News

Atlassian Splits the JIRA Platform into Three Tailored Products

• By John K. Waters
• October 13, 2015

Atlassian has split its flagship JIRA issue tracker and project manager into three standalone products running on a common platform. The changes will allow the company to extend JIRA, which has evolved from a simple Java-based bug tracker to become a widely used project management solution, more purposefully into new markets, the company said.

The three "tailored" versions of the product are: JIRA Software, for Agile development teams; JIRA Service Desk for IT, which provides a "user-focused service desk for IT teams and other service teams;" and JIRA Core, which embraces the approximately one-third of JIRA users who are not software developers.

JIRA Core comes with no use-case-specific add-ons and provides a simplified task tracking and processes for business teams, explained Junie Dinda, head of product marketing in Atlassian's JIRA group, in an e-mail. This version can be customized with terms and tasks associated with the teams' day-to-day work "instead of software development lingo and workflows," she said. It also provides dev teams with specific project templates for non-software processes, which can also be customized.

JIRA Service Desk incorporates the former Service Desk add-on. It comes with IT and basic service desks, pre-configured templates out of the box, and ITIL-ready capabilities, Dinda explained. "It provides integrated functionality for incident, problem, and change management, that improves visibility into issues as they arise, helps agents identify and fix root cause problems, and easily track actions across the IT landscape to minimize risk and downtime," she said.

The JIRA Software edition is aimed at traditional developer users of the product and incorporates the former Agile add-on. It's the first "purpose-built experience specifically for teams," Dinda explained. "Teams now have the best agile capabilities front and center in their application and a new project-focused experience when they view projects," she said. "Teams also have the Release Hub, which integrates with existing development tools to flag issues that may impact launch."

Release Hub is a dashboard designed to provide teams with real-time visibility into the status and progress of an upcoming releases.

All three of the standalone versions of the product will look and feel similar, providing "a consistent user experience," Dinda said. For example, a left-hand sidebar will enable users to navigate to, and access the most important things in their projects. "This will vary by team, but the user experience will be similar," she said.

All three JIRA versions are available now in cloud and server editions.