Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

When I was a little girl, I played “business” at my grandmother’s house. She gave a box of blank payroll checks from a defunct business and heels and fancy clip-on earrings that she wore to work. I stuffed a bunch of blank checks into a purse and strutted down the hall to the back bedroom (y’know, the official boss’s office), where I’d wave my hands around telling everyone to get to work.

Atlassian is built on the belief that there are better ways to get work done. If we find a way of working to be ineffective, we will change it. This belief is fundamental to how we build and sell our products, and now we’re applying it to how we acquire companies (aka mergers and acquisitions, or “M&A”).

As the problems we tackle get more complex, the nature of project teams is changing. Here’s what you need to know (and what you should change) in order to be successful.

A no-BS guide for people who suck at communicating with coworkers. Which means you. Also, me.

Engineering stateless, high-availability cloud services comes with juuuuuuust a few challenges. Here’s how we (eventually) slayed the dragon.

It might feel like a fuzzy concept to you, but the data shows real benefits for companies and individuals when we all get along.

The forming-storming-norming-performing cycle repeats more often than you might think. Here’s how to navigate each stage with grit and grace.

Can you ever say with certainty that your project will be a success? Nope. You can’t. But running a premortem – a thought exercise in which you imagine what could go wrong and decide how to prevent it – in the early or middle stages of your project goes a long way.

Think about the last time you worked on a large group project. Go ahead — let out that inevitable groan. Now, think about the last time you worked on a group project that was completed ahead of schedule. Yep, we hear those crickets too. Team projects are notorious for taking far more time than expected, which means you don’t have to go far to find some famous examples.

Every time I get into a serious discussion about prioritization with the teams I coach, there’s a moment where someone does a big exhale (the kind where your cheeks puff out) and says “Let’s face it. We’re trying to do way too much and we’re kidding ourselves if we think we can do it at high quality.” And every time, they’re right.