Introducing Latest Addition to the Jira Family: Jira Product Discovery. So What is Jira Product Discovery? What does this new Jira tool do? How is it different from other Jira tools?
According to Atlassian: “Jira Product Discovery lets product teams capture and prioritize ideas and align everyone with product roadmaps”. So, How does it accomplish this?
Before we get into all that! Let us go back to the basics!
What is the Product Discovery Process?
The product discovery process is essential for the success of any product. It is an iterative process to discover a new potential product as part of a business’s growth strategy, or it also serves as a process to identify and optimize existing products as part of a product innovation effort. In both cases, a product discovery process serves to understand the problem, gather data, prioritize product features and communicate with stakeholders.
This process is considered complex as there are different factors to consider such as technical feasibility of features and business goals of the company. In addition, a product discovery process requires collaborative efforts of customers, stakeholders and users. Tus it requires a combination of processes and tools to gather data and communicate with the different collaborators.
In its effort to streamline this process and make it more efficient, Atlassian announced a new product called Jira Product Discovery.
👇 Check out this quick demo made by Atlassian to discover more about Jira Product Discovery
So, Jira Product Discovery is a tool that helps product managers gather and prioritize ideas, and then turn those ideas into products. But, How does it accomplish this?
Issue With Old Product Discovery Process:
In the past, product managers had to use a variety of tools to gather and prioritize ideas. This proved to be a time-consuming and inefficient process. Typically product managers face various challenges in the product discovery process such as :
- Difficulty in defining the problem and understanding what they are trying to solve.
- Difficulty in gathering necessary data to gain a deeper understanding of the problem at hand.
- Deciding which features and more important therefore, are to be prioritized.
- Communicating with stakeholders can be time consuming and inefficient. So, it may seem difficult to keep stakeholders informed and aligned with the process’s progress.
This is where Jira Product Discovery shines through as an efficient tool for product managers.
👉Learn more about this tool provided by Atlassian
What is Jira Product Discovery?
Jira Product Discovery is a cloud-based tool that is integrated with Jira. This means that its part of the Jira Family of products that includes: Jira Software for Software and IT teams, Jira Service Management for Support teams, and Jira Work Management for non-technical teams like Marketing and Finance teams.
Product managers use JPD to gather and prioritize ideas, and they can also move those ideas into Jira Software for development using Sprints.
This tool provides a solution for Project and Product Managers to take in, distill, and organize ideas into initiatives and work items.
Jira Product Discovery stand out to product managers as it offers:
- A central repository for ideas
- A variety of tools for gathering and prioritizing ideas
- The ability to communicate ideas to stakeholders and get feedback
- The ability to track the progress of ideas as they move through the product development process by linking Jira Issues to ideas
Get Started with Jira Product Discovery:
Using Jira Product Discovery (especially for first-time users) is quite a straightforward and relatively quick process that doesn’t really require much training, especially if you are familiar with the other Jira tools.
Upon creating a project, you’ll see the “All ideas” view, which resembles the Grid view in Jira Work Management (JWM).
We’ll dive more into this view’s details in the Important features section of this blog post.
Atlassian’s Aim to Capture the Full Picture
So now we’ve captured that Jira Product Discovery can help product managers gather and prioritize ideas, and then turn those ideas into products. But, It can also be used to create Jira Software issues from ideas. This allows product managers to track the progress of ideas as they move through the development process.
In fact, Atlassian highlights Jira Product Discovery’s Importance in Jira’s Overall Workflow. Jira Product Discovery is the starting point for product development and connecting ideas to the delivery stage that can be centralized within Jira Software.
Important Features in Jira Product Discovery
What distinguishes Jira Product Discovery and makes it a powerful tool, is its dynamic features, including:
All Ideas
All Ideas view captures ideas created within your jira product discovery project in a table format. Your ideas are listed with a short description.
You can create a new idea in this view, select fields you deem important to organize your ideas such as the goal of the idea, its status, number of comments and votes made on the idea, and many more.
To create a new idea: Click on “Create An Idea” , a new row will appear where you can add a summary of your new idea.
Then you can select appropriate input for each field in your “All Ideas” table.
You can also edit your idea by clicking on your idea summary.
An idea panel will appear where you can configure your idea overview, add a comment, view and edit insights, view idea history and create a delivery ticket through Jira Software.
Impact Assessment
The “Impact assessment” tab helps in ranking ideas based on effort and impact, allowing Product Managers to prioritize tasks effectively.
You simply need to enter the impact and effort of each idea, and the tab will automatically calculate a score for each idea.
The ideas with the highest scores will be the ones that have the biggest impact and require the least amount of effort, so these are the ideas that should be prioritized first
Impact versus Effort grid
This grid shows the impact score and effort of each idea in a simple visual way. This helps product managers to see at a glance which ideas are the most important.
To use the Impact versus Effort grid, you simply need to enter the impact and effort of each idea and the grid view will automatically generate a visual representation of the data. You can then customize this view by changing the fields used on the axis of the grid. Do not forget to change your grid view naming to suit the new data.
The ideas with the highest impact and effort will be the ones that are shown in the upper right-hand corner of the grid, so these are the ideas that should be prioritized first.
Roadmap View
The roadmap is a board view composed of 3 columns based on pre-defined stages which are: Now > Next > Someday
A new idea roadmap status is set automatically to “Someday”. Whilst editing an idea, you can change its roadmap status to “Now” or “Next” or simply drag the idea card view in the Roadmap board view and drop it to any roadmap status you select based on business goals or the idea requirements.
You can also select which field you want to see in this ideas card view in the roadmap board. Simply click “Fields” situated above the roadmap board and select which fields you would like to see.
Plan View
This view allows product managers to create and visualize product plans. You can select the timeline of your product discovery process, and group your project ideas by teams responsible for handling them.
This view serves as a simple visual summary of your project ideas organized by time period and teams. The ideas will be displayed in a card view, so you can see the details of each idea and how they are related to each other.
Similar to the “All ideas” view, the delivery view is a table format with the idea summary and other fields as columns.
But, this view focuses on the delivery stage as it allows product managers to track the progress of ideas as they are being delivered.
You can include fields such as teams responsible for the idea delivery, effort required for the delivery stage, and also determine if the important elements such as design are ready. It is also important to include the idea or project delivery target timeline.
You can also include a Jira Software delivery ticket link in this table, or create a delivery ticket directly from it.
Custom View
As with any Jira tool, customization is available to suit individual needs. With Jira Porduct Discovery, You can create custom views, including matrix charts to rank ideas based on various criteria.
You can rank ideas in your product discovery project based on teams responsible for the idea and required follow-up actions.
However, while JPD shows great promise, concerns arise regarding its integration with other Atlassian products like Advanced Roadmaps, Jira Software, JSM, and JWM.
Create a New View: List, Board, Timeline, etc
You can also create a new view, list, board or template. This can be helpful if you want to customize the way that you view your ideas, easily navigate through your ideas, or if you want to share a specific view with others.
A new view is by default a kanban board where ideas are added in card format. The card format includes a short summary and you can add fields to showcase necessary information.
In this example, we wanted to view our project ideas by their goal impact. A score that we assign to determine how impactful an idea is in regards to an organization’s business goals.
For instance, you can also select Effort required for an idea as your new view field such as the example below.
Jira Product Discovery Workflow
The workflow helps product managers to manage the product discovery process. It includes steps for gathering ideas, prioritizing, and delivering them.
To see or edit the jira product discovery workflow: navigate to Project Settings > Workflow
You will be able to see the default workflow for a Jira product discovery project. Similar to a Jira Software workflow, the status is categorized by “To do Status”, “In-progress Status”, and “Done Status”.
Creating a new idea trigger the workflow. Once created, the idea is automatically set to the “Parking Lot” status. An idea then moves through the workflow by using transitions. Set up transitions to customize your Jira Product Discovery workflow and automate the move from one status to another.
To add a transition, select “Transition” from the top menu. Specify both statutes you want to link along with a name.
Once you have set up all transitions to optimize your workflow, your customized workflow for all jira product discovery projects in your instance is ready. In our example, we have set up necessary transitions as follows:
What’s Next for Jira Product Discovery?
As of this article’s publishing date, Jira Product Discovery is still in Beta, and as such, it is subject to change.
While it addresses the specific needs of Product Managers, it remains to be seen how it fits into the larger picture of Atlassian’s ever-expanding Jira Cloud ecosystem. Atlassian’s further efforts in integrating its new product with other tools and promoting best practices will be critical for its long-term success.
Jira Product Discovery is a step in the right direction, catering to the needs of project and product managers in managing their initiatives and work items efficiently. While its introduction solves an important problem, the seamless integration with other Atlassian tools will be crucial for enhancing overall productivity and collaboration.
As Atlassian continues to develop and refine this new addition, we can only eagerly await its full potential and seamless alignment with the larger Jira family.
