Atlassian—a leading productivity software provider—has rolled out a slew of new features for its Jira Software and Jira Work Management platforms. Introducing these new functionalities in Jira is part of the company’s long-standing strategy to enable better synergy between technical and non-technical teams, reports Computerworld.
This pivotal move to extend the capabilities of the platform comes two years after the launch of Jira Workflow Management. Atlassian expects these new collaboration and integration features to help all enterprise business teams collaborate efficiently with their technical counterparts. This will help them achieve the collective impact of software development.
“Software development teams don’t just achieve a level of impact all by themselves,” stated Megan Cook, head of product for Jira Software. “There are marketers, program managers, designers, and other non-technical teams who are really key to collaborating and making it all happen. Adding that to make it easier for these teams to work together, Atlassian is continuing to roll out features in Jira Software that address non-technical use cases.”
The report highlights the shared release dates as one of the notable enhancements to be rolled out. With this new update, impending product rollouts in Jira Software get auto-synced with a department’s calendar in Jira Work Management. It can streamline and facilitate team communication by freeing users from manual calendar updates as project timelines change.
The other is the overview feature that enables users—particularly project managers—to consolidate multiple projects into a single unified project.
“With Jira Work Management, teams can work on their own individual projects, while you’re able to bring them all together into one easy-to-understand overview,” explained Megan Cook.
This aggregated project also comes with a shared timeline or calendar. That allows project managers to track work across various teams collaborating on a cross-functional project. The summary tab with the overviews acts as a centralised system, allowing leaders to get actionable insights into different projects, for example, team workloads, priority breakdowns, etc. Jira Software lets users embed these summaries into Confluence, facilitating easy sharing with team members and stakeholders.
Responding to the demand of development teams, Atlassian has brought about the command palette in Jira Software. Jira Software users now have access to over 40 commonly used commands, including search, quick action, and navigation tools. This long-awaited feature is expected to allow customers to work seamlessly in Jira with keyboard shortcuts.
At the same time, Atlassian is planning to equip Jira Work Management with Atlassian Intelligence. This is a virtual teammate offering a collection of AI-enabled capabilities already available with Atlassian’s cloud-based lineup. This new functionality is expected to help organisations operate more effectively by enabling them to summarise content, auto-generate content for tasks, modify the tone, and more.
Atlassian plans to integrate Figma into Jira apps to improve collaboration between designers and developers in cross-functional projects. Scheduled for a late 2024 release, Figma for the Jira app is expected to “streamline project communication, simplify handoff, and eliminate the overhead that comes with finding and maintaining the latest design files.” In addition, users can add designs to Jira by pasting the URL in the design field without leaving Figma.
Although these updates improve cross-team collaboration, some businesses still use monday.com for non-technical project management and Jira for technical purposes. For such organisations, syncing up both teams and ensuring seamless communication is critical to driving business productivity.
These businesses could use an expert monday.com licensing service such as Automation Consultants to integrate the two services for maximum collaboration potential. Such services eliminate data silos by assisting organisations with standard as well as custom integration. At the same time, they also offer visibility to the different teams working within these tools.
Sohela is an electrical engineer and a self-professed writer with a keen interest in all things tech. When she’s not writing killer content pieces, you’ll find her enjoying tempting foods in her favourite restaurants.
