One of my major responsibilities whilst at Atlassian was the re-design of JIRA — a now 15 year old issue and project tracking tool used by millions. Used primarily by software teams, JIRA is the powerhouse behind companies like NASA, Spotify, and pretty much every team I’ve ever worked with.
As anyone whose ever used JIRA knows… it’s really hard to master. Once you have it figured, you can do some amazing things — but the barrier to entry is high. And in an increasingly saturated marketplace, small software teams are less willing to put in the time to learn the intricacies of such a large product — so it was time for JIRA to adapt to meet their needs.
Over several months, I led a series of workshops, customer interviews and design spikes to produce a fresh new take on JIRA that made it more appropriate for modern software teams. In early-2017, it was announced by Atlassian’s Head of Design at their European Summit.
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