Atlassian has pushed out a second release candidate for its upcoming Jira 8.17 platform. It also revealed it will be supporting flexible terminology in Data Center 8.17.

The Aussie firm announced Jira 8.17 Release Candidate 02 on May 14, indicating the new release would fix a problem that affected zero downtime upgrades in the first release candidate for the upcoming production version.

Meanwhile, the firm said that starting with Jira Data Center 8.17, the platform will support flexible terminology. This will ensure consistent nomenclature of sprints and epics between Jira and agile “at scale frameworks”. A sprint in Jira is a time period in a continuous development cycle in which developer teams complete work from their product backlog, while an epic is a large project typically delivered over a set of sprints.

The issue that this is meant to address is the problem of common terminology with an organisation as it grows from a small team of 20 to an enterprise of 20,000. According to Atlassian, agile is a “means to understanding”, and that is achieved through a common language. The org maintains that a common language becomes mission-critical as organisations scale and agile methodologies are adopted.

Flexible terminology is to become a native Jira Software Data Center feature, meaning that users will be able to standardise terminology without the need for third-party applications. Admins will be able to define naming conventions globally for every project and user, Atlassian says. They will also be able to name epics and sprints the same for Jira Software and Jira Align.

Jira 8.17 Release Candidate 02 is available under the early access programme (EAP) here, while the list of changes to prepare for the new release is available here.