Let's dive into some of the latest updates and interesting discussions emerging from the Atlassian ecosystem. This week, we've got some fascinating developments across Compass, Trello, agile practices, and even a look into Atlassian's AI advancements.
Atlassian Compass: A Unified View for Your Services
Atlassian Compass is a tool that aims to provide a centralized view for your distributed services and the teams that own them. While still evolving, the idea behind Compass is intriguing: to link various elements of your development lifecycle and business goals in one place.
The latest updates to Compass enhance this connectivity. You can now:
- Track package dependencies: Gain deeper insights into the relationships between your code and external libraries.
- Connect with ServiceNow: Integrate your IT service management for a more comprehensive operational overview.
- Link business goals to initiatives: Align your technical work directly with higher-level strategic objectives.
How to Get Started with Compass
If you're curious to try Compass, here's a quick way to explore its capabilities:
- Go to any Jira instance.
- Navigate to a specific project (e.g., an Android project).
- In the project settings, find the Component section.
- If you're using it for the first time, you might be prompted to switch your components to Compass components. This will guide you through setting up a Compass instance (it's free for less than three users!).
Once configured, you can create new services within Compass, link them to teams, activities, repositories, and even documentation. This ultimately provides a dashboard where you can monitor diverse aspects from different tools, all in one place. It's an evolving feature that's worth exploring, especially if you're looking for a consolidated view of your software ecosystem.
Trello's New "Mirror Cards" Feature
Trello, a popular tool for task management, has introduced a small yet impactful new feature: Mirroring Cards. This allows you to sync two cards, keeping their information consistent across different boards or lists.
For those familiar with Jira, this is akin to keeping two issues in sync, a common requirement in many project management scenarios. While Trello remains a straightforward tool, ideal for basic task management, this new feature adds a layer of flexibility for users who need to maintain consistency across related items.
Deep Dive into Agile Estimation: Planning Poker
Atlassian recently published a valuable blog post on planning poker, a widely used agile estimation technique. This is particularly useful if you're new to agile, Jira, or Scrum, and are grappling with how to effectively estimate work.
Planning poker addresses the challenges of estimating work, especially when traditional hourly estimates fall short. Story points, which are central to this technique, focus on the complexity, effort, and risk involved, rather than just time.
Here's how planning poker generally works:
- Team Participation: Everyone on the Scrum team provides their independent estimate for a story or task.
- Simultaneous Reveal: Estimates are revealed simultaneously (e.g., using numbered cards) to avoid bias.
- Discussion and Re-estimation: If there are significant discrepancies, the team discusses the reasoning behind their estimates, then re-estimates until a consensus is reached.
The goal is to foster a shared understanding of the work and leverage the collective intelligence of the team. While stories should ideally be completable within a single sprint (typically two weeks), this technique helps ensure realistic and collaborative estimates.
Atlassian's AI Recognition and the "Work Item" Debate
Atlassian Intelligence: A Growing Focus on AI
Atlassian has been recognized as an emerging leader in Gartner's 2025 innovation guide for generative AI technologies. This recognition underscores Atlassian's commitment to integrating Artificial Intelligence into its tools.
Atlassian AI is already making its way into products like Jira Premium. While still in its early stages (for example, generating automation rules isn't perfect yet), the potential is immense. In the future, we could see AI significantly streamlining configurations and tasks within Jira, allowing users to simply "ask" the AI to perform complex operations. This commitment to AI indicates a promising future for more intuitive and powerful Atlassian products.
The "Issue" to "Work Item" Transition: A Point of Contention
One of the more debated changes in the Atlassian ecosystem has been the shift from "issue" to "work item" (or "work type") across Jira's UI. While Atlassian's intention was to adopt a more generic and inclusive term, it has caused some confusion.
For long-time Jira users, administrators, and consultants, the term "issue" is deeply ingrained. It refers to epics, tasks, subtasks – the fundamental units of work. The sudden widespread appearance of "work item" can be jarring and feels unnecessary for those already familiar with the platform.
While new users might find "work item" slightly easier to grasp initially, the existing user base now faces a cognitive shift. The underlying APIs still refer to "issues," highlighting the depth of this change. As a consultant, I've observed that such frequent and sometimes seemingly uncritical UI changes can be disruptive, impacting user muscle memory and increasing the learning curve for both end-users and administrators. Consistency in tool design is crucial for a positive user experience, and frequent, non-optional UI overhauls can hinder productivity.
Upcoming Atlassian Community Connect: Faridabad
For those in the Delhi NCR region, mark your calendars! There's an upcoming Atlassian Community Connect event in Faridabad on June 15th. These events are fantastic opportunities to network with other Atlassian users, learn about community benefits, and stay updated on the latest trends. With four Atlassian communities now active in the Delhi NCR region (Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Greater Noida, and now Faridabad), there are ample opportunities to connect.
Jira Best Practices: Assignee Fields and Avoiding Common Mistakes
Finally, two insightful resources worth revisiting:
- Assignee Field vs. User Picker Field: A common point of confusion in Jira is the Assignee field, which is designed for a single user. Clients often request the ability to assign multiple people to a task for notifications or shared ownership. While the Assignee field remains single-user, you can achieve multi-user notification and approval workflows by leveraging a User Picker field in conjunction with Jira's notification and automation capabilities. This allows for more flexible task management while adhering to Jira's core design.
- Top 10 Jira Mistakes: For new Jira administrators, avoiding common pitfalls is crucial. Jira is highly configurable, which is a strength, but also means it can be easily "misconfigured" or become overly complex if not managed carefully. Understanding and avoiding these mistakes from the outset can save significant clean-up effort down the line.
That wraps up this week's Atlassian ecosystem updates and discussions. We hope you found these insights valuable!
What are your thoughts on these Atlassian updates? Have you tried Compass or experienced the "work item" transition? Share your feedback in the comments below!