Does Atlassian consider user votes when implementing new features?

[Johannes Kilian]

As there are several long outstanding feature wishes in JIRA/STASH (like "Allow Versions of components" - https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-5225 - opened in 2004) and as Atlassian does not publish any development roadmap, I tried to analyse whether Atlassian considers voting on issues on https://jira.atlassian.com while developing their software.

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I made the following analysis:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-3821?jql=project%20%3D%2010240%20AND%20resolution%20%3D%20EMPTY%20ORDER%20BY%20votes%20DESC%2C%20key%20DESC

This gives me a list of all unresolved Jira issues odered by votings. Clicking through the issues it shows that most of those issues are really long-time-running issues (dating even back to 2002) Most of the issues have a Atlassian Status message stating, the issue "is not on our near-term roadmap" (many of them have been delayed several times)
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On the other hand I had a look on the issues (only features - not bugs) which have been resolved, sorted by date
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-40973?jql=project%20%3D%2010240%20AND%20resolution%20%3D%20Fixed%20And%20Type%20!%3D%20Bug%20ORDER%20BY%20resolved%20DESC%2C%20key%20DESC


Looking through this list, it shows that most of the resolved issues do not have any user votes (some of them have a few votes - only one has >250 votes (288))
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The same is valid for STASH
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/STASH-2469?jql=project%20%3D%20Stash%20AND%20resolution%20%3D%20EMPTY%20ORDER%20BY%20votes%20DESC%2C%20key%20DESC
versus
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/STASH-5332?jql=project%20%3D%20STASH%20AND%20resolution%20%3D%20Fixed%20And%20Type%20!%3D%20Bug%20ORDER%20BY%20resolved%20DESC%2C%20key%20DESC

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So my question is: does Atlassian consider user votes at all? I've got the strong feeling, they don't ...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

They do.  Very much so. I've had this conversation with a couple of Atlassians at Summits, and votes are important to them.  They even start some discussions with "right, what are the (open) highest voted items at the moment?"

However, there are always other factors - technology decisions, overall direction that the teams are going in (e.g. "this year, we need to focus on data center"), security, and so-on.

I tend to point to Bryan's answer about JIRA specifically, at https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/110373  but that's actually a good answer for ALL the products.  It is quite long, but there's another view and a really good summary over at https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEV/Implementation+of+New+Features+Policy

In short, yes, your vote counts.  But it's not the only consideration

[Radu Dumitriu]

I'm not in Atl team, but for sure they do. However, when deciding to implement a feature you do not take into consideration only popular demand. The score function must weight in cost of the implementation, technical stuff, etc.

Philosophically, democracy (i.e. user choice) and scientific/engineering truth (i.e. all the above) do not reconcile easily.

Read, for instance, Hannah Arendt (there are plenty of books on the subject): it is told somewhere that opinions and truth have an essential difference. If you respect someone's opinions, you actually respect her/his moral autonomy, i.e. her/his ability to perform judgments of value. If you respect the truth, you actually respect the real nature of world, independent of the humans. Therefore in human societies, we must assess a judgment from both perspectives.

Have fun.

[Johannes Kilian]

My question was meant to be provocative. For sure they do - but I cannot understand why the currently highest voted issues, especially the ones which are more than ten years old, are delayed over and over again.

For this issues it looks like they don't take the votes with a pinch of salt: delaying over and over again - unless they are very high voted over a looooooong period of time and unless the issues (at least some of them) have been planned for a certain release and haven't made into it (and those issues haven't made it in any following releases either). If they don't want to implement those issues they should make a clear statement - instead of ignoring the votes over such long periods and messing around with the voters ...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

As that posting says, the votes are not the only thing they have to think about. There is no need for a "clear statement", the answer is always going to be "we think we have other more important things to deal with".

[Radu Dumitriu]

... my answer also was meant to be provocative.