Set up Jira Cloud
Learn how to set up Jira Cloud and integrate it with other products and applications.
Understand how Jira works with goals and projects in Atlassian Home
Jira can integrate with goals and projects in Atlassian Home, connecting updates on your work with where the work is tracked. Understandably, there may be a few questions and some confusion around what exactly the differences are between Jira and these new platform features in Atlassian Home.
Understanding the differences and similarities
Jira is an issue tracking tool, helping you see what your team is working on right down to the nitty-gritty details. In contrast, goals and projects enable communication between teams, giving other teams and stakeholders a high-level summary view of how your projects or goals are tracking.
While Jira helps you work within your immediate team, goals and projects help you communicate outside your team and across the organization. Due to the different audiences within these two tools, the type of updates you share needs to be tailored to their proximity to the work.
For example, if you’re launching a new mobile app, do your stakeholders really need to know all the tasks that your team completed in the last week? Or do they simply need to know that the mobile app is on track to being delivered by the targeted due date, and here are the main highlights, risks and next steps?
Software projects vs project overviews
A Jira software project is simply a collection of issues (stories, bugs, tasks, etc). You would typically use a project to represent the development work for a product, project, or service in Jira.
Meanwhile, Atlassian projects are more focused on concrete work or workstreams that have a set definition of done, and are better suited for anything you’d want to provide regular updates on. They’re more similar in size and scope to a Jira epic, as both are striving to achieve a specific outcome or complete a body of work. Because of this similarity, Jira epics can be linked to both Atlassian goals and projects to keep the progress updates in sync with the work itself.
When a project in Atlassian Home is linked to an issue in Jira, it’s referred to as a “Project overview” on the issue view to avoid confusion with a software project. The “Project overview” in the Jira issue is exactly the same as the equivalent, linked “Project” in Atlassian Home.
Read more about projects in Atlassian Home
Different reporting for different audiences
Automated, end-to-end report solutions have their appeal, especially when statistics around progress %, story points, and issues completed are pulled from Jira. But are these reports valuable for people outside of your team? The people following an Atlassian project are very different from those in your Jira boards. Dashboard statistics have a lot of useful information, but it doesn’t effectively convey the same insight and clarity as a short, curated update.
This also means there isn’t the double handling our customers initially expect. Since the content shared is different, the extent to which you need to keep things aligned may just be as simple as dates and statuses.
Read more about Atlassian’s belief in curated status updates
Providing the right level of detail
There are scenarios where a tighter relationship is required between Jira and Atlassian goals and projects, particularly when it comes to planning and communicating in-progress work.
Through the Atlassian Home integration with Jira, you can link and sync critical information between an Atlassian project and a Jira epic, such as the title, target dates, and tags.
Owners of the Atlassian project can also link their followers to more detail in Jira if needed without the need to sync. This includes:
Adding your more detailed board via the “Links” section in the project sidebar
Use smart links to embed issue details and status in a status update or comment.
Embed a software project’s roadmap into the project or goal’s About page.
Embed goals, projects, and topics into other Atlassian products.
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