Atlassian debuts new Jira Software Cloud with timeline view, configuration flow

Jira PM here. Sorry to hear about your experience and thanks for your feedback. We know it can be really difficult to use Jira Software Cloud, which is why we've reimagined how it works. I assure you the team listens, so please take another look and give the 'next-gen' projects a try.

> Plus, there's no release date for these features (which seem like desperately needed improvements) anywhere. We're fixing the blog post link, it'll be up very soon. All the features in the video / article is live. If you haven't yet, please watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHLzrYYlgAU attached to the article, is a good representation of what we have now. Create a new 'next-gen' project within your Jira Cloud instance to try it out.

> A jumble of all the features you could possibly want, half-assed and thrown together with terrible UX.

For 'next-gen' projects, features (like sprints, backlogs, etc) can now be turned on and off when it's appropriate for your team. We regularly listen to feedback and have shipped numerous updates to address some design flaws and bugs for features available.

> The data model is non-sensical (everything is shared between projects - if you create a status, a field, an issue type, it becomes the one true object shared by everyone), making the damned thing impossible to configure.

For 'next-gen' projects, the data model has been reimagined, configuration options are currently scoped to the project. On top of that, configuration is drag-and-drop, much clearer and intuitive. As we build more features and configuration options, we run interviews, perform usability tests, look at in-product feedback, amongst other channels, to make sure that we're not adding unnecessary layers of complexity. If we are, we change and iterate.

In the future we'll be introducing customisable project templates, which allow you to save and share an entire project configuration. Instead of sharing data objects, your teams can reuse or fork templates, making for a better UX. As you can imagine, Jira has many configuration options so we're carefully thinking about how to approach this without the difficulty curve of the classic data model.

> The way kanban boards currently work is that they don't scroll. They adjust their horizontal scaling to shove all the columns on to the screen.

For 'next-gen' projects, we've fixed this. The scrolling is responsive, we've changed how horizontal scaling works and the card updates are near realtime. Our team is working on more performance improvements so expect a snappier experience over time.

> The whole thing needs to refresh every time you make a change.

We've updated the tech stack, this should happen less now with the 'next-gen' projects.

> You can't see review status or comment status from Jira, so you have to click straight through to the PR if you want to see how the conversation has moved.

You can see updates about the branch, commits and PR: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftwarecloud/files/777...

For commenting on PRs, I think that's a fair call - thanks for this feedback. I'll relay this to the team.

> And yeah, right now, you have to configure your workflow independently of the columns and then attach the the statuses to the columns.

In 'next-gen' projects, we've fixed this. The default behaviour is that creating columns on the board updates the workflows. Hence you don't have to run into multiple steps of configuring your workflow, make statuses and add columns. Right now what we have is simple and we plan to build more customisability on the workflow editor but we will be very careful to make sure we don't run into usability problems like what you just mentioned.

Thanks again for the time in leaving valuable feedback for our team.

Well, I just found the NextGen projects and have been playing around with them. This looks like a massive improvement. Fixes most of my pain points. I'm still going to miss Waffle's tight integration with Github -- being able to see the PRs under the cards along with their review and build status at a glance was wonderful.

But this makes Jira much less of an "Oh god, do I have to open that?" and much more of a tool I can actually make use of. Before I was in a state grudging accepting (because our PMs clearly needed it) while dreading the change. Now I can reach of state of peaceful acceptance. I'll make use of the feedback link as I find things. Thanks for the hard work I'm sure the team put in to make this real!

Edit to add: After playing with it more, I would just ask that you, at the least, make that PR icon that shows on the card clickable to jump straight to the PR. Or find someway to expose a list of PRs and their state on the card itself.

I wonder which (and when), if any, of these improvements will trickle into their on-premise offerings, given Cloud and Server have diverged quite a bit.

Jira PM here. We’re thrilled to hear you’re digging the new improvements on Jira Cloud.

We can’t promise when (or if) specific features will be deployed in Jira Server, but the Jira Server team is investigating and learning from customer feedback on Cloud.

We’ll be balancing the well-received parts of the Cloud experience with priorities around performance at scale and advanced configuration options in Jira Server.