The biggest threat to enterprise performance isn’t poor strategy—it’s failing to execute on a good one. Only 3% of organizations say they’ve connected strategy to execution “very successfully.”
Something gets lost in translation when the C-suite communicates strategy to delivery teams—and again when those teams report progress back up. According to Harvard Business Review, just 55% of middle managers can name even one of their company’s top five priorities.
The gaps typically stem from three core challenges:
Lack of visibility
Lack of coordination
Inability to adapt
That’s why many enterprises consider adopting Jira Align, part of the Atlassian Strategy Collection (alongside Focus and Talent). When used together, these tools give organizations the visibility and adaptability they need to close the gap between planning, execution, and outcomes.
If you're interested in learning how Atlassian Focus can bring people, work, time, and financial data into a single source of truth for the enterprise, check out our recent on-demand webinar.
Jira Align is not plug-and-play—and it’s not the right fit for every organization. How can you tell if your business is ready? And how can you prepare to close existing gaps?
Here are 8 ways to know if your organization is ready for Jira Align—and 3 ways agile coaches can help get you there.
The number one indicator of readiness is leadership commitment. Leadership remains the number one barrier to agile success, as shown in the latest State of Agile Coaching Report. It’s not enough to have an executive sponsor who supports agile in theory. You need an executive champion—someone with decision-making authority who will actively lead the transformation alongside Jira Align implementation.
If your C-suite is willing to appoint a champion with real authority, time, and a cross-functional support team, you’re ready to take the first step.
👉 Coach’s Tip: Partner with a Jira Align expert to facilitate a workshop for your leadership team. Showing them where strategy is currently getting lost—and how Jira Align can provide visibility—can ignite stronger leadership commitment.
Many executive teams want agility, but few understand how enterprise agility changes their role. To succeed with Jira Align, leadership must shift their mindset: they are not just setting strategy—they are active participants in enabling delivery.
👉 Coach’s Tip: Educate leadership on how Jira Align works, how it supports the agile-at-scale journey, and what new behaviors will be required of them. Without this shared understanding, your rollout will stall.
Jira Align delivers ROI—up to 340%, according to Forrester—but success demands more than software investment. It requires a parallel investment in:
Training on agile frameworks like SAFe®
Jira Align platform training
Change management to support new ways of working
👉 Coach’s Tip: Position Jira Align as part of an agile mindset shift, not just a reporting layer. Without organizational change, Jira Align will not drive the results leadership expects.
Implementing Jira Align requires changing how teams work—and that can cause discomfort. Teams will need to:
Shift processes
Standardize data
Adopt new reporting practices
Those shifts often surface friction. But organizations that persevere through the discomfort will ultimately gain greater alignment and business value.
👉 Coach’s Tip: Use storytelling and real-world examples to help teams understand the “why” behind these changes. Leverage tools like Jira Align’s “Why” button to connect work back to strategic priorities.
Enterprise-wide visibility requires standardized data. For many organizations, this means aligning:
Work management practices
Taxonomies and definitions
Reporting standards
If your teams are ready to embrace this standardization for the sake of better business outcomes, you’re moving toward readiness.
👉 Coach’s Tip: Help teams see how standardization increases autonomy and creativity, not bureaucracy. Show them how real-time alignment will reduce manual status reporting and unnecessary meetings.
Jira Align implementation works best when supported by a dedicated transformation team. If such a team does not yet exist, the organization must be willing to form one. This team can:
Meet regularly
Remove impediments
Formalize evolving agile practices
👉 Coach’s Tip: Use this team as a home base to introduce key agile-at-scale practices—such as lean portfolio management and prioritization models like WSJF—to build momentum.
Many organizations mistakenly believe Jira Align is a simple reporting tool. It’s not. Jira Align is a living system designed to enable:
Daily cross-enterprise collaboration
Real-time visibility
Continuous alignment to strategy
It is not a short-term quick fix—and implementation takes time:
3 months for an initial pilot (team of teams level)
12+ months for full enterprise implementation
18-36 months to fully internalize agile-at-scale mindset and practices
👉 Coach’s Tip: Set these expectations early. Help leadership and teams understand that Jira Align is a platform for driving agile maturity, not just displaying charts.
Jira Align must integrate seamlessly with tools like Jira Software or Azure DevOps (ADO). Success requires:
Competent tool admins
Reliable, dedicated technical expertise
Support for configuration, data hygiene, and ongoing maintenance
Many organizations choose to supplement internal teams with managed services to provide the technical depth and capacity required to keep Jira Align functioning smoothly over time.
👉 Coach’s Tip: Learn Jira Align well enough to leverage its built-in feedback loops. Use features like framework maps, Work Trees, and process step Kanban boards to continuously measure progress—and coach for improvement.
Educate leadership: Host workshops that expose current visibility gaps and clearly articulate how Jira Align supports strategy execution.
Prepare teams: Use coaching sessions to introduce agile at scale concepts in current team contexts and lay the foundation for successful adoption.
Leverage Jira Align for feedback: Once the tool is in place, use its live data to coach teams, measure transformation progress, and report ROI.
As more enterprises apply agility beyond software, the need for enterprise-level visibility and alignment is only growing.
Half of State of Agile respondents now apply agile to the entire application delivery lifecycle.
Two-thirds already use Jira to manage agile projects.
Jira Align helps enterprises:
Gain real-time visibility
Align every team to strategy
Optimize for customer value at scale