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And now you’re wondering, how does it work with Jira? Where’s the integration? How do I link an Atlas project to my Jira issues? Can I automate my status updates based on Jira data?
We’re here to clear that confusion. But firstly, if you prefer to watch a video instead of reading, we’ve got you covered:
Jira is an issue tracking tool, helping you see what your team is working on right down to the nitty-gritty details. In contrast, Atlas enables communication between teams, giving other teams and stakeholders a high-level summary view of how your projects or goals are tracking.
So, Jira helps you work within your immediate team. Atlas helps you communicate outside your team, across teams of teams. Due to the different audiences within these two tools, the type of updates you share needs to be tailored to their proximity to the work.
For example, if you’re launching a new mobile app, do your stakeholders really need to know all the tasks that your team completed in the last week? Or do they simply need to know that the mobile app is on track to being delivered by the targeted due date, and here are the main highlights, risks and next steps?
We understand the appeal of an end-to-end reporting solution, where statistics around progress %, story points and issues completed are pulled from Jira, but we urge you to think about the value of this in practice. Remember, the people following your Atlas projects are very different from those in your Jira boards. Showing dashboards statistics may be visually alluring, but it doesn’t have the same insight and clarity as a short, curated update (read more about why we don’t believe in automated status reports).
This also means there isn’t the double handling our customers initially expect. Since the content shared is different, the extent to which you need to keep things aligned may just be as simple as dates and statuses.
Does this mean we don’t have any integration to Jira? Of course not! We have already built light integrations that allow project owners to link their followers to more detail in Jira, if needed. Some of the ways you can link Team Central and Jira together are:
We acknowledge there are scenarios where a tighter relationship is required between Jira and Atlas, particularly when it comes to planning & communication of in-progress work.
Often, planning happens in Jira through roadmaps. Atlas does not aim to solve project planning. Instead, Atlas targets communication between teams on how work is tracking each weekly, after planned work has been kicked-off. The status of this in-flight work may then be an important input into planning the next wave of work. Where a Jira epic maps to the same entity in Atlas represented at different parts of the delivery cycle, we understand keeping date and status aligned will help teams adjust their plans as-needed.
We’ve built and are testing a Jira integration internally at the moment. The integration is an add-on for Jira epics, where users can create or link an Atlas project. This then keeps title, date and status in sync between the Jira epic and the Atlas project so you only need to change these details once. Whilst this has not been released yet to customers, we’re working hard to make this available soon.
We have ideated concepts around Atlas status updates powering Jira Roadmaps, a ubiquitous update composer so you can write updates from anywhere, the ability to group your work in Jira by Atlas goals etc. and we will continue to explore these possibilities in the future.
So, have we answered your questions on the relationship between Atlas and Jira?
Let us know what you think and if you have any more questions, feedback or challenges to our perspective on this topic!
Rachel Lin
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