“Product Discovery” is a new Atlassian offering that capitalises on the Jira brand, but is quite different from the original offering in terms of usage. However, it’s still very much in the Jira universe, since the solution offers tools for the upstream processes of task assignment and project management. Let’s take a look at what it’s all about.
A solution part of the agile development cycle
Atlassian is a major player in Agile development and DevOps. At each major stage in the lifecycle of an application (or a product in general, this also applies), the publisher has a tool to offer. Jira Product Discovery fills a gap that can sometimes be seen at a crucial stage: between user feedback or analysis for continuous improvement and planning the work to be done.
In fact, before planning the work, it’s a question of brainstorming ideas in order to keep the best ones, prioritise them, and so on. This is called building a backlog if you’re using an agile / scrum approach. In the DevOps cycle, this is included in the main ‘Plan’ phase, but Atlassian has chosen to remodel DevOps and make it a stage in its own right, in order to make the most of its dedicated product: Jira Product Discovery.
At Atlassian, cross-functional collaboration is provided by Confluence, Trello and Jira Work Management, the ideation and design phase is provided by Jira Product Discovery, agile planning is provided by Jira Software, the code creation and deployment phase by Bitbucket, and the operational phases are supported by Jira Service Management.
Capture ideas and structure them before letting them enter Jira Software
In simple terms, Jira Product Discovery is an ideation tool that goes to the very end of things, and logically makes the link with Jira Software. While Confluence can already be used for this kind of purpose (via the Ideation for Confluence marketplace application in particular), the dedicated tool developed by Atlassian goes a step further.
In addition to the ability to collect ideas from everyone, and the voting system to highlight them, the tool will allow you to prioritise them, plan them, or carry out a study of the effort required and an impact analysis. All of this is staged to provide excellent visibility of everything that’s going on, in the service of innovation. To enhance all this, the tool is capable of accepting input data: user feedback, Miro table, Slack conversation, etc. Ideas are not born in Jira Product Discovery, but in the field, in other applications when not at the coffee machine.
The strength of this initiative also lies in its connection with Jira tickets. Once ideas have been structured, they can be transformed into tasks and integrated into Jira sprints.
Jira Product Discovery is a powerful ally of Jira Software, ensuring that only concrete, studied and detailed tickets are left for efficient sprints.
There is a free version for organisations that can make do with 3 agents dedicated to administering the site. They are called Creators, and anyone can contribute and vote. Beyond this limit, the product imposes a monthly cost based on the number of Creators required.
