, but this seems totally overthought.  Just keep it as {issue}. So all things Jira still work correctly, like for JQL etc.  Then, give each project an alias.  So the project admin can use whatever they like based on what the project is for.  Work, Ticket, Issue, etc.   Then you just add a bit of code to convert everything to {issue}, so JQL works, search works etc.  That seems simple.

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John Wagner
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February 21, 2025

"work item" is fine, especially since HR is the fastest growing business team using Jira now, and Marketing and others are trying it out more and more. 'issue' and 'ticket' are worthless to them.

we long term users will call it whatever we want to. issue. ticket. late-for-dinner. it doesn't matter.

Like Sanjay Samani likes this
Greg D
Contributor
February 21, 2025

@Josh Sherwood checking in... some good questions here in the comments. Any chance some of us can sync up with you to chat somehow?

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Sanjay Samani
Contributor
February 24, 2025

The level of change resistance in this comment thread is quite surprising. Most Jira users will be working in environments and role that are promoting change and having to work against change resistance.

I, for one, am all in favour of this change. I am responsible for the adoption of Jira throughout my organisation. I try to be consistent with the terminology so that I am clear and consistent with what users are going to see in the product, help documentation and any content they see.  "Issue" always had issues because of the everyday usage of the word. Talking to a Creative or Marketing team and asking them to raise an "issue" when they want to record an item of work just adds unnecessary friction. Being able to talk about "Work Items" and collectively "Work" just works across all my users, where "issue" is an issue and has met a lot of resistance. The result has been secondary naming like "ticket" or "card",  but that's been inconsistent and not everyone understands those terms, again because of their day to day usage. Work Item is something that everyone can use, understand and be clear and consistent about. 

 

 

Sebastiaan Halff
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February 24, 2025

As a result of this change, won't "Child issues" become "Child labour"?

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Siobhan Flynn
Contributor
February 24, 2025

I'm really excited for this change, and feel it's long overdue! I teach Jira to a lot of non-technical teams and the issue with 'issues' always comes up. This will make it so much easier to explain and for them to get up and running with Jira. 
For those who are upset, I get that 'work item' isn't perfect, but a lot of people refer to them as tickets, cards, or tasks anyway. People will use whatever they like at the end of the day.

Stefan Tichelaar
Contributor
February 24, 2025

So Jira already has issue types: Task, Issue, Story, Epic and Idea. In our organization we added Change Request to make a distinction for changes in existing features and screens as well.

Using work and therefore "work types" with the same names too me offers very little extra. Even using "task" as the common issue/ticket nomenclature would probably be ambiguous enough? 

 

Anyway... If this is the way atlassian wan to go, then can we just get on with it so atlassian devs can focus on things that actually need "work" done, like the thousands of tickets and issues still open? (Some of them for more than several years already?)

Sean Regan
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February 25, 2025

I'm just here for the guaranteed flow of comments that when considered collectively are functionally impossible to satisfy. 

Shah_ Piyush
Contributor
February 27, 2025

Atlassian is likely trying to address a long due tech-debt around the legacy word "issue".  I read all comments above.  Nothing specifically to disagree (or agree).  Many things (if not all) with Atlassian are outside our control (as per the history).  

They have changed a lot of things as part of their LT focus/roadmap for Jira Cloud.  I have come to the terms that my energy is better spent absorbing the change (as more than often fighting is not an option).  On a positive note, I do like many things in JC.  Everything is subjective to each customer's Atlassian footprint size, custom entities, and guard-rails-vs-open-flood-gates.

Keeping fingers crossed as this March/2025 rollout is approaching.

Jen Kuntz
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February 27, 2025

It is ironic I found this thread while looking for a way to change the term “Issue” to something more meaningful to me. Jira was recommended to me for project management and so far I’m loving most of it, but the term “issue” doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t run a helpdesk to “ticket” doesn’t work either for me so I’m glad that wasn’t the chosen option. I’m happy to see that the term “Issue” will be phased out.

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Haddon Fisher
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March 4, 2025

This entire idea both utterly shocks me and does not surprise me in the slightest.

  1. Why is this a problem? This "problem" has been around since literally day 1 of Jira and it doesn't seem to have been a major barrier to using the tool. It's been said ad nauseum above but 99% of users think they're called "tickets", learn they're called "issues", and then call them tickets anyway.
  2. Why is this a priority? There's a laundry list of basic table-stakes features with significantly higher impact on usability and that people have been asking after for literally decades. Instead of looking at any of that, Atlassian decides that this is where they want to spend their time.
  3. Why is this the solution? Jira is (or I should say, wasexpressly designed to enable as many use-cases as possible. It seems pretty obvious then that the real problem isn't "we are using the wrong term"; it's "you can only have one term for something that is inherently different for different folks". Changing the word simply changes who this doesn't work for. I personally would say that it actually makes the problem worse since "work" feels more opinionated than "issue" but that could be just me.

I'd say "re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic" but honestly this is more like debating whether they're deck chairs or loungers.

One other piece of more general feedback for Atlassian...I really wish y'all would stop saying things like "We’ve heard from you that..." or "Through discussions with numerous teams, we've learned..." unless you're going to include some actual data to back that up. I fully expect that there's going to be changes that make me say "what the actual f*#$ are they thinking" - I'm just one jabroni with my own opinions, thoughts, and needs. What I don't expect is to have that sentiment echoed back to me by my users, peer admins, and in feedback on this site over and over again on so many big changes. It makes me wonder if this is what you say when you just want to do something and need some air cover.

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Rick Westbrock
Contributor
March 5, 2025

Changing the word simply changes who this doesn't work for

That's it in a nutshell, isn't it? Great observation which also applies to the controversial decision to make JSM resolved transition comments default to internal instead of customer-facing. That alienated the majority of customers who preferred how it was before.

#2 was another good point, there are so many RFEs out there which are many years old (sometimes a decade) with many hundreds of votes yet effort is put into something that I bet no customer actually asked for.

Don't get me wrong there have been a lot of changes which enhanced how we use the toolset but lately it seems like changes are being made for the sake of change without providing any real world value. Does Atlassian think that anybody is going to start using the "work item" term if they never used "issue" before?

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