Atlassian - Prioritizing New Features

Mirek
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 6, 2013

Hi all,

Recently I added a question about custom project types. One of the answers was added by Richie from Atlassian to add a vote to existing request. (link) . When I checked the status I noticed and said to myself:

"Wow! .. ticket created on 16/Jun/05 which is now more than 8 years.. Currently is having more that 225 and it is still not implemented? ... Looking forward I see another similar request even older - https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-4505 since 08/Sep/04 ...Why is still there?"

Based on that I would like to know more about how Atlassian is really prioritizing new features? by votes only? complexity? business need? .. To be honest if I would have only one free developer he would be able to implement already such a feature in 8 years..

I am really curious since on the tope there is a feature that have 1176 votes - https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-3821 and it will be delivered finally also after years but still in the next 12 months.

Is there really a chance to implement something that have less votes faster? What do you think about keeping new feature requests Open for years? Maybe it would be better to somehow resolve every stale request and get back to it after some time and reopen if needed?

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Mirek

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 6, 2013

Definitely not by votes... It's a lot more complex than that.

Formally, Atlassian say: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DEV/Implementation+of+New+Features+Policy

But there's a really good write up by Bryan at https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/110373/how-does-the-jira-team-use-jira-atlassian-com - lots more detail and insight!

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 6, 2013

For what it's worth, I really do think leaving an issue open for years is fine if you really would like to fix it in the long run. Closing it tends to mean you've slammed the door shut on it.

On the other hand, I like the simple approach one of my old clients took - they explicitly had a status that meant "nice to have but under-resourced or too low a priority because you keep asking for other more urgent stuff"

Mirek
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 6, 2013

Yes, I agree. I have something like that in mind. Not closing an issue but put it in a state that could give some hope that this will be implemented in near future or at least that the idea is good like you mentioned "nice to have.."

Keeping it in OPEN state for years without clear information it is not a good idea.. Then people are comming and adding only not value comments/questions like: "Is there work beeing done on this issue?" , "Any news on this issue?", "Come on guys, 5 years and no progress on this? ", "So many votes and nothing is done?"...

This it growing year by year.. I do not cleary understand why features that are based on users feedback (that are probably the most valuable) need to wait so long to be implemented.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
November 6, 2013

I understand why they take so long - it's quite simply that other things are more important. User feedback is only one of the things that drive prioritisation.

Most of the places I've worked it's even more simple - you ask the users how much money an improvement could make or save for the company, balance it off against the work needed to implement it and the one with the largest "profit" wins automatically.

But yes, it would be nice to have an explicit "we aren't planning to do this, but don't really want to close it because we can see it's useful" status

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