Building products that customers love is a tough job. Product teams must stay on top of market research, competitor analysis, and customer feedback to ensure they are meeting the needs of their ever-evolving customer base. They’re constantly fielding new ideas and collaborating with various teams, such as engineering, marketing, and sales, to bring those ideas to life.
To ensure the successful development of new products, product teams need a place where they can gather ideas and prioritize what to build next (and spoiler alert: spreadsheets will just slow them down). Enter Atlassian’s Jira Product Discovery, which launched in early 2023. In this article, we’ll delve into everything you need to know about Jira Product Discovery, its features, benefits, and how it can enhance your product development journey.
Jira Product Discovery is a prioritization and intake tool that helps product teams capture and organize ideas for new features or improvements. Serving as a collaborative space to explore and approve ideas both big and small, Jira Product Discovery makes it easy for teams to brainstorm, share insights, and prioritize what to work on next.
As an extension of the Atlassian ecosystem, Jira Product Discovery keeps teams aligned on the “what” and “why” of the products they’re working on and facilitates decision-making throughout the discovery phase.
User Story Mapping
When integrated with Jira, one of the standout features is the robust user story mapping functionality. Once ideas are created in Jira Product Discovery, they can be linked to epics and user stories for work execution, enabling teams to visually map out user journeys, identify pain points, and prioritize features based on user needs. This helps create a shared understanding of the product vision and aligns everyone toward common goals.
Gathering feedback is integral to refining and shaping the product. Jira Product Discovery provides mechanisms for collecting feedback from stakeholders, customers, and team members. This iterative feedback loop ensures that the product evolves in line with changing requirements and market demands.
Idea Management and Scoring
Another feature of Jira Product Discovery is its ability to allow teams and stakeholders to score an idea based on different variables like effort vs. value. This helps teams streamline the approval process and prioritize what ideas to work on next.
As part of the broader Atlassian ecosystem, Jira Product Discovery seamlessly integrates with Jira Software and Advanced Roadmaps. For example, let’s say someone has an idea for a new product feature. It gets submitted through Jira Product Discovery, goes through the workflow statuses, and then to approval and prioritization.
Once the idea gets approved, it then moves into Jira Software for work execution and Advanced Roadmaps, where teams will create a roadmap for that work to communicate timelines, dependencies, and key milestones about the product development trajectory. This integration ensures a smooth transition from discovery to execution, maintaining consistency across the entire product development lifecycle.
Enhanced visibility into the product discovery process fosters transparency across teams. Stakeholders can see what’s coming down the pipeline, understand decision-making rationale, and actively participate in shaping the product direction.
With the ability to create custom boards, product managers can also tell stories tailored to the specific interests of different stakeholders. They can also link ideas to development work happening in Jira Software and see the progress of that existing work.
Prioritizing your Jira backlog is a must when it comes to helping teams organize work and perform more efficiently. However, scrum teams often end up with so much in their backlog that prioritizing that work becomes difficult and time-consuming.
By serving as a place to approve ideas before they make their way into Jira Software, Jira Product Discovery helps create a backlog of work that truly aligns with an organization’s strategic objectives.
Another critical factor that sets Jira Product Discovery apart from other idea management tools is pricing. Jira Product Discovery is a low-cost, lightweight solution, especially for organizations that already have an Atlassian footprint.
Compared to more expensive idea management tools on the market, Jira Product Discovery is free for up to 3 Creators and costs $10 per month per Creator after that. Creators are considered admins who actively create and manage projects, ideas, fields, and views. Jira Product Discovery plans also allow for unlimited Contributors, which are users who can create ideas on the platform as long as they have an Atlassian account.
Jira Product Discovery is only available in the Cloud. If your organization is looking to migrate from one of Atlassian's other hosting options, Praecipio can guide you through your journey to the cloud.
It’s important to note that Jira Product Discovery is still in the early stages, and there are opportunities for improvement in the tool. For example, no external users can submit an idea directly through the platform.
If someone from the business team or a customer has an idea about how to enhance a product, this person must work with someone who has an active Jira Software license to get their idea into Jira Product Discovery. That, or the idea gets lost and never comes to fruition.
Atlassian's Jira Product Discovery tool is a valuable asset for navigating the complexities of the discovery phase and ensuring the delivery of products that truly resonate with customers.
You may be asking how Jira Product Discovery fits into your toolbox and how to get those ideas from Jira Product Discovery into Jira Software. That’s where Praecipio comes in.
As an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner for 15+ years, we put your Atlassian tools to work for your business. We can help you incorporate Jira Product Discovery into your ecosystem and establish guidelines around when and how an idea moves into Jira Software.
Contact our team about driving your business forward with the Atlassian Platform.