What Atlassian/Confluence/Jira terms do you find yourself clarifying frequently?

[Kat Warner]

Whether you are a super user, administrator, consultant, or work for a solution partner you will find certain terms cropping up that need clarification.

Share what terms you find yourself clarifying and I'll add some of my own.

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"Our infrastructure team says we need to move to Cloud"

 - This is a fun one where I usually need a whiteboard to explain the difference between the platforms and products Atlassian offers. Cloud hosting =/= SaaS.

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"Enterprise Releases means security fixes are available longer, right?"

- This is a common misconception. ALL supported versions of Atlassian products get security patches for their 2-year support window. The advantage of Enterprise Releases means critical bug fixes will be made available alongside the latest point release version. Supported versions that are not Enterprise Releases or the latest release only get security fixes.

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I'm sure I will think of more and add them soon.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Mine fall into groups:

Cloud, Server, Data-center - I think Atlassian made a mistake in choosing these terms, because it's a right b****r trying to explain that while "Cloud is not too bad a description but it is not quite right", "Server can be run on what the rest of the world thinks is 'Cloud', as can DC" is not fun.

Totally with you on "Enterprise" - it's not misleading, unlike Cloud/Server/DC, but I do find myself explaining it a lot more than I should have to.

The last group is a lot of Agile (Software) terms, mainly Scrum ones.  Unless someone has been through a Scrum Master or Product Owner course, I can pretty much guarantee that they don't understand what estimates are for or how Story points work (especially when used as the estimation).

And the "Align" terms too.  I'm in the enablement training for Align this week, and although it does make a lot of sense (because it tends to follow the SAFe model and I know that), I am pretty sure I will be explaining SAFe as applied to Jira and/or Align quite a lot.

[Kat Warner]

I am still proud of my anti-love story post in February last year about Jira Cloud vs Jira hosted is the cloud.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, yes, and "apps" and "applications" - another terrible choice of wording.

[Iago Docando]

I still use "addon" very frecuently

[Jimmy Seddon]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- I'm going to assume that the Cloud vs Server vs DC issue is because of the line of work you are in.  I did not experience anything along those lines when we moved from Server to Cloud.

@Kat Warner I have a number of users that actually still use the term plug-ins

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I've worked with computers almost my entire career.  Cloud, Server and Data Centre have specific and different meanings to Atlassian.

A server is a computer (real or virtual) that runs stuff.  Cloud is a computer you don't look after providing a service.  Data Centre is a building full of computers. 

But when its Atlassian, a Server is a service,  Cloud is their Service platform, and Data Centre a large scale server (clusters of servers).

So, just to show why it's a bad choice - I'm running Data Centre on the Cloud running on a couple of Servers in a Data Centre.

[Kat Warner]

@Jimmy Seddon - plugin/addon/app and all the varieties in spelling and punctuation are like mosquitoes in our documentation. Some of what we sell on the atlassian Marketplace has "plugin" in the name so I can't even do a find-and-replace type process.

I discovered recently that the Atlassian developer documentation refers to plugins as part of what can make up a Marketplace App o.O

[Kevin Bui]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- 

The last group is a lot of Agile (Software) terms, mainly Scrum ones.  Unless someone has been through a Scrum Master or Product Owner course, I can pretty much guarantee that they don't understand what estimates are for or how Story points work (especially when used as the estimation).

This is so interesting for me to read, because as part of my role at Atlassian I spend a lot of time thinking about terminology in Jira Software. I've always believed Jira Software leans too heavily into agile terminology, and it makes the product harder to understand for a lot of people.

Which is why with next-gen, we've been trying to simplify the language of the product, e.g.; Column Constraint (classic) -> Column limit (next-gen) and Swimlanes (classic) -> Group by (next-gen).

But the other side of that coin is there are people who very much come to Jira Software because it's an agile tool, and expect agile terminology. Striking the right balance between those needs has been a challenge. 

Would love to read about any other thoughts you have regarding agile/software terms being confusing.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Oh absolutely - unless you've done a scrum course, or you're in a (real) scrum team and had it explained properly, you will not understand estimates.

Swimlanes are often misunderstood too - there's at least half a dozen of my answers here including a phrase like "I think you might mean Columns, not Swimlanes". 

I prefer Column Limit and Group By - far better!

Burndown is something people really don't get, but that's more the process than the name.  The other technical stuff in scrum is a bit easier - either you know the term, you can guess it right, or you don't really care as you're not using it.

[Iago Docando]

More often than not I find myself trying to clarify issue hierarchy to people that want to get started in Jira.

Personally I wouldn't think that particular point needs further clarification from you but reality tells me otherwise and I'm not sure why.

[Jimmy Seddon]

This is a good question @Kat Warner! I can't think of a specific term at the moment, but one concept that I find myself explaining a lot is that a board does not equal a project.

In that when you need a new view into some work being done you don't necessarily need a new project (at our company 99% of the time they actually don't want a new project) they want is either a dashboard or a kanban board with a different backing filter.

[Kat Warner]

Aaaaaah - "project" is another nightmare. A Jira project can be many things but very rarely have ever seen it used to represent an actual work project.

[Walter Buggenhout]

+1 on that, @Kat Warner . In kickoff meetings at new customers, this is the very first thing I try to explain. Every single time.

[Kevin Bui]

Not so much a specific term, but when I was new to Jira I had to keep reminding myself the differences between Jira (as in, the platform) vs Jira Software.

Now that I have a few years of experience under my belt the distinction between the two is pretty clear, but when I was new I really had trouble figuring out where the line was between Jira Software and the rest of Jira.

For example - it took me a long time to realize that "boards" was a Jira Software concept. Or that there was a difference between a Jira admin and a project admin.