Ultimate agility: the ONLY way to change a Next-Gen Project lead
The Sneaky B^st^rds! š³š²
In recent years Atlassian seems to be throwing out random but significant changes at us willy nilly: thereāll be a random experiment, then some form of Beta testing and before we know it the Issue View in Jira has changed forever, the Editor in Confluence is not what we were used to (nor wanted ā sorry, had to put it out there) and Next-Gen Projects are now here to stay!
But I am not actually here to berate Atlassian and the Product Management teams (thereās loads of that on Community already and thereās no need for more) - quite the opposite: I am here to compliment them, highlight one flaw and then tell all of Community how to overcome said flaw!
Job well done with Next-Gen Projects
Once upon a time, Atlassian toyed with something called Agility and eventually made the announcement (HERE) that those Agility projects would soon become NEXT-GEN. My first reaction was that this was something unnecessary... both Agility and Next-Gen... but nowadays, boy do I love NGPs! Gone are the days of someone coming to me in my part-time-volunteer role asking for a new project and then going through a laborious process of setting up their project, ensuring the right issue views, workflows, configurations... explaining epics to them, why they need good versioning, etc. Etc.
Now I just flick the switch on an NGP hand it over to them and let them get on with it, with little guidance or effort on my part. The teams love it as well... no longer do they have to deal with grumpy Admin Andrew as I go through project creation process whilst they just get cracking and feel they are really in charge. The teams are now empowered.
[Important side-note: business critical projects always get Classic Projects... non-critical get NGP]
The one massive FLAW
Despite my joy and my love of NGP, there are still quite a few flaws... (to be expected with any product... nothing in life is perfect!) but the is one that is just bloody glaringly woeful and I have to call the PMMs and Engineers out on this one because the lack of this functionality makes the mind boggle:
The Project Lead Cannot Be CHANGED! š¤Æ
Yes... you read correctly. One of the most basic of (not just functions, but) needs when it comes to managing projects and administration of Jira is not available! I was a bit at a loss for words when I first discovered this. At first thought there is the fact that it must be the simplest of development tasks, but then there is the fact that Accounts can be changed... so why not Lead? To top it off, Atlassian tools are best in the hands of (sys) Admins, so most companies already have an Admin in place, whereby teams do not make their own projects and the function becomes vital. Whoops ā I digress... hereās a harsh but funny meme to make light of my critique:
How to overcome said FLAW
I really could not accept that this was this way and so set out to find out exactly how! Where thereās a will thereās a way... and when there is blood-boiling determination, one gets sh** done! I trawled through loads of Community articles and questions as well as the backlog feature requests for NGP: all work arounds and recommendations were bum and at the end of the day, it came down to two options:
- THE HARD WAY -
If you go to the feature request [JSWCLOUD-17323] there's a well detailed guide on running cURL with postman and an API. If you like that kind of stuff (I donāt) and you know what youāre doing (I donāt) and you want to waste your time (I donāt), you can follow that.
- THE EASY WAY -
The hard way for me though is just a waste of time... why should I have to waste my time when there should be a simple feature improvement? So, I like to make it Atlassianās problem! šš
That is quite simple to achieve, costs only a few minutes and is as follows:
Step 1) Go to the feature request [JSWCLOUD-17323], upvote it and moan your arse off that this feature needs shipping in the comments.
Step 2) Go to Atlassian support - Suggestions and reports:
https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa?selectPageId=10440
Step 3) Make sure you are logged in (top right)
Step 4) Click āCreateā (middle-ish of top menu bar ā won't be there if you did not log in)
Step 5) Fill in form the form, and feel free to use the following text:
Due to this feature request still not being shipped:
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWCLOUD-17323
I am forced to ask Support to manually change the project lead on this project:
https://YOURINSTANCE.jira.com/projects/PROJECTNAME/settingsIt needs changing from <name incorrect lead> (Admin) to <name correct lead> (Project Lead)
Step 6) Sit back and wait for Atlassian to sort themselves out. (Takes 1-2 hr max, as-long-as you raised it early during your office hours! I submitted three support requests the other day around 9:30am and all were complete by lunch time!).
Whilst this is frustrating, do not give up on this process because (hopefully) eventually, Atlassian will realise that by the time theyāve wasted Support ticket hours, itād wouldāve just been quicker to ship the feature and make everyone happy!! š³ š
GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR NEXT-GEN PROJECTS! šš¤
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Andy - PTC Redundant
About this author
Former RocktAR Project Manager (now redundant)
PTC
Rotterdam
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