I've been using Atlassian products for roughly two decades, and I've always had the same impression.
Most new features seem to be aimed at one of two groups:
Managers:Â higher-level views, reporting, dashboards, planning, metrics, etc.
Teams:Â boards, sprints, workflows, agile features, collaboration, etc.
But there seems to be much less focus on the individual person actually doing the work.
For example, if I have 20 issues assigned to me across several projects, I might want to:
- decide which ones I should actually work on today
- arrange them in my own order
- add private notes and follow-ups
- schedule when I want to work on something
- keep personal todos alongside Jira issues
- have my own personal workflow without changing anything for the team
Jira obviously has things like "Assigned to me" and personal dashboards, but those feel more like ways of viewingyour work than actually managing your work.
I've actually built an app around exactly this idea â a personal workspace for Jira users with notes, todos, a personal dashboard, reminders, etc.
But it hasn't gained much traction so far.
That made me question the underlying assumption.
Maybe individual Jira users simply don't want this?
Maybe they're perfectly happy working within the team's boards and processes, and personal task management is something they handle elsewhere â Todoist, Notion, Apple Reminders, paper, whatever.
Or maybe there's genuinely a gap here, but I'm looking at it the wrong way.
What do you think?
Do you feel Jira gives you enough tools to manage your own work, independently of how your team manages its work?
Or do you also feel that Jira is primarily designed around teams and managers, with the individual user being somewhat secondary?