It's here: 'Work' is the new collective term for all items you track in Jira

[Charles Johnson]

I'm all for 'innovation'.
Just know that for:

• every change in terminology
• every UI update
• every navigational shift
• every shift in how things are accomplished and/or tied together

...hundreds of community threads, documents, 3rd party addon configuration instructions, and youtube videos are rendered obsolete and useless to folks seeking help.

[Russell Forbes]

If only you would spend your time on fixing some of the many irritating features that sit on your backlog for years "gathering interest" rather on messing around with the terminology for issues...

[Michael Hart]

I don't wish to be cruel to the Atlassian team, but I think this messaging could have been delivered in a much more effective way.

Yes, universal terminology is important, but a terminology already existed; whether that was optimal or not was really immaterial. Instead, what is materially, impactfully important to all of your customers is that the products and services work as expected. I.e. squash some bugs!

Looking at the bug reports:

• Confluence: 1,600
• Jira: 1,500
• JSM: 750
• Automation: 190
• Opsgenie: 175
• Statuspage: 150

I fully grasp that it's brutally hard and exhausting to keep those numbers down, but perhaps in future updates as you roll these things out you could try to "soften the blow" by leading with something like:

Over (timeframe) we have worked hard to resolve ## high and critical priority bugs, and ### medium / lows. In addition to this, we are excited to be able to devote resources to (this other thing).

And if the numbers aren't impressive enough, focus on the kinds of things that were fixed. Talk about how much of a "game changer" some fixes will be in our day-to-day. Highlight the function of things we already know and use. Then you can introduce the new shiny thing, but you need to make it obvious that you're not just working on the shiny thing to the detriment of everything else. Give us some assurance that you are supporting and maintaining what we already care about; show us that you aren't distracted.

And sure, I get it. Bug fixes aren't "exciting", but they are immensely impactful and meaningful. They make a huge difference in our day-to-day and quality of life. If you take time to acknowledge those things upfront before, or instead of, announcing what might feel like "window dressing" by comparison it would do your team a world of good. Again, terminology is incredibly important and I'm fine with this change, but...it's really hard to appreciate that you cleaned and vacuumed the inside of the car, when the engine keeps stalling in traffic. I care far, far more that there's gas in the tank and that none of the tires are flat; I don't care nearly as much about switching out an LED on the dash.

[Carla Ann K. Rowland]

@Josh Sherwood Is this going to be applied to JSM Data center? I cannot express enough the frustration of Data Center Administrators that DC bugs that have existed for years are not being fixed but cloud terminology and functionality keeps getting pushed to DC products with little or no notice. The US Government majority is still on DC and some will remain there. How about attention to those $$$$ customers? 

[Kyle Simpson]

Jira team making missteps in my view. Long-time executive-level engineer and user, and frankly between "work" and the new UI, I'm about to start looking at other options.

It makes sense to "create an issue" but does not make sense to "create a work [item?]", which feels like full circle from item -> issue.

Why not just make this a configuration item and let the users decide for themselves, while maintaining the same abstraction for the object itself, whether work item or issue?

[Kyle Simpson]

@Haddon Fisher Agree with you completely. Regarding the vision statement "Our goal is to make Jira the place of work for all teams, ensuring that the language in our tools is accessible and supportive of this vision." -- it sounds like they want to generalize from the goto tool for software engineers to compete with something like Asana over market share. This seems like enshittification and will likely open new opportunities for a company to disrupt Jira with a better tool tailored for software/technical users.

[Michael Russo]

When introducing new people to Jira, I avoid using the term "issue", as that's easily confused with a "problem" or "bug". Instead, I use the term "ticket", and everyone understands what I'm talking about.

So I can see problems with the word "issue", but I think "work item" has its own problems, and I don't understand why you opted against "ticket". The FAQ answer doesn't really answer the question:

Q. Why not use a term like 'ticket'?

We conducted research with a diverse range of teams that had varying levels of technical knowledge. Although there were many common terms that teams used to describe their work, most were not broadly suitable. Based on the feedback we received, 'work item' was chosen as the most appropriate term for all teams.

So the takeaway is that "ticket" wasn't considered "broadly suitable"? How so?

[Antony Donovan]

This is perhaps the worst change I have encountered with your product and I am seriously considering moving my companies issue tracking to a different platform because of it.  

[Jamie Carey]

@Michael Russo - Ah! yes! Everyone's already calling issues "tickets" anyway.

[Hector Eduardo Calzada Tenorio]

In my opinion, this is one of the least important changes, yet it's causing the biggest headaches. Why focus on things that, from my perspective, don't really add value? There are other areas that could genuinely make a difference but oh well.
I just need some clarification on this:

What will happen with smart values, automation rules, and ScriptRunner scripts that reference the term issue?

Will you be updating those as well?

From now on, do I need to code using something like work.key instead of issue.key, for example?
I’d really appreciate a clear answer on this.

Thanks!

[Vinteen Qiu]

only interesting is the hierarchy, but it is not open this for any other filters? that is quite confusing.  

[Russell Zera]

I have a lot of questions about this change, but my first question is (and maybe it's staring me straight in the face and I'm missing it)... where is this change on the Atlassian Cloud Roadmap, which many individuals (myself included) rely on learning about new changes and changes coming soon? If users aren't reading all the blog posts and just subscribed to the cloud roadmap to learn about what has changed, this could be why they feel like this was just dropped on them instead of a well considered change.  

Even when viewing the linked blogs linked from Jira Help "Find out what's changed in Jira" the only reference to it in the incredibly long page of updates each week is a line saying "Reducing 'issue' terminology in Jira" with no link to more information. 

[Jaden Minix]

Hello @Josh Sherwood 

I posted a question earlier in the comments but it was not given an answer. I'm afraid it was taken as a rhetorical question but I am asking sincerely. I will post it again:

This is your priority?

[__ Jimi Wikman]

@Russell Zera Atlassian is struggling with release documentation and roadmaps. Today you have no way to actually stay on top of what is coming because it is not organized and the quality of documentation is sadly low.

The roadmap will show the bare minimum, and you should treat it as inspiration, not an actual roadmap. You actually find more useful information in the developer community in some cases, but even combined you will not get a full picture of what is coming your way. Not even at a high level.

The release notes are sadly also in a terrible state where not everything is actually added as a release note. The things that are included are now almost impossible to track after the latest UI change, which is why I have cancelled my videos for the latest changes and my database for release notes. I simply can't find the information anymore...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLjzTm3-BD0

Some of us have discussed how to make Atlassian aware of this big problem that is causing severe issues from time to time as we get changes rolled out we have no idea they are happening...

[Christy]

I'm so glad that I've spent so much time creating training documents for my team based on the term 'issue'. 

This just makes things so confusing for those of us who have been using/managing Jira for years.

Now all of our training docs will have to be updated. Thanks for the extra work!

[Edie Hovermale]

Not all issues are work items but containers, like Epics. Issue is not great either but 'work item' is not the answer. Why did you spend so much money on such a mistake. Ticket would have been better.

[Haddon Fisher]

+1 __ Jimi Wikman and godspeed. Still occasionally have nightmares about the day they silently dropped the API return limit from 1000 to 100.

[Ben Thomas]

At work, we just refer to Jira issues as Jiras, which is a pet peeve of mine. 😂

I've tried my hardest to get people to use the correct terminology, but 1000 people here are set in their ways.

I hope this formal naming change will take hold. 🙏

[Josh Sherwood]

@Carla Ann K. Rowland: there are currently no plans to extend this update to Jira Data Center.

@Russell Zera: this update can be found on the Cloud Roadmap here.

[David Reyes Esparza]

Good news!

Now Jira is implementing a more standard terminology just as Azure Boards does, just to mention one competitor.

[Ondřej Medek]

@Josh SherwoodIn the site Permission (e..g Default Permission Scheme), has title is "Work items" but permission names and descriptions still have "issues" inside, e.g.: Create Issues: Ability to create issues.

Do you plan to change these permission names or these will stay as they are? Thanks

Also asked by @Pavol Sočuvka in https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-articles/It-s-here-Work-is-the-new-collective-term-for-all-items-you/bc-p/2994672#M18624

[Russell Zera]

@Josh Sherwood Thanks for the link! I totally missed it! There is so much on the roadmap, but it is clearly spelled out there, so I appreciate the "it's right here" link to help me adjust my consuming of the information to improve :-). 

[Jason Ross]

"Work item" is no less of an ambiguous catch-all term than "issue." This is a very dumb and unwanted change. Nice to have something else forced on us.

[Jamie Carey]

Ben Thomas wins funniest comment.

[Jaden Minix]

Hello @Josh Sherwood my question still stands. I've had to ask it twice and you've ignored me twice but I am in genuine search of an answer. Please check your mentions and respond in this comment section, we all deserve to hear your thoughts.