How Atlassian powers Atlassian

The secret to aligning 12,000+ globally distributed employees

At Atlassian, we build the future of work for our customers by living it ourselves

Drawing from our unique expertise, we developed a new philosophy to make cross-functional collaboration function. We call it the Atlassian System of Work.

Our philosophy rests on a core principle:

To stay competitive, modern companies need to connect every team across the business.

Organizations that align all their teams innovate faster, have more satisfied customers, and accelerate revenue growth.

The secret to exceptional teamwork

We use our own Atlassian System of Work to help teams easily:

Align work
to goals

Plan and track work together

Unleash collective knowledge

Make AI part of the team

Here’s exactly how our teams work with each other and with AI to deliver results, fast.

Align work to goals

We make sure that everything we do aligns to goals and that all goals are visible across all teams.

Goals are our North Star. Making our individual, team, and company goals visible to everyone is key to working in lockstep.

Anu Bharadwaj, President

Our practices

1. Set clear, ambitious goals

We set company Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) in the Atlassian goals app, where we outline both what we will accomplish and how we’ll know we’ve succeeded. Teams and individuals set goals that all ladder back up to our top-level OKRs.

2. Make goals visible

We document goals in the Goals app so they can be viewed by anyone in the company. We track progress via weekly and monthly updates that make it easy for all Atlassians to stay informed and for relevant stakeholders to jump in if needed and move things along.

3. Use goals to align work to priorities

Teams align every project to a goal, which lets all Atlassians see how specific work fits into the bigger picture. On Mondays, managers often share a Loom about how the team’s priorities that week tie into larger goals.

We rely on Rovo to connect teams that might be working on similar things. Instead of reinventing the wheel in siloes, we’re able to build on each other’s insights.

How Loom helps Sales align work to goals

When sales leaders set goals, they send out Looms to rally and align their teams. Those Loom videos live in Confluence sales enablement hubs and help everyone stay focused on top priorities.

For weekly project updates, managers share Looms in the Goals app. It’s often faster and easier to talk through something like a customer win analysis than to type everything out. Plus, if anyone has a question, they can comment (and get answers) on exact moments during the Loom.

The Goals app makes it easy for all Atlassians to stay informed and build on insights from sales.
A recent learning?

Sales team members who use Loom to create personalized video messages in prospecting have 20% higher win rates!


Plan and track work, together

Great teams turn goals into work. At Atlassian, we’ve developed rituals and AI agents to help us execute on exciting visions.

Jira makes it easy to see what work is happening across the company. That drives clarity, confidence, and speed. Plus, since everyone has access to every piece of work, we don’t need pesky status meetings.

Leith Stevens, Head of Product

Our practices

1. Create an understanding of the plan and purpose

We start each project with a Confluence page (or a Loom that AI turns into a page) that explains the problem being solved, who it’s being solved for, and why it matters. We then use Rovo to automatically convert this brief into Jira tasks.

Jira Program Boards make cross-functional planning even easier by clearly showing the dependencies, objectives, and milestones that everyone has agreed on.

2. Get clear on what needs to be done

We make sure every Jira task has a clear owner and states what “done” looks like. We track progress by updating task statuses in real time.

Questions and explanations happen in Jira and include links to Confluence pages that contain important context. That means every discussion stays tied to the task, so our team’s knowledge grows with the work. No sorting through long email threads or digging in folders.

3. Iterate to maximize impact

Rovo lets us quickly discover insights from other teams that may impact or inform our work. Loom also makes it easy to scale what we’ve learned. If several teams are stuck, they can often be unblocked by a single, 2-minute Loom.

To ensure we’re applying those insights, we review progress as a team every two weeks.

How our biggest event came to life on Atlassian

Pulling off TEAM 25—5,000 attendees, 100+ sessions—was no small feat. Making our most ambitious event ever a success required Atlassians to stay closely aligned across 6 time zones.

TO DO
IN PROGRESS
BLOCKED
WON'T DO
DONE
TEAM

Team is Atlassian's biggest event of the year. Attendees learn about the latest in AI and human collaboration, get the inside scoop on our product roadmap, and connect with peers and Atlassian experts.

We tracked over 3,000 tasks and decisions in Jira, planned everything in Confluence, and used Loom to hand off work seamlessly across time zones. If we needed feedback on a keynote update, a quick Loom from a marketer in San Francisco let our Sydney-based CEO easily comment on exact timestamps, no calendar wrangling required.

Rovo brought it all together. Instead of digging through pages or Slack threads, we just asked Rovo. Instant answers meant continued momentum—and an incredible event!


Unleash collective knowledge

Generating insights from a vast knowledge base gives you a massive advantage – especially when that knowledge is accessible to AI.

Rovo allows us to search without leaving our browser and find the most relevant answers in one place.

Holly Tompkins, Head of Sales, Business Value & Trust

Our practices

1. Answer questions with AI

Because we do everything within the Atlassian portfolio, knowledge is centralized. That means we can easily chat with AI or collaborate with Rovo Agents to surface and build on existing insights.

2. Share more knowledge async

Meetings don’t scale. To effectively hand off work across 12 countries, we document context and key decisions in Confluence, share ideas or demos with Loom, and rely on Rovo (not on another person being online) to find the exact information we need. Sharing async also helps us continually add to our knowledge base.

Bonus: We love that Loom makes video communication two-way. When our CEO shares company-wide updates in a Loom, he can see exactly where people are excited or have questions. And Atlassians can stay in the loop, no matter their time zone.

3. Turn ideas into knowledge


We brainstorm in Confluence whiteboards and collaborate in Confluence pages. We make sure to mark whether a page is an early brainstorm, in-progress, or final. By working together on every part of a project, we keep everyone on the same page (literally 😉) and make it easy for all Atlassians to build on each other’s ideas.

How Rovo saves time and drives impact

Our Customer360 Rovo Agent saves us time and lets us have better customer conversations.

Instead of Atlassians spending hours tracking down information, we rely on Customer360 to instantly answer questions like, “What are this customer’s key projects and priorities?”

Because Rovo can surface relevant Looms, we’re also able to watch a quick video to get additional context or if we don’t have time to fully dig into a Confluence page.

Atlassians find agents so useful that we’ve created more than 3,000 of them! Our engineers save 1-2 hours each week by working with Rovo, which adds up to more than 500 hours per developer, per year, that goes towards building the next big idea.


Make AI part of the team

Top teams treat AI like their go-to collaborator. At Atlassian, we’ve developed rituals and AI agents to help us execute on exciting visions.

We can hardly remember what it was like to operate without Rovo—Rovo has become an essential participant in getting work done.

Jamil Valliani, Head of Product, AI

Our practices

1. Use AI to make faster, better decisions

Rovo lets us turn information into actionable insights with just a few keystrokes. Whether we need an project checklist or deep research on competitors, Rovo pulls the right info fast. The result? We spend less time digging and more time doing.

2. Empower everyone to become a builder

With Rovo, we can automate time-consuming workflows, spin up prototypes, and continuously improve. Agents update Jira tickets, draft sales emails, and help new Atlassians learn everything they need to know in their first week and beyond.

To make working with AI easy, agents offer guidance on how they can help. Take our Email Sales Guru Agent, which starts off by suggesting prompts like, “Tips for crafting compelling client emails.”

3. Define clear roles for AI

When we kick off a project, we pinpoint the workflows that Rovo can automate or augment. For example, we’ll often have Rovo surface key insights, draft briefs, or quickly spin up prototypes. As a result, we’re able to refine our thinking much faster, waste less time and deliver a better final product.

How Rovo lets us build at the speed of our ideas

When we plan new marketing campaigns, Rovo is our go-to collaborator. For example, we can create a Confluence whiteboard, ask Rovo to generate ideas based on past campaigns and market insights, and watch it speedily add sticky notes. We’ll then react to and iterate on Rovo’s initial ideas.

Once we’re ready, Rovo turns our whiteboard into a Confluence page with a detailed content calendar. And just like that, we have a solid draft ready to go. With Rovo, we save time, build momentum, and do higher-quality work.


At Atlassian, we’re using our own philosophy and our AI-powered platform to deliver Atlassian solutions.