Atlassian continues to invest in its Cloud offering, and this includes ensuring the highest level of security and compliance. With security and compliance being the cornerstone of its products and services, Atlassian just hit another big milestone in their Cloud Roadmap: Jira Service Management is now HIPAA compliant. 

But what exactly does being HIPAA compliant mean? Why is it important for your business? And what does it mean for your Atlassian products? In this article, we’ll get to the bottom of these questions and give you the low-down on everything you need to know about Atlassian’s recent announcement regarding Jira Service Management’s HIPAA compliance. 

What Does HIPAA Compliance Involve?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a regulation developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services designed to protect the privacy and security of an individual’s Protected Health Information (PHI). The HIPAA Security Rule was established to protect individuals’ health information and ensure the security, integrity, and confidentiality of this data. HIPAA applies to healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare clearinghouses, as well as other third parties, known as “Business Associates”, that create, receive, maintain, or send PHI.

Compliance with HIPAA can only occur when an entity implements controls and protections for any relevant Patient Health Information (PHI). To make this a reality, a healthcare company must review the entirety of HIPAA (privacy laws, omnibus, etc.) and make provisions to follow the regulations within their business. 

HIPAA compliance means implementing controls and safeguards to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of protected health information. It involves developing policies and procedures that are in line with HIPAA laws and regulations and requires your organization to use HIPAA-compliant software that keeps patient data confidential.

What Does Being HIPAA-Compliant Mean for My Atlassian Products?

Security failures, compliance oversights and not regulating how technology is used puts organizations at risk of violating HIPAA. When you use Atlassian products, Atlassian provides comprehensive privacy and security protections that enable customers to operate products in compliance with HIPAA. These include:

• Security measures for protecting PHI
• Assessments for reasonable remediation or mitigating controls of addressable HIPAA Security Rules
• An annual HIPAA Security Attestation, Gap Assessment, and Security Risk Analysis
• Regular review and retention of HIPAA Security policies and procedures
• Security awareness content regarding the protection of ePHI, and
• The designation and role definition of a HIPAA Security Officer.

Additionally, as industry leaders in security and compliance, Atlassian works with third-party organizations to regularly audit their security, privacy, and compliance controls to support all of their customers’ compliance needs and meet different HIPAA requirements. We recommend referencing this chart that explains the different HIPAA requirements and what Atlassian is doing to meet them. 

What Atlassian Products Comply With HIPAA Regulations?

In addition to Jira Service Management Cloud Enterprise, Jira Software Cloud Enterprise, and Confluence Cloud Enterprise are also HIPAA compliant. Bookmark this page to stay up-to-date with any announcements related to Cloud products and compliance news.

How Do I Make Sure My Atlassian Software Is HIPAA-Compliant?

If your organization requires HIPAA compliance and you plan to use Atlassian products to manage patient information and confidential health data, you need to purchase an Enterprise Plan. HIPAA compliance only applies to Atlassian's Jira Software Cloud Enterprise, Confluence Cloud Enterprise, and Jira Service Management Cloud Enterprise plans.

In addition to purchasing an Enterprise Plan, you must also enter into a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Atlassian to ensure that the proper safeguards are in place to prevent misuse of patient health information.  

Once you are covered with these administrative steps, you will need to set your instance up in a way that meets HIPAA requirements. As part of their commitment to helping your organization meet its security and privacy needs, Atlassian created a HIPAA Implementation Guide to guide you through the process of using your Atlassian products in a HIPAA-compliant way. 

It’s also important to note that while Atlassian has provided you with the necessary security features, it’s up to your organization to ensure that your people and processes also adhere to HIPAA regulations. You will also need to make sure that any third-party apps integrated with Jira, Confluence, and Jira Service Management are operated in a HIPAA-compliant manner. 

Customize Your Atlassian Software to Work For You

While these updates to Atlassian products are exciting, there’s still a lot to learn and navigate through, especially when it comes to making sure your data is secure and is being managed properly. 

At Praecipio, we are committed to ensuring the unwavering security of your company’s information so your teams can focus on the work that matters most. In addition to guiding you through the complex process of migrating to Atlassian Cloud, we set you up for success with 

Atlassian Cloud Enterprise and ensure your instance is configured in a way that meets all HIPAA requirements. 

Contact us to learn more about how we can help your organization comply with laws and regulations regarding healthcare information. If you have additional questions about migrating to Atlassian Cloud, watch this webinar where our migration experts answer the most common questions about moving to cloud.

By 2025, 55% of large enterprises will successfully implement an all-in cloud SaaS strategy. Moving to the cloud is quickly becoming a priority for organizations looking to stay relevant in an increasingly competitive environment. Reduced costs, greater agility, scalability, and the need for remote work capabilities are some of the reasons companies are migrating to the cloud. 

Transitioning from on-prem infrastructure to a cloud-based solution is a big decision that involves many moving parts, but it's totally possible. Planning and preparing represent the biggest parts of the migration process and safeguard organizations from making costly mistakes. 

The Key to A Successful Atlassian Cloud Migration

For those in the Atlassian ecosystem, migrating to Cloud is more important than ever. We’re less than a year away from Atlassian ending support of Server products, which means that if your organization can’t operate without Atlassian tools but you’re still on-prem, it’s time to make the move to cloud.

While you can carry out a migration on your own, we recommended working with a Solution Partner due to the complexities and risks involved with migrating from Atlassian’s Server to Cloud. It will make your journey to becoming a cloud-first business much smoother and set you up for success in the long run.

In this article, we explore three organizations that partnered with Praecipio, a Solution Partner specialized in Atlassian Cloud, to guide their teams through the migration process and successfully made it to the other side. 

Castlight Health

After falling behind on their Atlassian Server updates and security patches, Castlight Health had accumulated massive technical debt. This resulted in mission-critical tools like Jira, Confluence, and Jira Service Management being extremely slow. It also made the healthcare navigation company vulnerable to security breaches, outages became more common, system performance lagged, and they had to reboot their Servers constantly. On top of all of this, Castlight was ramping up its remote workforce and the increased VPN usage put even more stress on its already exhausted system. 

As an organization in a high-risk security industry, Castlight knew that the best solution for their company and their bottom line would be to migrate to Atlassian Cloud. With the support of Praecipio, Castlight mapped out a solid project plan that listed key migration milestones, potential risks, and how to approach teams internally.

The first order of business in preparing Castlight for its migration journey was cleaning up data, analyzing applications, and communicating project milestones to the rest of the company.

Castlight had accumulated 50+ apps over the years, so their migration team enlisted Jira power users from all departments to decide which apps needed to stay or go. Moving data in small chunks at a time, the actual migration took 20+ hours and was followed by rigorous testing, user training, and additional post-migration support.

Since migrating to Atlassian Cloud, Castlight has drastically reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), eliminated downtime, offloaded maintenance, experienced efficiency gains, and improved performance and security. Now, Castlight can focus on what really matters: helping people navigate the complexities of healthcare.

Ginkgo Bioworks

To accommodate their accelerated growth and achieve their ambitious business goals, Ginkgo Bioworks needed a scalable, high-performing environment with more storage. After years of leveraging on-premise Atlassian products, Ginkgo Bioworks knew that migrating to Cloud was the next step in their business transformation journey.

Becoming a cloud-first company would also enable Ginkgo Bioworks to address various Server-related issues, including slow-performing apps, too much downtime, improper tool configuration, and maintenance. To get the job done right and ensure a successful cloud migration, Ginkgo Bioworks brought on Praecipio as their experienced and reliable Solution Partner. 

The first step in Ginkgo’s journey to cloud was laying out a clear migration roadmap, from preparation to migration and post-production support, with cleanup being a top priority. The Praecipio team advised Ginkgo Bioworks to restructure their instances so that users could have a better experience and then analyzed which apps needed to migrate to cloud. 

As with any migration, some challenges presented themselves. Some of their apps had a straightforward migration path while others were more complex and involved extracting and aggregating data before migrating. Additionally, because Ginkgo operates in a high-security industry, Praecipio had to find a workaround for accessing their environment to carry out the migration process.

After migrating to cloud, the leading biotech company offloaded maintenance, experienced a high-performing Atlassian environment, tightened security, and enhanced data accuracy which led to making smarter business decisions. With more time and resources available to focus on the work that matters most, Ginkgo Bioworks expects to triple their output and cut their costs in half. 

Advanced Energy

Advanced Energy, a global power solutions leader, wanted to migrate from its legacy project management system to Jira Cloud to accelerate its business transformation journey and support its rapid growth. 

The energy organization had just completed multiple acquisitions and needed to bring everything together–people, processes, and technology–on a single instance. Another issue that the organization faced was that their development team had deployed Jira Software without any governance, making it difficult to scale their instance because of too many workflows, unchecked configurations, and lack of standardization.

Advanced Energy partnered with Praecipio to effectively manage the transition from their legacy software to Jira Cloud, which would serve as their corporate instance. Praecipio helped the organization define a roadmap that supported their growth initiatives and created governance documentation that would accommodate the development team and how they used Jira. 

Once the leading global power supplier migrated to Jira Cloud, they also worked with Praecipio to merge the Jira instances from the acquired companies to their corporate instance and to provide training and post-migration support to end users.

After completing the Jira Cloud migration and initial mergers, Praecipio continued to provide additional support, maintenance, and governance for Advanced Energy’s growing Jira Cloud instance, which had grown from 500 to 12,000 users. Since the initial migration, Advanced Energy has continued to acquire other companies and merge those instances into their Jira Cloud. 

How to Become a Cloud-First Company

Migrations make people nervous and for good reason. They're highly complex, involve risk, and require a significant resource investment. But with careful planning along with the guidance of a Cloud Specialized Solution Partner, your Atlassian Cloud migration can be successful.

In a recent webinar, our team discusses the top issues we've seen when migrating our clients from Server to Cloud and answers the most common questions about Atlassian Cloud. You can also download our ebook, where we go into detail about what to expect before migrating and the exact steps you need to follow to transition to cloud.

If you are currently figuring out the next step in your migration journey, Praecipio is here to help. Contact our team of migration experts to analyze your situation and figure out a path that leads you to a successful Atlassian Cloud migration.

With the push to migrate to cloud and Atlassian ending support for their Server products next year, you may be wondering what the hosting options are for your Atlassian Cloud products. The good news is that Praecipio’s webinar with AWS provides those answers.

In addition to sharing the benefits of hosting your Atlassian stack on AWS, we also explore why running Atlassian software on Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a powerful and efficient solution for many organizations. Scalability, cost-effectiveness, and security are just a few of the key benefits that make this an ideal combination for cloud-first businesses using Atlassian.

Scalability

Let’s start by looking at scalability. AWS provides a wide range of services and resources that can be easily scaled up or down to meet your organization’s needs. This allows you to quickly and easily adapt to changing business needs, such as increased traffic or new projects. For example, you can easily add more servers or storage to your Jira or Confluence instances to handle a spike in usage or spin up new resources to support an upcoming project.

For your organization to quickly adapt to the demands of today’s fast moving business landscape, you need scalable and reliable infrastructure. By combining Atlassian’s Data Center offering and AWS Aurora, you’ll be able to apply high availability to your database. Praecipio understands that your Atlassian applications are mission-critical to your business, and we can help you meet and exceed availability requirements when configuring your Atlassian stack in AWS.

Cost-Effectiveness

Another key benefit of running Atlassian software on AWS is cost-effectiveness. AWS provides a pay-as-you-go model that allows you to only pay for the resources you use. This model can help cut down on spending, especially when compared to traditional on-premise solutions that don’t adapt to your specific usage. Additionally, AWS offers several cost-optimization tools and services, such as reserved instances and auto-scaling that can help you further reduce costs. You also can create your own pricing estimate using the AWS Pricing Calculator to better understand the potential cost savings for your organization.

Security

Security is another important benefit of running Atlassian software on AWS. AWS provides a wide range of security features and services that protect your data and applications. This includes security groups, network firewalls, and encryption services. AWS also has a number of compliance certifications, such as SOC 2, PCI DSS, and HIPAA that can help you meet regulatory requirements.

Integrations

Finally, Atlassian’s software and AWS have several integrations and plugins that improve the functionality and ease-of-use of both systems. For example, the AWS Elastic Beanstalk plugin for Jira allows users to easily manage their AWS Elastic Beanstalk environments directly from Jira. Similarly, the AWS CloudFormation plugin for Confluence allows users to create and manage their AWS CloudFormation templates directly from Confluence.

In conclusion, running Atlassian software on AWS is an ideal solution for many organizations. It provides scalability, cost-effectiveness, security, and integration capabilities that can help organizations improve their software’s performance and ease-of-use. To learn more about the benefits of AWS and Atlassian, watch our on-demand webinar, Scaling in the Cloud, No Gear Required: Exploring Atlassian’s Cloud Powered by AWS. 

You’ll hear from Praecipio’s Technical Solutions Architect, Luis Machado, and AWS Partner Solutions Architect, Angela Bartlett, on how to leverage Atlassian Cloud to scale, better maintain security and governance, and drive change within your organization. Dave Treft, from our client Ginkgo Bioworks, will also share how migrating to Atlassian Cloud with Praecipio helped Ginkgo achieve exponential growth. 

While it is possible to migrate to Atlassian Cloud on your own, working with a Cloud Specialized partner like Praecipio allows your team to focus on work that drives your business forward and ensures your migration is done in the most efficient way possible. 

We also understand that there are scenarios where hosting your Atlassian instance in the cloud is not feasible. Praecipio’s Cumulus hosting solution is optimized to support Atlassian products and provides additional customization options, as well as the support of a dedicated team with decades of experience in the Atlassian platform. Learn more about our Modern Service Management  here.

As if growing customer demands and the rise of distributed teams didn’t present enough challenges for businesses, increased economic uncertainty has only added more pressure to generate efficiencies. Service management sits at the center of meeting customer expectations and optimizing resources, but only when implemented properly and supported by the right technology.

Legacy service management solutions have left organizations dealing with inflated costs, disconnected teams, and inefficient service delivery. To keep pace with the speed of business, organizations are looking to adopt Enterprise Service Management (ESM) practices. To do so, they must make the switch from legacy ITSM tools to more modern solutions that bring people and processes together.

Creating a Universal System of Connected Work

Named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for IT Service Management Platforms, Jira Service Management (JSM) is Atlassian’s modern service management solution that unites development, IT operations, and business teams on an integrated platform to accelerate work, eliminate silos, and deliver high-velocity service experiences.

Jira Service Management is the fastest-growing ITSM product for the second year in a row, with over 45,000 customers leveraging the platform to power their organizations’ internal and external service delivery. The reason for such tremendous growth comes down to Atlassian’s substantial investments in the ITSM space – especially their recent acquisitions of tools like Insight, OpsGenie, ProForma, and Halp – making JSM a central hub for requests, incident reports, configuration, and asset management. 

Our recent whitepaper, Enterprise Service Management: A Core Pillar to Business Transformation, explores how Jira Service Management provides a platform for connected teams, improved visibility and accelerated workflows. It also presents quantifiable data on Jira Service Management’s financial impact. 

Implement ESM the Right Way

Like with most strategies, they look good on paper until it’s time to actually execute them. One of the main reasons businesses fail to extend ITSM capabilities beyond IT is because they’re trying to do so with an outdated legacy system.

To understand the negative impact of poorly executed ESM strategies, we explore examples of organizations big and small that addressed operational challenges with Jira Service Management. All of the organizations partnered with Praecipio to ensure that Jira Service Management was configured in a way that set them up for success with implementing ESM practices. 

How ACI Worldwide Saved $4 Million with Jira Service Management

ACI Worldwide, a global leader in mission-critical payment software, used a major Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform to implement ESM practices. Not only did this platform not align with the organization’s business needs, it generated massive overhead costs in licensing, maintenance and customizations. 

In order to standardize workflows and improve service delivery across the enterprise, ACI Worldwide made the switch from their legacy CRM platform to Jira Service Management. With over 4,000 employees in 34 countries and handling $14 trillion in transactions per day, the payment provider needed a platform that connected their distributed teams and could scale with their growing organization.

After completing the ESM implementation, the worldwide leading enterprise improved service delivery and operational efficiency across all departments, saving them $4 million in licensing fees year-over-year.

Modernizing Operations with a Nationally-Ranked Private University

Struggling with impossible-to-update legacy software and a scattered ticketing system, a nationally-ranked private university needed a modern service management solution that allowed them to track a variety of requests–from facilities to equipment–across the university. 

Their legacy ticketing system lacked reporting and search capabilities, and upgrading meant risking the entire system breaking down. Additionally, while tickets transferred from one queue to another, the information in their custom fields did not. Investing in upgrading their legacy system just didn’t make sense financially.. 

After evaluating various service management tools, they ultimately decided on the flexible, user-friendly Jira Service Management because of its superior UX and endless customization options. 

Service requesters enjoyed Jira Service Management’s easy-to-use interface and service teams appreciated how workflows were streamlined with dashboards and queues created to optimize prioritization and organization. 

Enabling Faster Innovation at Crocs

When world-famous shoemaker Crocs sought to improve its innovation workflows, they turned to Jira Service Management. 

Previously, Crocs used Google Forms to provide a product-intake channel where anyone on the team could submit innovation ideas or report bugs. The product manager would then review these inputs and create Jira tickets for the development teams, but this manual process slowed down the innovation process. 

After implementing Jira Service Management, the process between ideation and development moved faster. Simultaneously, now that project managers were able to track tickets, they could quickly gain valuable insight into workflows and were able to focus on more high-priority tasks. 

Small Team, Big Results With Jira Service Management

A local utility company was struggling to meet SLAs and implement an asset management strategy that supported their long-term vision. Not only did they have a small-but-mighty team servicing the entire organization, they used several disparate tools to manage and track service requests, incidents, employee onboarding/offboarding issues, and computer inventory.

After considering different service management platforms, they decided to go with Jira Service Management because of the tool’s ability to provide teams with a single source of truth and enable seamless service experiences.

The utility provider implemented a pre-defined framework based on ITIL best practices with the support of Jira Service Management, and this resulted in streamlined processes and improved SLAs.

How the World’s Largest Beverage and Brewing Company Got Rid of Excel Spreadsheets

Operating on a legacy service desk, the world’s largest beverage and brewing company struggled to keep up with increasing ticket volume, meet SLAs and triage incoming work. The legacy system also did not offer self-service options to support customers, retail and distribution vendors, or employees. 

Additionally, the beverage company managed their resources with spreadsheets and different databases, an impossible feat with over 30,000 employees and more than one million company assets to keep track of. 

To overcome these challenges and properly implement ESM best practices, the beverage corporation turned to Jira Service Management. Atlassian’s powerful service management platform provided the multinational company with a self-service portal and knowledge base capabilities needed to automate processes and improve service levels.

Jira Service Management also supported 750 agents and 20,000 users in delivering high-velocity service experiences when handling more than 4,000 daily service requests. With JSM, the organization was able to effectively manage and make better decisions regarding their company assets.

How Can My Organization Adopt ESM Practices?

Legacy systems have fallen behind the demands of today’s hyper-competitive and uncertain business environment. These outdated technologies no longer serve organizations looking to modernize ways of working, optimize resources, and put the service experience at the forefront of their operations. 

As an Atlassian Platinum Solution partner, Praecipio has helped hundreds of organizations–from small startups to Fortune 5 companies– improve visibility and connectivity with our Jira Service Management implementations. We tailor Jira Service Management to work for your organization by combining ideal ESM practices with custom configurations that enable your teams to focus on the work that matters most. 

Ready to start your journey with Jira Service Management? Contact us to learn how your small team can get 10 Jira Service Management agents at no cost for a year, or if you form part of a large organization, how you can get 30% off your first year of a Jira Service Management license agreement. No matter the size of your company, Praecipio can help your organization leverage ITSM capabilities across the entire organization. 

We’ve compiled a list of the most popular content determined by our readers from all of 2022. With recurring topics like Confluence Optimization, Atlassian Cloud Migration and Agile Transformation, it’s evident that 2022 was the year of getting things done. According to our research, the following resources are our most-loved and viewed throughout last year:

1. Whitepaper: The Connected Enterprise: Close the Gap Between Business Strategy & Execution

Together with the experts at Atlassian, we explore how Jira Align as a platform - when implemented well, can help to improve visibility and coordination so that organizations can adapt more quickly. We dive into how Jira Align provides seamless user experiences that leads to large-scale transformation success, the importance of properly configuring the platform, and how Jira Align helped enterprise clients uncover and resolve issues through real-time feedback loops and faster decision-making cycles.

2. Ebook: 6 Steps to a Successful Atlassian Cloud Migration

This eBook walks you through the steps that organizations should follow to plan, prepare for, and carry out an Atlassian Cloud migration. Learn what to expect before migrating, how to avoid common mistakes during the migration process, and how Praecipio used these six steps to guide Castlight Health through a successful Atlassian Cloud migration.

3. Ebook: How ITSM Drives Business Transformation

As customers continue to demand better products and always-on services from companies, ITSM sits at the center of meeting their expectations and delivering value faster. This eBook walks you through the ITSM practices that are essential for keeping up with today's fast-paced world and accelerating business transformation. Learn how to modernize your IT operations, facilitate collaboration, and deliver new services with agility by leveraging this customer-centric approach.

4. Webinar: Proving Value: How Business Leaders Use Jira Align to Connect Strategy and Execution

In this webinar we define the connection between strategy and execution from the Portfolio to the Program within Jira Align. We guide you from ideation through prioritization, planning for execution, commitment to the backlogs, and tracking progress, investment, and status. By the end of the webinar, Praecipio will demystify how Atlassian, and specifically Jira Align, can help you mature within Lean Portfolio Management.

5. Blog: How to Report in Confluence with the Jira Issues Macro

The Jira Issues Macro bridges the powerful, native link between Jira and Confluence. With it, you can report on Jira in Confluence seamlessly. This one macro can solve many of your reporting needs in Confluence. What's more, you can provide context around the data instead of just straight data. The Jira Macro is a great way to keep team members informed without navigating from Confluence to Jira and back again.

6. Blog: How to Solve Too Many Confluence Email Notifications

In this blog we walk you through all the ways to reconfigure your Confluence notification preferences so that your email doesn’t become clogged with notifications that are not important to you. Free up the space in your inbox and save yourself time later by updating your Confluence settings now using this blog as your guide.

7. Blog: Scrum Sprint Planning: How Long Should Sprints Be?

Teams new to scrum face lots of decisions – one critical decision for teams to perform efficiently is determining sprint length. Every team's needs are different, and there's rarely a one-size-fits-all approach to planning the length and organization of your sprint. While there are arguments for the varying lengths of sprints in scrum, this blog lays out some standard variables that you and your team should consider.

8. Blog: Affects Version vs. Fix Version in Jira: The Difference

Both the Affects version and Fix version are automatically created in Jira out of the box. They are related to Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) projects and are the foundation of releases in Jira. While they are linked and work in tandem at some points, there is a best practice when using the versions inside of both of these fields. This blog defines what each field is and how to properly utilize them.

9. Blog: Best Practices for Jira Epics

Discover how to make the best use of your Jira instance with Jira Epics. We walk you through what an Epic is and the importance of knowing the various workflows and requirements uniquely available for Epics, how to use these features to get on track with your agile project management, and provide you with some basic do’s and dont’s centered around Epics.

10. Blog: Maximizing Jira Align's Value Prop to Deliver Value Faster

Jira Align is truly a unicorn product that brings teams and information closer together for improved visibility, faster decision-making, and greater agility. When configured correctly and in a way that meets the specific needs of the client, Jira Align helps organizations reach that sweet spot where they connect strategy to work execution and eventually achieve true enterprise transformation. In this blogpost, we dive into what makes Jira Align such a powerful tool and how organizations can maximize this enterprise platform to deliver value faster. 

We're on a mission to help teams execute on the work that matters most, through a customizable approach built on Enterprise Agility, Cloud, App Dev, Dev Ops, and the powerful Atlassian platform and beyond, we can help you GET IT DONE, by removing the systems-level obstacles preventing you from DOING. We hope this list inspires you to take the next step in achieving your business goals. Should you need assistance our team of experts is here to help.

We’re so excited to begin creating more helpful resources this year to help you continue to drive your business forward and add value to your organization’s digital infrastructure. 

Welcome 2023; let’s get things done!

In their 2022 report, Gartner named Atlassian’s ITSM platform, Jira Service Management or JSM, as a leader in their Magic Quadrant for ITSM. Gartner releases its influential reports each year using qualitative data to evaluate various tools and systems and help business leaders make the right decisions when they invest in platforms. 

Jira Service Management is the fastest-growing ITSM product for the second year in a row, with over 45,000 customers leveraging the platform to power their organizations’ internal and external service delivery. The reason for such tremendous growth in customers comes down to Atlassian’s substantial investments in the ITSM space – especially their recent acquisitions of tools like Insight, OpsGenie, ProForma, and Halp – making JSM a central hub for requests, incident reports, configuration, and asset management. 

Gartner praises Jira Service Management and Atlassian for their commitment to continued enhancements and expansion of platform capabilities, as well as their dedication to research and development to continuously improve their platforms and better support customer needs.

What does this mean for you?

In today's fast-paced business world, teams everywhere are experiencing growing pains due to disparate tools and delayed decision-making. Jira Service Management was designed to help organizations of all sizes across all industries deliver value fast, make work visible, and connect technical and operations teams.  

From the world’s largest Beverage and Brewing Corporation to a local Public Utilities Company, Praecipio has helped organizations improve collaboration and cultivate a customer-centric mindset among service teams with JSM. As an Atlassian Platinum Solution provider, we can help you get the most out of Jira Service Management by customizing and integrating JSM tools with your existing software and processes. We’ll help you keep your business moving forward and allow you to focus on the work that matters most. 

Read the Gartner Report 

Ready to learn more about JSM? Explore our eBook, Unlocking Enterprise Service Management with the Atlassian Platform or reach out for a technical assessment.

Plus 3 Ways Agile Coaches Can Help Businesses Close Their Readiness Gaps 

Almost every organization struggles to some degree with connecting strategy to execution–only 3% of companies say they have done it “very successfully.” 

Something gets lost in translation when the c-suite tries to communicate an organization’s strategy to delivery teams, and then lost again when delivery teams try to communicate progress back up to the c-suite. In fact, in a survey by Harvard Business Review researchers found that only “55% of middle managers can name even one of their company’s top five priorities.” 

The pain points exist in three main areas across a company’s people, process, and technology: Lack of visibility, lack of coordination, and an inability to adapt. 

To help improve all three of those pain points, many teams consider technology like Jira Align, which promises to “connect your business strategy to technical execution.” 

Jira Align is definitely not plug and play, and is not appropriate for every organization. So, how do you decide if your organization is ready for a platform like Jira Align? And how can you, as an agile coach or transformation office team member, begin to close the gaps in order to prepare the organization (and yourself) for this technology?

Let’s find out by looking at eight ways to know if your organization is ready for Jira Align.

Success with Jira Align Requires Agile Leadership

Historically, (including in the most recent State of Agile Report and State of Agile Coaching Report), the main blocker for an agile organization is leadership. So it is no surprise that the first two indicators that a company is ready to adopt Jira Align are also leadership focused.

1. A c-level leadership team with a clear vision for an agile transformation is by far the top indicator that a business is ready for Jira Align. Jira Align can’t put an organization on a path of agile transformation, it can only illuminate the path that the business is already on.
   
   
2. Many organizations have an executive sponsor who believes in the agile transformation and offers support. To be ready for Jira Align, your business needs an executive champion.
   
   What’s the difference between an executive champion and an executive sponsor? The executive champion takes an active leadership role in a Jira Align implementation and the concurrent agile transformation, and is positioned high enough in the organization to make decisions.

The leadership team is the first and most obvious place for you, as an agile coach or implementation lead, to begin to close the readiness gaps for your organization. Work with the c-suite to explain what agile is, how it affects their work, and their role in a successful agile transformation. 

Ask leadership to appoint an executive champion, perhaps a Chief Transformation Officer, who has real authority, can dedicate time, and will build a team to support the change effort.

To help educate others about the need for Jira Align, work with a Jira Align partner to hold a workshop with the organization’s leaders. In a few hours, a skilled Jira Align expert can demonstrate some of the most glaring problems separating strategy from execution, and talk through ways to close those gaps. 

Often, seeing the scope of a problem first-hand–and how the platform can give visibility to that problem–gives leadership much more energy around investing in agile transformation with Jira Align as the technology platform solution.

Success with Jira Align Requires an Investment in Change  

Forrester Consulting’s Total Economic Impact study found that Jira Align has helped customers achieve up to 340% ROI, so it’s clearly worth the investment. But beyond the tool-related investment costs, the organization has to be willing to invest in change, and to have the patience to go through the associated growing pains. 

Indicators three through five, then, are all about an organization’s commitment to change. 

1. Investing in Jira Align is as much an investment in changing the mindset of the organization as it is an investment in technology. The funding for training and coaching (both for agile-at-scale frameworks like SAFe® and in Jira Align itself) should be on par with a transformation. Without training and coaching, businesses will not get the desired results from Jira Align.
   
   
2. The organization must be willing not only to fund the change, they have to also have active change management in place to embrace that change. Successfully implementing Jira Align requires significant shifts in organizational thinking and processes. This will result in significant discomfort across the organization as process changes and mindset shifts are in progress. Working through that discomfort is painful, but ultimately worth it.
   
   
3. Jira Align is designed to align teams throughout the organization. Doing this will likely require teams to change the way they work and the tools they use for that work to standardize data and reporting. Complying with standards will take not only strong change management, but also strong coaching on the why behind the changes.

The whitepaper The Connected Enterprise: Close the Gap Between Strategy and Execution presents some valuable statistics and a model case study to help showcase how much more an organization benefits when its teams know they are building the right things, at the right time, for the right people.

Hold informational sessions such as lunch-and-learn programs around how much more autonomy and creativity teams will have when leadership can see in real time how the work they are doing is related to the strategy. Explore a quick demo of Jira Align’s “why” button, which when properly configured provides all of the context behind each feature, epic, and theme from inside Jira Software, including the business case behind an item’s priority.

Source: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-align/ask-why-to-unlock-organizational-change

If it does not already exist, create a transformation office. Once formed, the transformation teams can begin meeting monthly or quarterly to gauge progress, remove impediments, formalize processes.

Scaling is another coaching opportunity. Introduce teams to agile at scale within their current context.  Discuss how small but impactful changes at the team level can help create standardized metrics that add visibility not only to the c-suite but between teams as well. This automated visibility can eventually expose and decrease dependencies between teams, meaning less time spent in meetings and more time spent creating and delivering value.

Other agile coaching opportunities may include: formalized ways to prioritize programs to achieve strategic goals (e.g., WSJF) and/or lean portfolio management.

Success with Jira Align Requires Realistic Expectations

Before going all in with Jira Align, it’s important to set realistic expectations not only about what the platform does and does not do, but about how long it will take, and how much technical expertise will be required to realize all of its benefits. That brings us to the last three indicators that an organization is ready for Jira Align:

1. To be successful with Jira Align, the organization and its leadership first must understand that Jira Align is not a reporting system. Jira Align is a living system. It is an enterprise agile transformation platform designed to enable collaboration at all levels, every single day. Sure, it has a powerful reporting component. But the greatest value enabling mindset transformation and value delivery are in the live views.
   
   
2. Implementing Jira Align takes time. An initial pilot at the program (team of teams) level can be implemented within 3 months for a single program. A full implementation modeling the firm from Enterprise/Strategy to Team levels will take at least 12 months.
   
   Internalizing the related mindset, processes, and practices will take as long as a typical successful agile-at-scale transformation:18 - 36 months.
   
   
3. Last but not least, the organization will need to bring in training and technical expertise. For Jira Align to work as intended, it must interface smoothly with team-level tools. That’s why it’s critical for the organization to have competent Jira or Azure DevOps (ADO) admins or reliable, dedicated Modern Service Management that can perform that function. In addition, organizations will need dedicated technical expertise to support the configuration and integration into the existing technical ecosystem.

Here’s the third and final place where agile transformation coaches can really dig in and use Jira Align for their own benefit as well as the organization’s benefit. Learn Jira Align well enough to use its built-in feedback loops to coach teams, measure the organization's agile transformation progress, and report on return on investment.

You’ve likely had to learn tools before to support and help teams: from Trello to Miro to Jira Software. Jira Align is no different. What is different, though, is how you can use the live views and reporting metrics inside Jira Align to measure your own success in enabling the organizational transformation.  

You can learn about features such as framework maps that let you map framework implementation activity to the Jira Align implementation, resulting in a visual map of the organization’s progress. Check out a process step Kanban board for all the teams’ work items, from stories to features to epics to themes. View and review the Work Tree using multiple filters such as the Strategy View, Top-Down View from Portfolio, or Bottom-Up from Story. 

Already, 14% of respondents in the 2022 State of Agile Report report using Jira Align. As that number increases, coaches will need to quickly interpret teams’ progress and areas for improvement as easily as they do today, but within Jira Align. Knowing Jira Align provides a competitive advantage within the industry. 

Get Ready for Jira Align

As more and more organizations begin to apply agility outside of just software teams, the need for technology like Jira Align is only going to increase. About half of State of Agile survey respondents say they apply agile practices to the entire application delivery lifecycle. And two-thirds are using Atlassian’s Jira to manage their agile projects already.

Jira Align helps to solve so many problems organizations face at scale, including real-time visibility, aligning every team to strategy, and optimizing for customer value. And, it claims to be the only platform that lets organizations implement and extend any framework at scale, including hybrid and custom frameworks.

It won’t be long before your organization is asking to implement Jira Align. Start getting them–and you–ready today.

The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing is "a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction."

Is your cloud a place where platforms of services share a set of common security and monitoring tools linked to a data lake that safely and compliantly stores information such that you can rapidly create and introduce a new feature or service? If yes, welcome to the digital cloud age. If not, you need to reconsider where you are on your journey and accelerate the path to cloud and digital. While hybrid strategies will exist for the next few years, Gartner believes that by 2025, most organizations will operate out of the cloud with limited personal capacity.

The cost of maintaining your infrastructure is becoming prohibitive, but more importantly, no longer making sense. Where do you want your financial resources allocated: keeping the lights on or generating innovation? The COVID pandemic has forced your customers and staff to rely on internet-based services. SaaS and the cloud are now the only viable technology strategy. The way you work should no longer be underpinned by software you write, but instead provisioned by trusted partners (Cloud Service Providers – CSP). The only exception is for unique products associated with your organization, but even then, these should be supported by the cloud. To read about some frequently asked cloud migration questions and our expert advice, check out this eBook.

Cloud challenges and opportunities

A useful analogy is thinking of your migration as a journey to a new land. You will encounter a variety of obstacles along the way, but when you arrive, the benefits will more than reimburse your effort. 

Your journey must adopt these five principles to be successful:

• Relentless customer and staff usage focus with frequent feedback
• Never forget that continuity and sustainability of the business is a daily requirement (not an annual test)
• The shiny tools are not the solution. The culture of technology is what leadership must embrace and portray
• Data is king, and all of your design-thinking must be on how to obtain information safely that leads to the creation of quality and secure services
• Agility is fact-based decision-making on a real-time basis, which can now be performed by AI and cloud services

Cloud is a subscription-based model, so you must understand how and when you will be charged. Think of a mobile phone. If used in your locality, it is inexpensive but utilized elsewhere, and you will get an unpleasant surprise at the end of the month. In order to be more cost-effective, consider these questions: 

• Should I rewrite the applications, or is there benefit to lift and shift them?
• If lift and shift, will this result in technical debt shortly?
• Should we stop supporting our custom-built applications and instead use SaaS (cloud and internet)?
• Do we have the skills to move to the cloud, and if not, how do we obtain them? Partnering with a CSP is a possibility, but we also want to avoid vendor lock-in.

It is easy for cloud initiatives to fail as the organization rushes towards automation and references architecture models without considering the impact on services, data flows, and security. You must learn how to take advantage of your CSP optimization offerings. Pilot, test, assess, understand, revise, and complete the move is the flow must be encouraged in small but rapid steps.

Software is the tool that underpins the way you work and services a customer or member of staff. Therefore, moving to the cloud does not begin with assessing what applications are in use but instead with how you want to work to take advantage of digital services. When you look at your applications, you can lose the ones that no longer fit with your future and apply the savings to cloud provisioning and skill training. 

Your new culture requires technology skills across all levels to remain in business. Your move to the cloud will impact budgeting, funding, procurement, HR, marketing, and other processes. CSP's and coaches can help you begin your journey acting as guides to highlight how to circumvent obstacles or take advantage of shared services. No single CSP will provide everything you want, so ensure that your strategy is flexible enough that you can blend their capabilities with your requirements. 

Currently, your applications probably do not provide you with real-time information on usage, cost, demand, and issues. Cloud services, no matter the source, all give this ability, which allows you to receive notifications that are customer and technology relevant, enabling rapid scaling to occur. Consider the news stories on organizations that have not planned for customer demand and therefore crumble under requests' weight. You need to scale up and down as necessary to service your customers and staff.

In your current infrastructure environment, you would never consider turning anything off until it was needed. Cloud finds this action expected: the development environment not in use, so turn it off. Even completely disassemble and reconstruct it when needed at the push of a button. Think of the savings as you consider the new ways of using cloud services.

Applications are no longer disparate pieces of code but instead modules of software that can be used by various users. Your services need to be blended such that a platform in the cloud can deliver them. Instead of hundreds of applications, think of 20-30 platforms (services or products) that your staff and customers need.  Build them with a mix of SaaS and your own software based in the cloud facilitated by APIs, service catalogs, microservices, and containers. Those that adopt a platform strategy see savings 30-40% faster than those that move applications in other manners.

The cost of cloud is not in what you place into it but instead is priced on the way you utilize data. Your information is the essential asset after your employees in your organization. Careful consideration on what data you have, you need, how it is shared when it is archived, and how long, the rapidity of retrieval and all compliance rules must be part of your information cloud planning. Get it wrong, and you might find your data in a location that breaches local government rules resulting in a hefty fine. 

DevSecOps is the data and platform design thinking that makes the cloud safe. Using zero-trust platforms ensure the best protection and cost model. Your security practices are now software modules embedded in your platforms to ensure that compliance is being met at all times. Test this rigorously and frequently. Trust nothing in your software until it passes these tests. Only by automating work and data flow wrapped around secure software can you keep your organization and customers safe. Cyber first thinking is mandatory to avoid hackers, data loss, and compliance breaches.

Cloud scalability is a push button or automated. The good news is then that what you need can be provisioned when you want it. The bad news is that this capability is not free. Think carefully as to how and when scalability will be allowed. The same goes with business continuity, whereby an outage can trigger the use of another location within seconds. This is not a given CSP service, and you must carefully plan and test (often) for its use.

Cloud encourages collaboration across your management team to work together to achieve the advantages of this technology. Cloud is no longer solely IT's domain, instead being an organization commodity for business product-platform owners. As such, avoid misuse with guardrail type governance. Avoid vendor lock-in by ensuring that your products can be quickly migrated to another CSP if required. Remove the human middleware where possible in your processes and rely on abstracted automation.

Conclusion

Moving to the cloud is a complicated journey. Learning from a cloud expert like Praecipio can help ease that complication and turn it into a flexible, tailored approach to your migration. We create custom migration plans to fit your organization's size so you can focus on the work that matters most. If you're looking to stay agile, deliver exceptional customer experiences and keep up with today's digital business infrastructure, drop us a line and jumpstart your Atlassian cloud migration.

One of the biggest shifts in IT service management (ITSM) over the last half-decade has been the push for Enterprise Service Management (ESM), where proven ITSM capabilities are extended to other parts of the organization to improve operations and outcomes. You can read more about the benefits of enterprise service management here.

There have undeniably been great successes in many ESM strategies to date. That said, there’s one thing still holding it back — its name.

What’s wrong with “enterprise service management”?

The name makes sense, right? Right!

Well…

To a certain point, at least.

ESM is the use of ITSM capabilities across the enterprise, so “enterprise service management” is an easy sell to those who know what it means. However, that group may be smaller than some might expect, which is where the pushback starts.

Enterprise service management is unknown outside of IT

“Enterprise” is, simply put, an IT-way to refer to the organization as a whole. It’s not something that has caught on quite as much in all other departments, though, especially those where “enterprise” already has a separate, distinct meaning. This can make pitching ESM tough, as its success hinges on other business functions buying into it.

Ultimately, the business functions that are seeking help to improve their operations and outcomes aren’t looking for “enterprise” service management. Instead, they’re looking for digital transformation and a quick-and-easy way to introduce much-needed digital workflows to their operations.

An individual in human resources (HR) may not have read or heard about HR’s need for “ESM”. What they will have been subject to, though, is a constant push to “digitally transform HR operations” and that “new ways of working demand digital workflows.” This messaging is most likely coming from both external and internal sources, too, meaning the recipient is often very familiar with it. 

This is why it’s time to talk to potential customers of ESM in the language that they’re expecting — and wanting — to hear.

Let’s not underestimate the critical business need for digital workflows

Your organization and its many business functions, having so far weathered the storm of the global pandemic (and its commercial and operational impact), are likely looking for a solution to support new ways of working. For many, the need for this solution has doubtlessly been accelerated by now-distributed, rather than centrally-located, employees and teams.

For any business function needing help with issues or opportunities such as:

• The inefficiencies and failures of its manual operations
• Missing enablement elements such as self-help tools and knowledge management
• The workflow and working issues caused by remote working
• The lack of insight into demand, performance, service quality, and outcome delivery.

It’s time to think beyond “enterprise service management” and speak about the ready-made solutions to these needs using terms that non-IT personnel will know and understand.

These business functions, teams, and employees all need the power of digital workflows and everything that can come with them. Things like rules-based and AI-assisted automation, self-service catalogs and chatbots, knowledge management, notifications and alerts, platform-based bespoke workflow/app creation, and other capabilities that are readily available and extensible in modern ITSM tools will help to vault your functions and teams to the level needed — if you can get each to buy in. Check out this blog to learn how to create buy-in with teams in other departments.

Let’s talk about enabling digital workflows going forward

None of this diminishes the opportunity and power of “ESM” — it just comes down to how the solution is sold. It’s time to start packaging it as “digital workflows” or “digital enablement” instead, selling the power of ESM to other business functions using the language they expect (and perhaps want and need). This will ultimately be an easier way of helping each improve their operations and outcomes. Check out this eBook to learn about ESM use cases for diverse business teams including HR, Legal, Operations, Marketing, and Sales.

If your organization and its business functions need fast access to flexible digital workflows, then let's connect.

Cloud-based ITSM use is rapidly becoming prevalent across several different industries. The global cloud ITSM market is expected to increase with an annual growth rate of 22.3 percent between 2022 and 2030.

Why is this?

Choosing a cloud-based solution for your ITSM strategy can significantly increase the speed of your IT service delivery and save you money by reducing admin costs. But what works for a small organization can quickly fall apart when presented with the challenges of big-scale growth and the impact scaling has on your resources. 

To help you scale successfully, Atlassian Cloud offers features that enable you to extend your ITSM practices across different teams in your enterprise. 

Scaling ITSM with Atlassian Cloud

Atlassian Cloud allows you to scale IT Service Management (ITSM) seamlessly with features that help your organization overcome the barriers and difficulties of introducing new tools, services, and processes.

Uptime 

With ITSM, your entire planning, development, and release processes are grounded in customer satisfaction. If you experience an outage or other downtime, the ITSM goal of serving your customers well isn’t met. Not only is this disappointing and frustrating to your end-user, but it can result in poor business reviews, a loss of customers, and high costs.

As your business grows, your ITSM processes will need to grow with you. Changing your process and the tools can cause downtime. Atlassian Cloud adheres to strict Service Level Agreements (99.90 percent uptime for Premium products and 99.95 percent for Enterprise), which means that your systems will be available nearly 24/7, helping prevent any negative impact on your user experience. 

Security 

Scaling your ITSM practices enables you to consistently — and satisfactorily — meet your customers’ needs. However, rapidly expanding your services and ITSM can have some security risks.

Maintaining secure data access is one challenge your organization can face while scaling. Some strict security measures can be neglected during this transition, making your network vulnerable.

How do you stay on top of these security challenges while scaling your ITSM? 

Atlassian Cloud handles compliance on your behalf, minimizing internal resources spent planning and executing compliance roadmaps and working with auditors. Atlassian Cloud also offers data residency, which enables you to choose where your in-scope product data resides for Jira, JSM, and Confluence. You can choose whether you’d like to host your data in a defined geographic location or globally. Data residency allows you to keep your data secure and meet compliance requirements that accompany highly-regulated industries.

Additionally, Atlassian Cloud provides user provisioning and de-provisioning, reducing the risk of information breaches. Based on the principle of least privilege (PoLP), user provisioning and de-provisioning allow you to control user access to your resources tightly. Additionally, de-provisioning automatically removes user access for users that leave the company, eliminating the security risks that former employees — especially disgruntled ones — can pose.

Finally, Atlassian Cloud implements thorough security measures and constantly monitors for issues related to your cloud infrastructure. If any issues are detected, Atlassian handles these potential threats before they cause damage to your cloud resources and app functionality.

And, because Atlassian Cloud is backed by multi-level redundancy, your system won’t go down while Atlassian handles any unexpected issues.

Flexibility 

As your business grows, you’ll adopt new features, tools, and perhaps more Atlassian products to your stack. With this growth, you’ll also need to extend your ITSM principles across different teams without worrying about hardware-related complications. 

Atlassian Cloud provides a comprehensive stack of Atlassian products that you can implement in ways that align with the capabilities and needs of your organization.

Furthermore, with Jira, you have access to flexible application and project types so you can manage projects in the best way for your teams. Additionally, Atlassian Cloud allows you to upgrade and downgrade resources depending on your business needs. 

Atlassian Cloud Suite of ITSM Tools and Your ESM Strategy 

Atlassian Cloud’s suite of ITSM tools helps your organization improve your Enterprise Service Management (ESM) strategy by supporting core ITSM principles. Some of its features include the following.

Incident Management 

In developing your ESM strategy, your organization must include plans or processes for responding to service disruption resulting from unplanned events and restoring the services to normal. To do this, ITSM teams rely on multiple applications and tools to track, monitor, resolve and even anticipate incidents. 

To keep up with the velocity of today’s incident management, the Cloud versions of Jira Service Management (JSM) and Jira Service Desk place all these functions in one place, enabling your ITSM team to have a transparent and collaborative response to incidents. With this, you can track and manage incidents from the incident report to its resolution in real-time and resume normal operation with the least possible hindrance.

Asset Management and Configuration

One key aspect you need to consider in your ESM strategy is Asset Management and Configuration. You can store hardware assets, software licenses, facility assets, and more using JSM’s cloud-based asset management and configuration services.

Jira Service Management Cloud provides a centralized asset database, making searching for asset and resource information less stressful.

Multiple members of your ITSM team can access assets and asset information from any device with an Internet connection — and in any location — without error or conflicting information. It also synchronizes your asset database across all your organization’s branch offices in real-time, reducing or eliminating asset loss.   

Service Delivery 

To provide an effective service to your end-user, you need to identify customers’ needs and any issues that arise. A quality ticketing/response system improves your service delivery through increased awareness and ability to triage, enhancing visibility into potential issues.

With JSM, your teams can receive incoming issues and requests from customers and team members. This enables you to better prioritize and understand the scope of issues and service requests so you can first address time-sensitive requests.  

Additionally, you can configure JSM to direct tickets to the appropriate ITSM team automatically. With this, the appropriate team can address the customer’s request and escalate issues if further assistance is required to address customer requests — while skipping the process of determining who should handle the ticket.

Conclusion 

Operating in Atlassian Cloud enables your organization to expand ITSM capabilities throughout your entire organization. 

While scaling your ITSM practices may seem daunting, it doesn’t have to be with proper guidance and support. Praecipio Consulting, an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, can help you take the guesswork out of scaling ITSM. From developing a solid ESM strategy to tips on how to increase efficiency and eliminate downtime, Praecipio Consulting is here to help. Contact Praecipio Consulting today to start scaling your ITSM practices with Atlassian Cloud.

Atlassian offers many products to help you increase your productivity, including Atlassian Cloud and Atlassian Data Center. Though both Atlassian Cloud and Atlassian Data Center give you access to a full stack of Atlassian tools, they serve different purposes depending on the needs of your organization.

 Atlassian Cloud is a managed and hosted solution, meaning Atlassian handles all required infrastructure and hardware for you. By maintaining and hosting your infrastructure for you, Atlassian Cloud helps you innovate faster with less management required.

Atlassian Data Center, in contrast, requires a self-hosted environment, meaning you have an on-premise center that you maintain, upgrade, and secure. Although you have to perform these management tasks yourself, Atlassian Data Center promotes flexibility and enables you to build a custom-tailored solution.

Both versions of the Atlassian suite include core applications like Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Confluence, and Bitbucket. However, some applications like Trello and Opsgenie are available with Atlassian Cloud only, while others, like Bamboo and Crowd, are only available in Atlassian Data Center.  

Whether Atlassian Cloud or Atlassian Data Center is the best choice for your organization depends on your use case. This article highlights use cases where Atlassian Cloud or Atlassian Data Center would serve you better, helping you decide between Atlassian Cloud and Atlassian Data Center.

Atlassian Cloud Versus Atlassian Data Center: Use Cases

To understand the differences between Atlassian Cloud and Atlassian Data Center, you can compare the features, accompanying stack of Atlassian tools, and infrastructure management requirements for each solution. However, it’s also helpful to compare the use cases for each solution and understand how their capabilities and limitations match up to your organization’s business goals. 

Atlassian Cloud

Global Product Teams

Globally-distributed product teams need tools that enable collaboration without adding friction. Atlassian Cloud tools like Jira and Confluence let remote teams brainstorm, plan, and track the development of new product features from anywhere, on any device, without requiring anyone to sign into a company VPN to use on-premises tools.  

Security and Governance

Integration with Atlassian Access means Atlassian Cloud apps work seamlessly with your existing single sign-on (SSO) and identity management infrastructure. Atlassian Cloud is compliant with strict regulations like PCI DSS, SOC 3, and GDPR, so you can spend more time being productive and less time worrying about compliance and governance.

Reliability

Global enterprises need tools that work 24 hours a day because downtime is expensive. Atlassian Cloud offers service level agreements (SLAs) up to 99.95 percent — meaning your productivity apps are always available when needed. 

Looking to Leverage Cloud-Only Atlassian Tools

Some Atlassian tools are only available in Atlassian Cloud, such as: 

• Trello for lightweight project planning and collaboration
• Opsgenie for IT incident response and on-call management

If applications like these are essential parts of your organization’s workflows, Atlassian Cloud is an ideal choice.

Atlassian Data Center

Requiring More Infrastructure and Environment Control

Large, established teams that require more control over their infrastructure than Cloud offers can use Atlassian Data Center. While Atlassian Cloud offers excellent flexibility, Atlassian Data Center lets you control how and where you run your applications. Atlassian Data Center is the ideal choice if you require a traditional on-premises deployment or want to deploy to a private cloud. 

Additionally, if you’re working in an industry that requires a high level of control and security, like a government agency or financial institution, using Atlassian Data Center would be an ideal solution because it gives you tighter environmental control and customizability to maintain security and meet regulatory conditions.  

Retaining Customizations Over Time

Atlassian Data Center is the best choice if your teams are moving from previous versions of Jira Software or Confluence and you want to retain customizations built into your products over time. Many long-time users of Atlassian applications have built deep integrations between these apps and internal line-of-business systems. Making those integrations work with Atlassian Cloud may range from difficult to impossible.

Adding New Customizations

Organizations looking for more customization options to meet their exact business needs without sacrificing performance or security are better-suited to Atlassian Data Center. Although Atlassian Cloud offers many integration points via APIs, on-premises Atlassian deployments are easier to integrate deeply with the rest of your enterprise’s applications. 

Needing to Meet Compliance Criteria

Organizations with strict compliance and regulatory requirements may not be met by Atlassian Cloud’s capabilities (though note that Cloud does support SOC2, SOC3, and PCI DSS). 

With Atlassian Data Center, you are fully responsible for managing your system’s security and ensuring it stays compliant with industry regulations. This means additional work for your organization, but that application security and compliance are as strict as you need.

Thinking Long-Term About a Cloud-first Future

Migrating to the cloud offers notable long-term benefits, including server savings of 30 percent, which is due to right-sizing servers, IT cost savings of 20 percent, and giving your organization a competitive edge by enabling staff to spend more time on strategic, business development tasks and less time on infrastructure maintenance and planning. These benefits have led to widespread cloud adoption, with Gartner predicting that more than 50 percent of IT spending will shift to the cloud by 2025.

Although you can use Atlassian tools in your data center, migrating to Atlassian Cloud offers additional benefits that help future-proof your business and enable you to get the most out of Atlassian tools, including: 

• Improved team collaboration and easier access to Atlassian experts if you need support, training, or mentoring.
• Reduced IT resource costs associated with maintaining your in-house infrastructure.
• Better scalability to meet peak demands without downtime; data centers cannot be easily scaled vertically like SaaS.
• Get faster time to value with Atlassian’s latest apps, features, and integrations. You can use the newest apps and features as soon as they are available rather than waiting for an upgrade cycle.
• Moving your Data Center products to Cloud means you can take advantage of Atlassian’s SaaS-only tools.  

Conclusion

Choosing between Atlassian Cloud and Atlassian Data Center is not always a clear-cut decision. It’s important to fully understand what you’re looking to achieve by using an on-premise or Cloud-based solution and what tools each solution offers to help you meet your goal.

Migrating to Atlassian Cloud reduces costs, minimizes maintenance times, and enables you to develop faster. However, performing a migration can be challenging, especially if you’re not starting with a fresh instance. You must migrate your users, apps, and data, meaning the chances of downtime and overall complexity are high. Similarly, when working with Atlassian Data Center, you take on significant maintenance, security, and configuration responsibilities. Though this independence provides you with more control over your instance, it also means you don’t have direct support from Atlassian if there are any problems with your infrastructure.

Fortunately, you’re not alone. Praecipio is an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, and we’re ready to help you select — and implement — the best Atlassian solution for your enterprise. Contact Praecipio to help guide you through the journey of a successful migration to Atlassian Cloud or Atlassian Data Center.

Enterprise Service Management (ESM) demonstrates how broadly applicable the processes and frameworks behind service management are. Although the principles were initially developed for IT, the scope of service management has widened considerably. 

The right ESM implementation should further business goals, enhance customer experience, and even improve employee satisfaction. A survey of 500 C-Suite professionals found that 72 percent of business leaders felt that cross-department collaboration benefits employee engagement and experience. With ESM tools reducing silos within organizations and creating a collaborative ecosystem of tools and workflows, organizations have a unique opportunity to improve their operations holistically. 

What a Successful ESM Implementation Looks Like

To create an effective ESM strategy, you first need to look at your existing processes to determine what should be refined. Tools from the Atlassian platform can help you achieve your goals of implementing ESM best practices, whether you’re trying to improve the efficiency of a single department by providing a modern service desk or improve the collaborative capacity of the entire enterprise through communication and project management tools. The combination of ESM principles and Atlassian tools can help you achieve your business goals.

Moving Into the Future 

For example, when one of the world’s largest legal and business news providers turned to Praecipio Consulting to help them remove silos in their organization and transition from outdated tools and antiquated workflows. By implementing the full Atlassian platform, this organization standardized tools and practices across teams and projects, gained better performance insights, and provided developers with integration to code repositories. 

With the help of a Jira and Confluence, this organization defined standardized processes that also accounted for the unique workflow needs of different teams. Praecipio Consulting leveraged Jira’s custom fields to meet the needs of individual workflows while also providing a standard for cross-project collaboration that keeps everyone on the same page.

From Ideation to Execution with ESM 

When world-famous shoemaker Crocs sought to improve its innovation workflows, they turned to Jira Service Management. Praecipio Consulting helped Crocs replace their outdated method of creating tickets via Google Forms by implementing  Jira Service Management (JSM), which automatically routed incoming innovation ideas and bug reports to the appropriate channels based on the request type. 

Making the change to Jira Service Management enabled teams responsible for evaluating suggestions and implementing changes to quickly take a holistic view of new ideas via a simplified Jira interface. It removed the need to manually assign tickets and enabled employees to focus on more high-priority activities. Simultaneously, project managers were able to track tickets and gain valuable insights into workflows quickly.

Unique Challenges Demand Unique Solutions

When a major enterprise in the digital payments space decided to make the switch from their legacy Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform to a modern ITSM solution, some major challenges involving their operations were brought to light. With over 4,000 employees working in  34 countries and handling $14 trillion in transactions per day, this organization required a robust tool capable of operating on a massive scale and across diverse business teams — all while still being able to support the unique nuances of individual workflows.

They decided to partner with Praecipio Consulting to guide them through the process of implementing ESM strategies. Our team quickly identified that the organization lacked consistency across different teams since each of them had a unique way of working. To address this challenge, we implemented ESM best practices in combination with dynamic Atlassian like Jira, Confluence, and Jira Service Management. This enabled all departments standardize workflows, templates, data reporting, and processes, which improved service delivery across the enterprise.

We also worked closely with different teams to understand the unique needs of their workflows and created distinct custom fields and data reporting methodologies tailored to each department. Additionally, Praecipio Consulting assisted with establishing a universal language to improve interdepartmental collaboration and closely align teams with overall business goals.

After completing the ESM implementation, the worldwide leading enterprise experienced simplified workflows and operational efficiency across all departments, saving them $4 million in licensing fees year-over-year.

What Can ESM Do for Your Organization?

Curious about how your organization could benefit from an ESM implementation? Contact Praecipio today to learn more about how we could support your business with a custom ESM deployment. 

You need effective communication across your organization’s departments to boost productivity and service delivery. Managing workflows, operations, and complaints in a growing workforce can be challenging, especially when dealing with siloed teams. Rooted in IT Service Management (ITSM) principles, Enterprise service management (ESM) is one of the most effective frameworks for managing collaboration and improving efficiency across IT and non-IT workflows. 

The Service Desk Institute found that in 2021, 68 percent of organizations employed ESM strategies and that 80 percent of those organizations accelerated their digital transformation in 2020 with the help of ESM processes and tools. This widespread use of ESM is driven by its ability to manage and encourage corporate collaboration by providing an efficient portal for real-time communication and resource monitoring — ultimately boosting productivity.

Benefits of Adopting ESM in Your Business 

There are numerous advantages to adopting ESM, but today, we’ll discuss five of these benefits.

Reduce Operational Costs

Having many support personnel on the payroll will inflate the cost of running your business. ESM has incorporated tools like chatbots, virtual assistants, and smart analytics to significantly reduce the number of staff required to manage employee and customer issues. Additionally, automation can reduce maintenance and training costs by making workflows more efficient.

Improve Customer Experience

Satisfied customers are the key to meeting business objectives. One way to improve customer experience is by offering fast and real-time responses to inquiries. It’s difficult to guarantee a fast response time when your company is over-dependent on human interaction. 

ESM technologies use artificial intelligence (AI) to handle basic customer inquiries and complaints, helping to ensure that no customer issues are missed and that customers have access to support when they need it. Additionally, using ESM can help to ensure that all of your teams play an active role in delivering value to your customers and that the customer experience is treated as a top priority across your organization.

Improve Department Efficiency

When the departments in your company operate efficiently, the overall productivity of the enterprise increases. ESM provides effective collaborative and communication tools that can be used among departments, reducing or eliminating the need to manually print and distribute memos or reports.

 ESM also helps in task monitoring to keep up with project specifications and due dates. You can use project management tools backed by automation to handle corporate tasks, including scheduling and resource monitoring. This can greatly reduce unnecessary human errors and oversights and minimize the time and financial investment in performing repetitive, manual management tasks.

Reduce Siloing 

ESM helps to reduce or eliminate siloing among teams in an enterprise. One of the leading causes of overall low productivity and performance in the enterprise is poor interaction among team members. When teams work independently vs. collaboratively, status reports may not always be communicated, and business objectives could hold different weights — or shift entirely — from team to team.

ESM offers a fast and efficient interaction among unit members. Using a central line of communication helps different teams interact with each other and offers a space to share relevant documents, analyses, and workflows. Plus, our experience shows that employees like working collaboratively within a single system.

Improved Incident Management

Managing emergencies and unexpected challenges is difficult, but it’s easier when you apply ESM capabilities. ESM tools like Jira Service Management have AI-enabled capabilities and automation incorporated into the management processes. This means that incidents are quickly flagged and the appropriate mitigation protocols are initiated.

As the management and structure of enterprises continue to evolve, more and more companies are jumping on the modern business management approach and setting up enterprise service management (ESM) platforms. In fact, a 2021 industry survey found that most businesses use IT service management (ITSM)  practices outside of their IT department. 

With more innovation and technology come novel business models, new workflows, and an expansion in staffing. While this expansion is exciting, new challenges arise when it comes to cross-departmental collaboration, as teams run the risk of trapping themselves in silos. According to a 2021 report of aggregated data from 4,200 organizations around the globe, ITSM helped teams adapt to remote work, enabling them to resolve tickets 23 percent faster while working away from the office. 

Atlassian’s Jira Service Management (JSM) is an ITSM solution that streamlines workflows and enhances the collaboration of developers, IT operators, and other departments within a modern organization. While initially oriented toward ITSM and DevOps practices, JSM has grown into a powerful solution for implementing ESM strategies as well. ESM empowers every employee — regardless of whether they work in IT — with the right tools to communicate and collaborate.

Managing Work with Atlassian’s Jira Service Management

Atlassian released JSM in 2020 as an improvement to traditional service desks. With more ITSM functions to help departments of all shapes and sizes, JSM takes the concept of service desks to the next level. 

Traditionally, service desks are the point of contact between a service provider (IT department) and the service user (employees seeking IT help). The implementation of ITSM principles makes it possible to offer IT as a service, creating a streamlined process that enhances the user experience, regardless of the service user’s level of tech knowledge. 

IT service aside, Atlassian’s JSM solution also enhances DevOps workflows by allowing continuous feedback between the production team and customers throughout the entire development lifecycle. With automation and an open communication channel, JSM empowers DevOps teams by managing support tickets, client reviews, and incident reports all in one place. 

Applying these ITSM techniques to the rest of the business structure and using ESM throughout the company are fundamental to modern multi-departmental businesses. Fortunately, Atlassian’s JSM solution provides a single platform for ITSM and ESM capabilities. Let’s look at some core features and explore how they help you enhance productivity, visibility, and quality of service.   

Request Management

JSM enables you to manage requests by consolidating data from emails, messaging apps, your service desk, and other mediums. Machine learning (ML) technology groups these requests into actionable categories for your team to process. ML can help workers respond to tasks up to 15 percent faster by using past data. 

JSM enables you to build an intuitive service desk that’s easy for your employees — even those with limited tech knowledge — to navigate and streamline requests to make them easier to handle. 

Atlassian’s JSM also offers a ready-to-use knowledge base to help you set up a self-service portal quickly and efficiently. This enables your employees and clients to get answers to commonly asked questions without going through a live agent, saving you time and resources. 

For example, consider how request management can benefit your human resources (HR) department. Instead of manually processing every leave and vacation request, your employees could submit their requests through the service desk and watch the approval status. Setting up this user-friendly ESM platform can improve your HR department’s efficiency, keep your employees informed and improve the employee experience. 

Incident Management

Atlassian’s JSM solution is a boon to incident management, covering everything from escalation to communication to analytics, helping make your DevOps teams’ lives easier. 

JSM mediates critical incidents by immediately notifying the correct teams to start working on resolutions. You can open chats using Slack or Microsoft Teams and set up video meetings to collaborate with your colleagues without leaving your ESM platform. Additionally, JSM enables you to link support tickets to the incidents, keeping everything organized on a consolidated platform. You can keep everyone on your team and your clients up to date about incidents with notification options such as email, SMS, and push notifications. 

JSM also provides detailed reports and analytics throughout the incident management process. With these reports, you can pinpoint the cause of incidents and keep track of your teams’ progress as they work to resolve them.

Suppose a system fails, leading to downtime that impacts the customer or employee experience. JSM facilitates the incident management process by centralizing and filtering alerts from monitoring, logging, and CI/CD tools. This ensures teams respond to issues quickly while avoiding alert fatigue. Additionally, you can customize on-call schedules, routing rules, and escalation policies to handle alerts differently based on their importance and origin.

Problem Management

JSM simplifies problem management by grouping related incidents to identify repetitive issues, helping you launch investigations to determine the root causes and assign the right people to fix problems. 

By providing a clear overview of the entire process and all the related incidents, JSM helps you find resolutions and minimizes any potential lasting consequences of the problem. Reports and analytics can also identify if any issues are recurring and where they start, ensuring you can tackle them at their roots. 

For example, your general operations team can benefit from JSM’s problem management ability. By grouping all the incidents into broader categories and providing you with reports to see the big picture, this platform can help you streamline your problem-solving processes throughout your organization.

Change Management

When it comes to developmental changes within your company, problems may arise as you shift your team members from one methodology to another. Atlassian’s JSM empowers your teams by providing risk assessments and managing approval workflows. 

JSM automation can score the risks of a change to determine the level of risk and whether it qualifies for automatic approval for implementation or requires escalation for review. You can also assign specialized authority to specific teams on the approval line, so everyone understands their responsibilities. Delegating specialized authority will, in turn, help you avoid bottlenecks during your change process.

For instance, JSM’s change management capabilities can help your IT operations team by providing change requests with full context about a change, the teams involved, and any related work. JSM delivers a single view of information about CI/CD tools, affected services, risk scores, and required approvers. By providing everything the team needs to know on one ESM platform, your IT operations team will always be able to make optimal decisions with clear ideas about the impacts of these decisions.

Asset Management

Atlassian’s JSM solution offers a flexible system to help your teams manage assets of all kinds. These can include everything from equipment to employees. 

JSM keeps track of inventory and data for auditing and organizes the details to help you make informed decisions to tackle incidents. Because all the data is directly in Jira, it’s easy for teams to access the information they need to manage, maintain, upgrade, or deploy any asset. 

While asset management is crucial for the IT department, other teams can also benefit. For example, HR can use this open database structure to keep track of all the employees within the enterprise and stay on top of each person’s salary, vacation dates, status, and more. 

Configuration Management

JSM supports configuration management by giving you complete visibility into your projects and assets. With dependency mapping, you get a clear picture of the entire project lifecycle to assess risks, resolve problems, and quickly get to the root cause of any discrepancies. And with JSM automation, you can also automate status updates, create new tickets based on changes, and add new assets.

For example, JSM’s configuration management can help you minimize change risks by giving developers a clear view of which configurations and services may be affected by the change. And if there are any problems, teams can address them quickly with the valuable insights provided, as JSM keeps track of all incidents and changes. Additionally, because all updates to configuration items are tracked automatically, JSM can save you a lot of time when audits come around. 

Knowledge Management

Atlassian’s JSM solution’s knowledge management capability provides a single source of knowledge, so your employees and clients retain near-immediate access to accurate, adequately documented information. 

By leveraging the power of Confluence, JSM encourages self-service by providing users with an easy-to-use access point to relevant instructions and articles in your database. Self-service empowers your teams to be more self-sufficient and saves your service team time. 

JSM’s machine learning algorithm also ensures that search results are specifically for your users. Additionally, JSM offers statistics to determine which articles solve the most problems and where there might be knowledge gaps you can fill.

For instance, consider your legal team’s applications of JSM and Confluence as an ESM solution. With a knowledge management platform that offers detailed articles on commonly asked legal questions, team members outside this department can stay informed and get their questions answered before contacting the legal department. If they do have to reach out to the legal team, JSM offers a self-service platform that enables clients to check the statuses of their legal requests without having to locate or take time away from their legal team members.

Conclusion

Atlassian’s JSM platform is a one-stop solution for your ITSM and ESM needs. Although Atlassian originally oriented JSM towards IT service management and DevOps practices, you can apply Jira Service Management’s capabilities to a wide variety of workflows throughout an organization. More than just a service desk, JSM has everything you need to help your teams manage their work and empower every department to provide a high-velocity service experience. 

From request management to knowledge management, it’s time to step into the future by implementing ITSM practices in every corner of your enterprise. Ready to leverage Atlassian’s JSM to support your ITSM and ESM strategies?

Reach out to Praecipio Consulting, an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, to learn how we can support you journey to unlocking the power of ITSM and ESM in your organization.

It’s no secret that happy customers mean better business. On average, a delighted customer contributes 2.6 times more revenue than a slightly satisfied customer, and up to 14 times more revenue than an unhappy customer. In the real world, 84 percent of companies that focused on enhancing and improving their customer service reported an increase in their bottom line. Making a conscious effort to ensure smooth and satisfying customer service experiences is well worth it for your enterprise. 

Providing great service experiences starts on the inside — happy employees mean happy customers. Businesses with engaged and satisfied workers outperform their competitors by up to 147 percent. Therefore, it’s essential to look at ways to set your teams up for success.

This is where Enterprise Service Management (ESM) and IT Service Management (ITSM) come in. ESM is the application of principles to all departments of an organization. Whereas traditionally, ITSM best practices were used solely by IT teams to provide service, ESM uses these strategies to empower every team. With a proper ESM platform, businesses can streamline their workflows in all departments and provide a better service experience for their customers. After all, productive and collaborative teams contribute directly to delivering better and faster service.

Built for all types of enterprises, Jira Service Management is Atlassian’s end-to-end service management solution that helps your teams set up efficient service desks, enhance process visibility, and break down the silos that tend to isolate different departments. With a vast selection of third-party applications and services, you can create and customize your service desk to fit your unique business model.

Simplifying Work Management

There are many components involved in setting up a cohesive work management system. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Service Desks

Service desks connect service providers and users. In the traditional sense, service desks typically refer to the system in place to help customers. However, as discussed above, providing support to your employees and ensuring their satisfaction is just as important. So in the modern age, you can think of service desks in the context of ITSM and ESM. 

A service desk, in this case, refers to the point of contact between the employees (service seekers) and the IT team (service providers). The team provides many services, including:

• Incident management
• Service request management
• Knowledge management
• Self-service
• Reporting

These are just some of the solutions a service desk can offer, and yours will be unique to your business. However many you may employ, keep in mind the goal is to provide high-quality service for your employees so they can, in turn, provide an excellent service experience for your customers. 

Visibility

With so many teams working alongside each other with their own goals and processes, it is easy to lose track of the larger picture. That’s why setting up a system to give you and your teams a clear view of your projects and systems is so important. 

Visibility enables managers, team leads, and team members to quickly see the stages of various tasks and act accordingly to reach their goals. And having a clear view of where incidents may be and the status of each employee can help you develop solutions and implement actionable steps based on real-time data. 

Jira Service Management enables you to have a clear view of incidents by providing an open and collaborative platform. You can link and sync issues and service tickets in Jira and incorporate data from the wide selection of ITSM tools, giving every team a clear view of the processes within your company.

ITSM

The ongoing management and implementation of ITSM infrastructure is necessary for all modern businesses. The International Data Corporation (IDC)’s research shows that organizations that use ITSM practices to set up modern ESM platforms are consistently outperforming their competitors. 

They outperform rivals because modern service management systems streamline collaboration by facilitating efficient incident management and cross-departmental collaboration. As a result, businesses that implement these systems can better equip their employees, speed up their internal IT service turnaround times, and provide better customer service experiences. 

This is where Jira Service Management can help. Jira Service Management can set your business up for success because it is an end-to-end, fully functional, and customizable ITSM solution. Jira Service Management is your one-stop shop for all your ITSM needs, from asset management to advanced escalation processes to analytics and more. 

To fully adapt to your unique business structure, Jira Service Management offers many ITSM integrations. Let’s look at some of the top performers on the market:

ScriptRunner for Jira

ScriptRunner is at the top of the automation market. It’s an all-in-one solution to automate, customize, and extend your Jira functions. Using Groovy scripting, ScriptRunner enables you to automate bulk actions, build workflows, create scripted fields, and much more. 

Jira Misc Workflow Extensions (JMWE)

JMWE allows you to tailor your workflow to fit your unique work processes quickly. With a collection of 30 plus point-and-click post-functions, JMWE gives you the ability to build and automate your workflows without the need to know code. 

Email This Issue

Email This Issue lets you keep in touch with your fellow employees and customers without needing to use a separate email client. With Email This Issue, you can process emails, upload attachments, and send Jira issues easily to anyone inside or outside your team to facilitate clear and timely communication in every department. This streamlined communication solution is a great tool to improve the service experience of your clients. 

Time in Status

Time in Status helps you identify bottlenecks in your workplace. With so many departments managing multiple projects, it’s only natural for complications to arise. This integration enables you to identify problem areas by reporting how much time you spent on each issue, who’s responsible, and where the incident is stuck — allowing you to tackle obstacles quickly. Time in Status is valuable for preventing your employees from running in circles and ensuring an excellent service experience for your customers by promptly resolving their problems.

These are just some of the many ITSM integrations you can make with Jira Service Management. Check out the marketplace to find endless possibilities which can upgrade your ESM platform. Want to learn more about how ITSM practices deliver value faster? Download your copy of our eBook below.

How ITSM Drives Business Transformation

Download your guide to empowering teams & delivering value faster

Conclusion

Running a successful business means providing excellent service experiences for your customers. And that starts by empowering your teams with a good ESM platform. More than just a service desk, JSM has everything you need to help your teams manage their work and empower every department to provide a high-velocity service experience. 

From incident management and triaging service requests, it’s time to step into the future by implementing ITSM practices in every corner of your enterprise. Ready to leverage Atlassian’s JSM to support your ITSM and ESM strategies? Contact Praecipio, an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, to learn more.

If your Atlassian Platform is the heartbeat of your organization and you are still on Server, then you already know that cloud migration is in your future since Atlassian will no longer provide support for its Server products as of February of 2024. 

So, there is no time like the present to start putting your Atlassian Cloud migration in motion. Every organization is unique and will require a different approach. If you're overwhelmed about the entire migration process, a good place to start is getting familiar with these four Cloud Migration Strategies and the pros and cons of each one.

The strategy you choose will determine the success of your migration outcome, so it’s important to spend time designing one that best fits the needs of your organization and investing the time to properly prepare your instance and teams. This blog post will discuss how to prepare, plan and carry out a successful migration strategy, including which Atlassian tools can help you along the way and how working with an Atlassian Solution Partner can support you throughout your migration journey.

Preparing for an Effective Data Migration

As an Atlassian Cloud Specialized Partner, we’ve seen it all when it comes to cloud migrations and can attest to the importance of investing the time in planning and preparing for an Atlassian Cloud migration. While many organizations mistakenly think that the migration itself is the most critical part of the process, it’s actually the prep work that will set you up for success. For example, we’ve helped our customers achieve a 100 percent migration success rate thanks to these 6 steps that involve diligent planning and rigorous testing:

Assess

During this phase, you'll find out what you need to prepare your environment for Atlassian Cloud. Take stock of your Atlassian footprint–including current applications, integrations, and customizations–to understand the complexity and level of effort required to migrate your instance to cloud.

Plan

Now that you know where you are going and how to get there, it's time to start planning the technical and operational aspects of your Atlassian Cloud migration. You'll also choose your migration strategy and method, as well as establish a timeline. 

Prepare

With your migration plan and timelines in place, you're ready to prep your instance and teams for the big move. You'll also want to clean up your data and build a communication plan for keeping users and key stakeholders up-to-date with migration milestones. 

Test

Doing a test run of your Atlassian migration is a critical step to ensure the process goes as smoothly as possible. This is also an opportunity to uncover any issues and determine how long the migration will take. 

Migrate

It's go-time! Now is your chance to resolve any last-minute issues and carry out your migration by moving your instance over to Atlassian Cloud. You're finally on the path to brighter days.

Launch

You've made it to your final destination! Now that you have successfully migrated to cloud, it's time to get your users onboarded and resolve any post-migration issues or questions.

Minimizing Downtime and Risk During the Migration

Organizations want to protect their data and systems to comply with industry regulations and earn customer trust. While migrating to Atlassian Cloud may feel somewhat intimidating—considering the level of risk and resources involved—there are several strategies you can use to minimize both downtime and risk.

Effective Project Management

Having a clear migration plan helps to set out the processes, workflows, and individuals that will make your cloud migration successful, as this planning enables you to avoid expected surprises that could cause downtime.

During migration planning, you can establish KPIs and performance baselines that you can use to determine how well your application/service is performing once migrated and highlight any errors that can cause downtime post-migration. You might select areas related to user experience (latency and downtime), overall performance (error rates and availability), and infrastructure (network throughput and memory use). Having these baselines in place helps you determine potential risks of downtime or other areas that can cause delays during migration.

As you prepare for migration, you should prioritize migration components and establish your migration plan. Will you migrate at once, or in pieces? Understanding system dependencies can help you prevent downtime from occurring, which is especially important to prevent downtime snowballs.

Before migrating, perform refactoring or other work on your applications/services as needed to ensure they’ll work properly once migrated. This helps to reduce any downtime that could stem from application performance. Additionally, paying attention to the resource allocation of your application helps to prevent any unforeseen resource consumption that could lead to downtime or application unavailability as a consequence of nonexistent or over-extended resources.

Establish Good Communication

Having a solid communication plan can minimize downtime and risk during the migration process. Everyone involved in the migration, whether taking on a more active or passive role, needs to be familiar with the established plan, who to contact in the case of an unforeseen incident, and how to respond to incidents if they do occur.

Additionally, since cloud migration does pose risks to security and can cause potential downtime if not handled in a thoughtful and well-planned way, it’s important to communicate with stakeholders, too. 

Communication and project management tools like Jira and Trello help everyone understand what they need to do to ensure a smooth migration. If downtime does occur, or resources and data aren’t available and working as anticipated post-migration, these tools help notify those in the migration process about the issues so that teams can move swiftly to begin resolving incidents to minimize interruptions. 

Secure Your Data and Resources

Before migrating, it’s good practice to encrypt data with secure network protocols (like SSL, TLS, and HTTPS) to minimize the risk of a data breach. Encrypting your data helps to keep it secure, preventing bad actors from being able to capture, distribute, or generally see sensitive or critical data during migration. 

Not having adequate security protocols in place when migrating data can expose your system to malicious or unauthorized users and systems. So, you need to prioritize security to ensure systems aren’t compromised and protect data both in transit and at rest.

To maximize your security measures and limit the blast radius, you can also adopt a security information and event management (SIEM) solution that centralizes alert management to identify and respond to suspicious behavior in real time.

For example, Atlassian Access is available as an enterprise-wide subscription, providing added security across all your Atlassian Cloud products. It comprises a central admin console for complete visibility into your system. Gain insights into your network, proactively repel cyberattacks, customize authentication policies, and effortlessly orchestrate everything across your environment.

Practice Identity Management

Before, during, and after the migration, all users accessing your resources should be identified and verified to ensure that they’re supposed to access data, resources, and other sensitive information. Having a central governance system ensures that no unauthorized users can access the system and minimizes risk during the migration process.

Identity and access management tools like Atlassian Cloud IAM help ensure only the correct people and tools access the new cloud system and data. Atlassian Access’s helpful features include SAML single sign-on (SSO) for increased security and seamless authentication, audit logging for monitoring activities, automatic product discovery to identify shadow IT, enforced two-step verification upon login for improved security, and integration with CASB software McAfee MVISION Cloud to monitor suspicious activities. These features help ensure the correct people and systems access the new cloud environment and data during migration.

Perform Frequent Testing

Testing your data management tools helps you to identify—and prevent—potential issues that you’ll encounter during migration, thereby helping you minimize disruption and prevent delays. This form of testing is called migration testing, and its goal is to verify that the migration will be smooth. 

In addition to reducing the risk of downtime, migration testing also helps you ensure that your migration won’t result in data being lost, data integrity being sacrificed, and helps you ensure that all data is available, accessible, and functional in its new environment.

Effective Planning

Every migration is unique, so what holds for one company may not apply to another. For instance, the technologies you use, the applications you need to migrate, or the compliance rules you must follow differ from organization to organization.

Accordingly, you should establish a migration strategy that helps you get the most out of your investment in Atlassian Cloud and sets you up for success throughout the entire migration process. When deciding on your migration strategy, you should consider:

• Long-term goals
• Budget
• Migration process duration
• Apps and integrations
• Compliance privacy requirements
• Recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) of applications that you plan to migrate
• The total cost of ownership (TCO) of cloud infrastructure

Atlassian has resources available to help you with planning and carrying out your migration. For example, the Atlassian Cloud free trial enables you to test new Cloud-only features, helping you build your case for migrating cloud and gaining stakeholder buy-in. Also, Atlassian’s free Jira Cloud Migration Assistant helps migrate projects from Jira Service Management, Jira Software, and Jira Work Management on-premises to Cloud.

However, even with these helpful tools, migrations are still a complicated undertaking and come with unexpected roadblocks, especially when dealing with more complex instances. We recommend bringing on an Atlassian Solution Partner–specifically one that is Cloud Specialized—to do the heavy lifting and guide you through the entire migration process.

Conclusion

While migrating to Cloud can be challenging, taking the time to properly plan in advance and prepare will minimize those unexpected roadblocks and set you up for success throughout the migration journey. 

To learn more about how to plan, prepare for, and carry out an Atlassian Cloud migration, download our free guide: 6 Steps for a Successful Cloud Migration, which is packed with insight on what to expect before migrating, how to avoid common mistakes during the process, and how Praecipio Consulting used these six steps to guide Castlight Health through their migration journey. 

If your organization is ready to migrate to Atlassian Cloud or Data Center, reach out to the Praecipio team to support you through your migration journey. 

One of the more compelling reasons to use Jira Service Management (JSM) is to take advantage of its request management and service desk functionality. JSM is designed to streamline both the fulfillment and intake of requests, across all teams.

JSM works to remove the frustration of having to manage requests from multiple sources through multiple channels, increasing overall efficiency by automating repetitive tasks. Teams can even measure their performance with JSM, tracking how many total requests come in, and how long it takes to resolve those requests. 

JSM clearly simplifies the process of streamlining service support, but what does the process actually look like? How are support requests so easily managed? To understand that, you’ll need to understand the JSM design structure.

Understanding JSM

At its core, JSM was designed to be a highly customizable tool. Atlassian understands that service delivery teams can often have unique needs, particularly when it comes to communication.

JSM functions as a singular place where team members can go for help. By using a centralized customer portal, both employees and customers can quickly access every service desk across an organization.

On the receiving end, service request management projects come with request types and workflows that are easy to review and edit. They also come with:

• Flexible Service Level Agreement Settings
• Customizable Queues
• Automated Request Management
• Email Channels 
• Adjustable Notifications
• Real-Time Reporting Capabilities

How Service Request Management Works With Jira Service Management

Before we dive into the actual process, it’s important to understand a few key elements of the JSM design. 

Let’s imagine that the customer/team member has a problem they need support with. They would start by accessing their customer portal and submitting a support ticket. The user that interacts with the customer portal is defined as a “customer” and does not require an Atlassian JSM license in order to access that portal.  

Support tickets within the customer portal are batched into specific portal groups. For example, you might have one portal group specifically for hardware which would include any hardware-related requests.  This way, the customer/team member can continue to find more granular tickets under those options. 

While tickets are placed in a particular portal group, the tickets themselves are not locked to a certain portal group exclusively. Some tickets may belong in multiple portal groups, and JSM accounts can account for this requirement. 

Within each portal group are the request types.  Request types are the actual tickets that a customer will fill out.  A few examples of request types for an IT Service Desk would be: locked account, new hardware request, new software request, software outage, etc. Once the request type is entered, the request goes into JSM, which is what the internal user (or agent) will interact with the ticket.  

Internal users of JSM are referred to as agents within Atlassian.  Agents are often members of service teams that perform the actual work for the tickets to be resolved.  These users require an Atlassian JSM license in order to view and move tickets through the workflow.  

The agent receives the request type as an issue type, and it’s worth noting that you can have multiple request types linked to one issue type. For example, the agent you may have multiple different request types (software outage, server issue, security vulnerability,etc.) that link to one issue type of incident. 

Simply by looking at the design, you can begin to say what makes JSM such a useful tool to both customers/team members and agents. Customers/team members are able to interact with a customer portal designed to simplify the support ticket submission process. Agents, instead of having to sift through a variety of different channels and sources, are able to quickly and easily sort by request type and address problems efficiently.

The Power Of Automation And The Overall Utility Of Jira Service Management

When your teams are supported properly, they’re able to waste less time fixing what’s broken and more time on the tasks that matter. Likewise, when your support team has a simplified support process, they can address problems much more quickly and help keep your teams moving forward.

Now that we understand a bit more about how JSM was designed, it’s time to find ways to improve the experience for all your teams. That’s why one of the first action items you’ll want to focus on is finding ways to implement smart automation. 

When you’re able to properly incorporate automation into your service request experience, you’ll be able to reduce the frustration of dealing with common, repetitive tasks for your service team. 

A great example would be using automation to help agents quickly move through their follow-up communications. Not only will this improve the way your support team can communicate with customers and employees, but it will also help improve estimated resolution times.

This is what JSM does best, making support simple for the customers/team members and making it efficient for agents. By building a distinct workstream for service requests, your business can use JSM to help your teams focus on delivering more valuable work. By standardizing the process, you’re able to increase both overall efficiency and service quality. 

As an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, Praecipio understands what it takes to get the best results from your JSM deployment. Our experts are ready to evaluate your existing processes and get you started with JSM quickly. Plus, we’ll standardize and optimize your JSM implementation on day one, so you start getting great results as soon as possible.

Want to learn more? Give us a call; we live and breathe Atlassian!

No cloud migration is created equally, and because there are several factors to consider when planning your migration, it can all feel overwhelming. As an Atlassian Specialized Partner in Cloud, our goal is to help guide you through the messiness of migrations and develop a path that fits your specific business needs and leads you to a successful Atlassian Cloud Migration.

Our team of migration experts recently hosted a Q&A-style webinar about the most common issues they see with cloud migrations and provided their insights about moving to Atlassian Cloud. Below is a list of all the questions that were asked and the answers that our team gave.

Q: What is the easiest way to determine if all the add-ons are still in use in the system prior to the cloud migration/test?

A: Have Praecipio Consulting run a database query.

Q: How do I migrate from Server to Cloud? What are the options?
A: Outside of a custom solution, there are 3 potential methods of migrating server data to cloud.

1. Leverage the Jira and Confluence cloud migration tools developed by Atlassian.
2. Run a full site export/import.
3. Use an add-on like Configuration Manager for Jira from Appfire.

Of these options, Atlassian only supports 1 and 2, and 2 will be deprecated as a supported method in the near future. None of these methods are perfect, there are pros and cons to consider for each, and potentially have additional objects and elements that would have to be solutioned for.

Q: Do you see any challenges with having a hybrid environment with, for example, a Cloud Confluence linked to an on-prem Jira?

A: The main challenge to a hybrid approach is going to be related to security. In order for the applications to communicate rules and allowances will need to be put in place between the cloud site and the internal network. If the current scenario is that both Jira and Confluence are on-prem, and Confluence is migrated to Cloud, there are some additional challenges to consider with existing issue links between the two that would have to be overcome depending on the migration method.

Q: How to deal with SSO for our partners whom also have different IdP at their end on Jira Cloud configured with Atlassian Access SSO.

A: When talking about Atlassian Access, the main consideration you have to take into account is that in the server setting, all user accounts belong to the individual application, but in cloud, all accounts are Atlassian accounts and exist independently from the cloud sites. This allows a user to have permissions on multiple sites but potentially be governed by a different organization. If you have partners that you wish to grant access into your cloud site, and they have their own SSO policy in place, you can freely grant them access without any impact to your current user base.  As an example, for our customers we frequently leverage our @praecipio.com accounts, which we have managed by our own IdP.

Q: 1. Do you have any automated way to clean up an on-prem instance of Jira before migrating to cloud, things like filters and boards that belong to legacy projects that no longer exist?

2. Can the ability to have team-managed projects be disabled to ensure teams do not create a mess and stick to enterprise standards?

A: 1. We have developed several scripts and queries over time that can be used to help identify orphaned boards and filters, but this process is seldom completely automated and often requires additional input and context.

2. Yes, in cloud there is a global permission associated with who can create team-managed projects.

Q: When it comes to merging of Jira Server projects into an existing Cloud instance (where the projects are replacing previous existing projects), is there a preference of whether going on-prem to cloud or go to a cloud instance and then go cloud to cloud?  Or is that hop unnecessary? Do you have a preference as to whether to use Appfire's cloud migration tool or Atlassian's native migration tool?

A: Going from server to cloud and then cloud to cloud is more than likely going to be an unnecessary hop, but this depends largely on the migration method and the context surrounding the environments involved. We tend to leverage Atlassian's cloud migration tools when possible to gain the benefit of having support from Atlassian, but there are scenarios where Appfire's Configuration Manager for Jira needs to be leveraged, especially if there's a more complex instance merge happening.

Q: When migrating Jira from on-prem to cloud, is there a way to migrate a project without its data (i.e. keep issue types, dashboards, etc BUT not the issue tickets)?

A: This functionality does not exist natively within the migration toolset developed by Atlassian, but it is certainly a scenario that could be accomplished. There are several factors that would have to be considered such as preference of data archival.

Q: Do I need to have Atlassian Access to use the claim domain?

A: Yes, Atlassian Access is required to claim domains and set up authentication policies, including the use of SSO.

Whether you're looking for a speedy, low-cost migration or have complex enterprise requirements, we have a path for you. While the journey to Atlassian Cloud comes with its fair share of challenges, our experts are equipped with a deep understanding of migration intricacies and have helped hundreds of enterprise organizations successfully move to cloud. With our team as your guide, start planning your migration with confidence. Watch the full webinar on-demand!

To keep up with the fast-paced digital landscape, businesses depend on software for carrying out day-to-day business operations, connecting teams, and simplifying workflows. This probably explains why the global application development software market is anticipated to reach $733.5 billion by 2028.

After helping some of the world’s leading brands drive business innovation with our custom software solutions, we've learned a thing or two (or six!) along the way about building custom software that keeps teams and their tools connected. Specifically with Salesforce, our applications and integrations (whether those be specific customer use cases or general ones via the Atlassian Marketplace) have brought systems together, increased productivity, and empowered sales teams to win more deals. 

Through our experience with developing custom solutions for the world's leading CRM platform, we've identified some key things to consider to help get you started when building Salesforce apps.

#1 – Hit the Trail(head)

Salesforce is a big, well-established environment. There’s a lot you need to know about the REST API, the development process, and packaging and distributing your applications. The Salesforce Developer Training available at https://trailhead.salesforce.com provides free training courses along with sandbox environments to do the exercises. It’s a great way to quickly come up to speed on the topics you need to know more about.

The courses are not limited to development topics. If you need to learn more about using Salesforce or just want to understand the ins and outs of the Partner program, the Trailhead is the place to go.

#2 – The REST API is nice

The Praecipio development team does a lot of integration work, helping our customers improve their workflows by connecting different systems together. We work with many platforms, and have seen many APIs that are REST in name only. Often these are thin wrappers over an older XML API, or they don’t handle relationships in a RESTful fashion. Salesforce gets it right. The API is clean, consistent, and easy to use.

The API also provides a lot of useful metadata, which can help you make your software exceptional. When working with any object, you can get a list of all of the object’s fields, the labels for those fields (which may have been customized or localized), each field’s type, and whether a field is required or not. For any field whose value is selected from a list, there is an API call to return the list of valid values for the field.

#3 – Leverage a library for your stack

While the API is well-designed, it is large and feature-rich. Starting from scratch can be daunting, and you might not even be aware of some of its features. Instead of rolling your own code, take advantage of open source projects that wrap the API in your language. To achieve this, we use the Restforce Ruby Gem. Simple Salesforce is a well-regarded Python customer, and jsforce is available for JavaScript developers.

#4 – Deploy with the force (CLI)

Books, tutorials, and Trailhead courses on Salesforce development typically have you developing in the Salesforce GUI. There are times when that is valuable. The Developer Console provides a REPL that is handy for testing out ideas and debugging problems.

However, if you are like most developers, you have invested a lot of time getting your development environment just the way you like it. Fortunately, it is possible to integrate the Salesforce development process into just about any workflow. The folks at Heroku, a Salesforce company, have developed a Command Line Interface called Force, that allows you to interact with Salesforce using an API, instead of the GUI. You can upload and download templates and code, test snippets, view logs, inspect and change settings, plus much more. You can do just about anything you could do in the Salesforce GUI and while doing it in a scriptable, repeatable way.

#5 – Not all Salesforce instances have API access

Salesforce offers a number of editions, each with different pricing and features. One of the features that is not available on the lower cost plans is API access. Trying to access the API of an organization with the Contact Edition, Group Edition, or Professional Edition will raise an error. It’s also possible for the administrator of other Editions to turn off API access. Full details can be found in this article.

However, it is possible for a developer to get API access in these editions, which bring us to our final expert tip.

#6 – Managed packages and unmanaged packages. Choose wisely.

One of the topics that can be confusing for new Salesforce developers is Packages. It’s an important topic to understand because your choice can limit who can use your application and how.

Packages are ultimately bundles of customizations created by you that other Salesforce users can install into their organization. You customize a Salesforce instance and then, using a Salesforce-provided tool, you package up those customizations and publish them.

Once you have created a package, you can simply share a link to it. This is then considered an Unmanaged Package. Alternatively, you can submit that package to Salesforce for review, after which it will be published as a Managed Package, available in the Salesforce AppExchange.

Pros of Unmanaged Packages

• Free to create.
• Can be released at any time.
• You can sell them directly to your customers.

Cons of Unmanaged Packages

• Not in the AppExchange, you have to market directly to your potential customers.
• Some companies will not install Unmanaged Packages, preferring only Salesforce approved applications from the AppExchange.
• As noted above, API access is unavailable in some Salesforce Editions.
• No automatic upgrades. If you make changes, your customers will have to manually install the new version.

Pros of Managed Packages

• Customers can find you in the AppExchange.
• Automatic upgrades are available.
• Salesforce manages payments and licensing.
• Full API access for all Editions. Editions of Salesforce that are not normally allowed to use the API are granted access for Managed Packages.

Cons of Managed Packages

• Setup cost. The review process for a Managed Package includes a security review, which is expensive and time consuming. If your application will be free, this fee is waived, but you still must complete the security review.
• Review time. The initial review process can take several months.
• Salesforce takes a percentage of all sales through the AppExchange.

Ultimately, it’s a business decision. If you want to be in the AppExchange or have API access to all Editions of Salesforce, then you will need to have a Managed Package. However, if you want to move fast, sell directly, and avoid upfront costs, then an Unmanaged Package may be for you.

What's Next?

Still feel like you need some guidance on your custom development initiative? The award-winning team at Praecipio can bring our Salesforce expertise and software development best practices to your next project. Let us know how we can support your organization and help design innovative solutions that scale with speed of your business.

As machine learning and artificial intelligence continue to transform the way we use our technology platforms, the potential for innovation skyrockets. Praecipio Consulting’s Intelligent Image Classifier for Jira Cloud takes Jira’s existing automation to the next level through intelligent image recognition. Developed as part of Atlassian’s global Codegeist hackathon using the revolutionary Forge development platform, Intelligent Image Classifier enables teams by bringing the power of artificial intelligence to Jira. 

Award-winning App Combines AI and Automation to Boost Service Quality

With Intelligent Image Classifier, teams are able to automatically classify issues using multiple artificial intelligence algorithms, based on the AWS Rekognition platform. The app improves user experience in searchability, automation, and issue classification by filtering based on detected text or content within an image attached to a Jira ticket.

When asked about the origins of Intelligent Image Classifier, VP of Software Services Phil Maddaloni said, “Given our work with machine learning and AWS and our dynamic expertise within the Atlassian ecosystem, it was a perfect fit for us to apply these skills in a way that would add significant value for end users.”

Praecipio Consulting has discovered many use cases for the Intelligent Image Classifier, but the initial need was brought to the company by a local municipality. This customer wanted to improve service to their residents by identifying certain types of “work items” within their town, and classifying them based on content attached to tickets submitted through their Jira Service Management portal.

Improved Customer Service through Intelligent Image Classifier

We’ll explore a common application of this app with the story of Mrs. Smith and her cat, Mittens:

Mittens climbed the tall oak tree in the backyard, and now she’s stuck! Mrs. Smith quickly takes action, snapping a picture of Mittens and submitting a ticket with the picture through the municipality’s Jira Service Management platform. Intelligent Image Classifier automatically starts processing information. The app scans the picture of Mittens and recognizes the animal, even picking up text from a nearby street sign and adding that to the ticket. It automatically assigns the ticket to Animal Control’s service desk. Animal Control immediately dispatches a vehicle to the scene to rescue Mittens. Intelligent Image Classifier saves the day, streamlines the process, and Mrs. Smith is a happy citizen.

Later, the municipality completes an annual review of how its Animal Control department performed, and how many calls were serviced. To do so, an Atlassian administrator quickly and easily searches keywords like “cat”, “dog”, “animal”, “coyote,” etc. to find how many issues were automatically tagged with these keywords.

Future Uses with Image Recognition

In addition to image recognition and issue tagging, Intelligent Image Classifier can scan images for file types and integrate with Jira’s existing automation to incorporate into issue filters and customize Agile boards. Soon, the app will be able to automatically hide detected specific content based on targeted words and images. These use cases all improve overall user experience and security.

Praecipio Consulting is dedicated to developing innovative software for our customers, and we are excited to be recognized for our Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence capabilities by one of our most innovative and foundational partners, Atlassian. To learn more about how Praecipio Consulting can help your team propel innovation through exceptional software development and custom apps like Intelligent Image Classifier, contact us today!

Designed to scale with enterprise needs, the Atlassian platform offers flexible licensing models to support all levels of software deployment. Whether you choose Cloud or Data Center, you can freely evaluate the products and purchase them under one common Atlassian Software License Agreement.

Atlassian tools are a major innovation investment for many enterprises. Like any investment, it pays to develop a clear plan and unified strategy for managing licenses, including third-party apps, across the organization.

Creating a strategy isn’t easy. Keeping track of licensing intervals for different software, evaluating business priorities to determine when to upgrade or downgrade user count, and moving from the Atlassian stack offering to individual software licensing all take time and can be complicated, especially in large organizations with multiple teams using different tools and apps.

That’s why experienced leaders choose to outsource license management to Atlassian Solution Partners like Praecipio. We can help you choose the best licensing model to support your organization’s growth plans, unify licensing across teams to minimize costs, manage renewals, and effectively support it all to ensure that you get the most out of your tools and teams.

Below, you’ll learn more about Atlassian licensing models, key considerations for license management, and how Praecipio's Modern Service Management can help organizations like yours stay on top of your licensing strategy.

Atlassian Licensing: A Strategic Investment to Support Your Growing Teams

Basic licensing models for all Atlassian products:

When selecting your licensing model, you should assess the number of users, operational needs, and administrative requirements to determine the most cost-effective deployment option for your organization. Especially for enterprise-wide adoption, you should consider the effort required for application setup, maintenance, user growth and customization, as well as potential downtime that might affect your business.

For example, if you are piloting discrete agile teams with Atlassian, choosing a Cloud deployment would be ideal, since it’s rather simple to get the system up and running. The software can quickly scale up or down, depending on your team size. However, if you require extensive customization or compliance requirements (i.e. FedRAMP), you may want to opt for a Data Center deployment. HIPAA compliance is now available on Atlassian Cloud.

It’s important to constantly evaluate your licenses and system scalability as your team grows. This requires a strategic approach to license management to ensure that you’re still using the most appropriate licensing model, your Atlassian tools and Marketplace apps are coordinated across teams, and your licensing tier is correctly sized for your business.

Get More from Your Atlassian Investment with Praecipio's Modern service management

Your job doesn’t just stop when you purchase Atlassian software–the software is critical to keep your business running. In addition to establishing a governance strategy to ensure a unified deployment, you need to continuously evaluate licensing to avoid unnecessary costs.

“Sounds great! But why should I outsource Atlassian licensing to a Solution Partner?”

We’re glad you asked.

As a Platinum Solution Partner, Praecipio can help you evaluate the best licensing to fit your growth now and in the future, while simplifying the purchasing process and renewal plans, assessing user activity to determine the appropriate license tier for your organization, and more.

Here’s exactly how we can help:

Evaluate New Licenses

If you’re new to Atlassian, you may feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of deployment options. Our team of expert Atlassian admins will help you develop a clear roadmap for your tools, select the right solutions, and deploy with confidence.

Existing Atlassian customers will benefit from a thorough evaluation of your systems and requirements to identify potential cost savings, select the right user tier, and evaluate upgrade options.

Unify Licensing Across the Enterprise

Once Atlassian begins to scale across the organization, many businesses lose track of the various Atlassian tools and Marketplace apps used by their teams. This can be a costly problem, resulting in businesses paying for multiple licenses when one correctly-sized licensing tier would do. It can also cause governance issues with teams using different apps to accomplish the same function (e.g., time tracking).

This is where it really pays to work with an Atlassian Solution Partner. We’ll help evaluate your complete environment, identify opportunities to improve governance and save costs through unified license management, and help you avoid the organizational headache of building and driving a clear roadmap and policies for your business.

Managing Interval License Renewals

Every software deployment, including Marketplace apps, comes with a 12-month validation period. Keeping track of all these licenses can be a hassle. We offer co-terming to transition all your product interval renewals into a single order. You’ll be notified by our team 90 days before the expiration date to avoid any interruption to your service.

Dedicated Expert Support

To help you get the most out of your Atlassian investment, we offer periodic assessments to determine if you need to upgrade to the next tier or downgrade your instance. We will also keep you on top of any security vulnerabilities, allowing you to leverage our full service from start to finish.

Move Your Business Forward with a Sustainable Atlassian Deployment

With Praecipio’s Modern Service Management offering, you can rest assured that your Atlassian technology stack is always performing at its best, at any scale. We’ll help you manage everything from your native Atlassian software like Jira, Confluence or Bitbucket to your Marketplace Apps.

Contact us today to learn more about our support packages and how we can help you with all of your licensing needs.

Software and data have become the most valuable resources for modern businesses. As such, a central part of your overall business strategy should be fully harnessing the infrastructure on which you host your applications and data. Identifying the right hosting platform – like Atlassian, AWS, or another – enables organizations to remain flexible. It helps them scale successfully, meet their objectives more quickly, and respond with agility to business trends.

Not all businesses are created equally, which is why a “one-size-fits-all” hosting solution doesn’t exist. 

In this article, we’ll compare the benefits and drawbacks of hosting on the cloud vs. on-premises specifically related to Atlassian Cloud vs. Data Center. Additionally, we provide insight to help you make an informed decision about which is the best fit for your business.

Cloud Versus On-Premise Data Center

Cloud software is hosted on a third party’s infrastructure and is accessible to an organization through a web server. The underlying hardware is often widely geographically distributed and complies with global regulations.

Traditionally, on-premise software was installed locally on data centers run by the organization. This model of data center has evolved to include “on-premise” data centers that use hybrid or outsourced infrastructures, including co-located servers running your apps, VMs, or private clouds. Although the servers aren’t on a company’s premises, the hardware is physically accessible and on-premises that you can visit and inspect.

Atlassian offers both categories of products for enterprise teams: Atlassian Cloud and Atlassian Data Center. First, let's introduce the options.

Atlassian Cloud

Atlassian Cloud is a delivery model for Atlassian products that hosts software on Atlassian’s globally distributed infrastructure. It enables your company to stay agile and invest more in your core business by freeing up your resources from having to manage security, upgrades, and maintenance. 

Atlassian offers a suite of collaborative tools to get work done at scale in a hosted environment. These tools include Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Trello, Confluence, and Bamboo just to name a few.

Atlassian Data Center

Atlassian Data Center is a self-managed solution that lets you control product hosting and perform version upgrades yourselves. Unlike Atlassian Cloud, your company is responsible for managing security, upgrades, and maintenance, but you have the access and flexibility to build a custom-tailored solution. Atlassian Data Center also offers a similar suite of tools for teams to the one available on Atlassian Cloud.

In early 2021, Atlassian began the process of ending support for Atlassian Server, leaving Data Center as the only self-hosted option for organizations joining the Atlassian platform. Organizations with existing licenses can continue to use Server, but support for Atlassian Server products is scheduled for early 2024.

Breaking Down Pros and Cons

Let’s discuss the differences in control and support, ease of deployment, and cost benefits between hosting software in the cloud and on-premise.

Control and Support

Cloud environments are managed by a vendor that offers support, monitoring, and built-in reliability functions. These environments are highly available and can be set up quickly.

On-premise hosting, on the other hand, is controlled by the organization. This means that you can customize your systems and choose which tools to deploy. But this also gives you or an external partner the responsibility of managing them effectively.

Ease of Deployment

Atlassian Cloud and Data Center both present unique challenges when setting up infrastructure.

Cloud infrastructure is the simpler option when starting fresh with a new instance, but any other type of migration requires more careful planning and preparation. Setting up the new instance is normally simple, as it only requires you to sign up for a subscription, choose your configurations and then your new software is in place almost immediately and Atlassian takes care of any installation.

However, if you need to migrate an existing instance — which entails your users, apps, and data — you’ll be balancing cost, downtime, and complexity. We don’t recommend doing a cloud migration on your own, so it’s important to bring on an Atlassian Solution Partner to help successfully guide you through the migration process. 

In contrast, deploying applications on-premise involves setting up new hardware or configuring your existing hardware before you install any software. It also requires you to perform maintenance on your hardware and ensure software is updated and patched.

Even if you choose to deploy your application on a non-clustered architecture, much of this work is time-consuming and requires additional specialized staff. A more complex setup provides all the performance, scalability, and reliability you’d expect from a clustered architecture, but demands a correspondingly greater investment and more work.

To successfully deploy on-premises, you need to hire staff — not only to build and implement your infrastructure but also to maintain it and ensure it meets regulatory requirements. You then need to document and benchmark your existing processes before optimizing your application.

Testing your deployment is the most intensive part of a deployment or migration. It can take 3 to 6 months to fully test your application for functionality, performance, and integration, after which your team is then responsible for ongoing infrastructure monitoring.

If you decide to hybridize your Data Center infrastructure, you can deploy Atlassian Data Center via cloud hosting infrastructure, like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Although this removes the burden of physical server maintenance, migrating is still a work-intensive and lengthy procedure.

Cost

Cloud service models free you from the expense of hardware, software, and additional IT professionals. Many businesses, especially startups and small companies, choose this option for its low upfront cost. Cloud hosting’s excellent scalability and high availability are expensive features to achieve in on-premise solutions. You don’t need to purchase the infrastructure (capital expense) with cloud environments — you’re only left to deal with operational expenses.

Atlassian Cloud's monthly or annual subscription model can help organizations save money by eliminating upfront infrastructure purchases. A subscription also includes frequent updates to maintain up-to-date security features, which can become a significant recurring cost if your organization is responsible for its own updates. Additionally, Atlassian works around the clock to ensure that your data is secure, so once again, once less cost that your business has to incur. 

On the other hand, some organizations may have specialized needs that require data to remain within their jurisdiction. These companies must usually purchase and maintain all their hardware, ranging from the obvious — like servers, routers, and networking software — to the less obvious and often surprisingly expensive — like HVAC, fire suppression, and backup power solutions. In general, on-premise systems require significantly more upfront capital than cloud solutions.

Although it gives you precise control over your deployment, Atlassian Data Center requires an investment in staff. Even if you decide to run a hybrid architecture and avoid the costs of maintaining physical servers, your team still needs to maintain your infrastructure’s software layer. Security patches, integrations, and network performance become your organization’s responsibility. 

Comparing Atlassian Cloud and Data Center

Let’s look a little more closely at Atlassian Cloud and Atlassian Data Center. We’ll evaluate them based on a few factors that most organizations prioritize.

Time and Expense of Initial Setup

Depending on the scale of your infrastructure, setting up an on-premise architecture could take weeks. You need to install and configure all of the Atlassian products and infrastructure you need, and then migrate any data you currently have. You’ll need to do this for every product.

Atlassian Cloud is quicker to set up because Atlassian manages everything for you. If you are starting fresh with a completely new Atlassian instance, you could begin using your Cloud infrastructure within minutes — or seconds, if you use SSO.

If you are migrating your Atlassian instance to Cloud, things get a bit more challenging. While Atlassian itself provides free tools to support your team through the migration process, including the  Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket migration assistant resources. However, even with this help from these tools, cloud migrations present unexpected roadblocks — especially during more complex or specialized migrations.

That’s why we recommend going a step further and getting help from an Atlassian Solution Partner. An Atlassian Specialized Partner in Cloud, like Praecipio, guides you through the entire migration process, sharing their proven expertise to accelerate your journey to cloud. For example, during a migration with Praecipio, any legacy or duplicate tooling is adjusted and your architecture is cleaned up, giving you peace of mind and a refreshed final product at a lower cost than if you were to complete the move yourselves.

Required Skills and Expertise 

Atlassian Cloud customers don’t need to manage instances because Atlassian provides and maintains the infrastructure. Cloud services are updated automatically, so you don't have to perform regular maintenance updates or worry about version compatibility.

At the other end of the spectrum, Atlassian Data Center offers more customization options, but it requires a higher level of expertise to manage successfully. You’ll need dedicated internal resources and skilled personnel to install, configure, upgrade and maintain instances.

Security

Atlassian handles all security concerns in its Cloud offering, which includes compliance with a broad set of industry standards, network security scans of both internal and external infrastructure, and regular penetration testing.

One of the main features of an on-premise setup is the additional control you have over your data. When using Atlassian Data Center, you have control over hardware and network security, but Atlassian manages application-level security for you.

Scalability Potential

Atlassian Cloud is inherently much more scalable than a Data Center. Atlassian Data Center also offers a solution with scaling potential, but the scalability is limited to the infrastructure deployed.

When using Atlassian Data Center, you need to forecast and build out capacity ahead of time to meet your predicted peaks. Many data centers are somewhat capable of being refitted to scale vertically, but horizontal scaling demands more space and power. You can easily scale out horizontally using Atlassian Cloud to get higher throughput and configure the environment to accommodate additional resources as needed.

Ability to Work Remotely

Atlassian Cloud is a hosted platform that you can use from anywhere, at any time. Team members can easily access Jira issues, Confluence pages, Bitbucket repositories, and other tools remotely from anywhere around the globe.

Atlassian Cloud also allows you to have teams of any size in the cloud and on-premise, working together in real-time. Employees working remotely can collaborate and access company products securely from mobile apps and browsers without signing in to a VPN. 

Data Center lets you stay flexible while retaining control over the security and stability of your instances. You can freely add nodes to your cluster to handle large numbers of geographically distributed users, and then use built-in features like rate limiting to prevent instability caused by external tools, automation, and infrastructure quirks outside of your organization’s control.

You can alleviate some of these concerns by using a content delivery network (CDN) to reduce peak load times on application instances running on Atlassian Data Center. This increase in performance extends to all your users, not just those who are geographically distant from your servers.

Cloud

A business with fluctuating needs requires a tiered pricing solution based on the number of users who access an instance in a certain period.

Organizations often have information spread across several different platforms. Your business may have messages on Slack, spreadsheets in Excel, and other documents in Google Docs. For example, you can bring these resources together using dynamic pages in Confluence Cloud to distribute communication materials and create company policies and marketing plans.

Confluence Cloud is used by many companies — such as Netflix, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Udemy — to create collaborative workspaces and consolidate information into unified dashboards.

Data Center 

In contrast, Data Center is better suited for organizations looking to meet specialized needs. It allows businesses to access their system’s back end and databases and create tailored integrations and add-ons.

For example, if you use Jira Service Management Cloud, you’re limited to specific customizations in some Jira plugin features, such as BigPicture Dashboard Gadgets or ScriptRunner scripting functions. However, you can use and freely customize these plugins by using them on Jira Service Management Data Center. 

Organizations that want to collaborate with their teams at a high velocity while meeting strict compliance standards can use Jira Service Management Data Center. Instead of having to build in-house ITSM systems, JSM Data Center acts as a single source of truth and allows you to extract and share data between teams without the complex processes of a conventional ITSM platform.

Conclusion

Unless an organization fully understands what it needs from its infrastructure and how the business might grow in the future, it can be difficult to determine whether to move everything to the cloud or run production systems in a data center. To evaluate how you can best serve your customers and employees, you must weigh the increased control and flexibility of Atlassian Data Center against what it could potentially cost your organization to operate out of the Cloud. 

Avoiding the switch to Atlassian Cloud will be more difficult to justify in a couple of years as support for Atlassian Server ends. So, organizations looking for longevity have an even stronger incentive to begin their migrations soon. Outside of specialized use cases, it’s often more beneficial to switch over to Atlassian Cloud.

Although migrations have a reputation as formidable undertakings, there’s no need for them to be overwhelming. The tools provided by Atlassian offer a good starting point for simple migrations if your IT department is provisioned to handle the risks.

However, working with an Atlassian Solution Partner like Praecipio to help with your migration will save you a lot of time and headache. Experienced migration experts provide peace of mind by helping you mitigate potential risks and by supporting your teams throughout the entire process, from deciding on the best migration strategy to onboarding users in the days following a migration.

If your organization is ready to migrate to Atlassian Cloud or Data Center, reach out to the Praecipio team to learn how we can help you achieve a successful migration.

Team '22 has wrapped and what an exciting week it was. The event served as an impactful place for innovators and problem-solvers to come together and interact with attendees and Atlassian customers. We're feeling so inspired to be at Atlassian's flagship conference helping teams focus on what matters most and discovering the power of their Atlassian investment. 

Our theme revolved around amplifying what's possible for teams everywhere. As a platinum sponsor this year, we participated in events like a Lunch 'n Learn Session on Work Management presented by Larry Brock, a Theater Session on Jira Align presented by Amanda Babb, an on-demand Breakout Session on Atlassian Cloud by Suze Treacy, and an on-demand Demo Session on Jira Service Management by Brian Nye.

Praecipio also delivered several training sessions, which allowed their students to utilize best practices and build on their existing skillsets. The team-led trainings included:

• Jira Align Program Essentials delivered by Jack Harding and Brian Nye
• Atlassian DevOps Essentials delivered by Luis Machado and Christopher Pepe
• Planning with Advanced Roadmaps delivered by Amanda Babb, Ian VanHover and Dean Rizzuto
• Bitbucket Pipelines Configuration delivered by Shannon Fabert and Jim Easterly
• Managing Boards in Jira delivered by Shannon Fabert and Larry Brock

We heard motivating stories from speakers and listened to informative presentations about new Atlassian updates. Attendees were inspired to work differently, together. Some highlights of the keynotes include Jay Shetty's, "How connected thinkers will build the future", "Work differently, together: A new vision for Work Management" by Joff Redfern and Erika Trautman and "In conversation with Bob Iger", an inspirational talk with the Former CEO and Chairman of The Walt Disney Company Bob Iger and Scott Farquhar, the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Atlassian.

"Being able to connect in-person after two years felt like an extended Atlassian family reunion. The continued growth in Atlassian and Marketplace products will provide lots of great tactical and strategic features. Team ’22 really renewed my excitement about our ability to help customers maximize the value of their Atlassian investment." - Joseph Lane, COO

Thank you to everyone who stopped by to say 'Howdy!' and to those who attended any of our talks. Keep scrolling to read about our recap of the ultimate teamwork experience. 

We learned a lot during the Atlassian Team '22 Keynote Address. Atlassian continues to transform how teams collaborate and drive cultural change through ITSM, DevOps & Agile, and Work Management.

Praecipio had some of the coolest swag. Pictured above are the water bottles we handed out.

Left: "Streamlining the DevOps Lifecycle with Jira Service Management" with Larry Brock
Center: "Jira Align Program Essentials" with Jack Harding
Right: "Bitbucket Pipelines Configuration" with Shannon Fabert

AMPLIFY WHAT'S POSSIBLE FOR TEAMS EVERYWHERE

We loved seeing old friends, making new ones, and connecting over all things Atlassian last week. Let us know if you have any follow-up questions about Team '22 and how we can amplify what's possible for your business teams. 

Teams new to scrum face lots of decisions – one critical decision for teams to perform efficiently is determining sprint length. Every team's needs are different, and there's rarely a one-size-fits-all approach to planning the length and organization of your sprint.

What is Scrum? How long should sprints be?

What is Scrum? Scrum is an Agile framework that gives teams guidelines on how to complete their work. It contains sets of roles, ceremonies, and considerations for how your work is completed.

An Agile sprint is a concept in scrum that represents a time box, i.e., a short amount of time the team has committed to complete the work. And how long is a sprint in Agile? Sprints in scrum can be as long as you want; however, it's most common for sprint length to be between 1 and 4 weeks. Teams running Scrum sprints need to decide what makes sense for them.

We often see that team's first instincts lean toward the extreme: Either 1-week sprints or 4-weeks sprints. While there are arguments for the varying lengths of sprints in scrum, here are some standard variables that you and your team should consider.

Sprint Planning for Planned vs. Unplanned Work

Before sprint planning begins, it's essential to define what you want to accomplish during that sprint. Instead of using overarching strategic objectives to guide your team, sprint goals should be smaller, more attainable chunks of work that can be completed in a shorter timeframe. 

If you are an Agile Scrum team with high variability in your work, longer sprints may give you the necessary buffer to complete the job. If you've got a 1-week sprint (with 1 of your 5 days already dedicated to ceremonies), even one or two random pieces of work can prevent your team from completing the work in the committed scope.

On the other hand, if the team has unplanned work with a lower level of urgency, Scrum sprint lengths that are shorter allow you to include the work in your Scrum sprint planning within a shorter period.

As far as how to best manage work, Jira is a great tool to help teams achieve this. Here's a guide on starting, managing, and completing a sprint using Jira. 

Time Dedicated to Scrum Ceremonies

How much time per week should sprint planning to be spent in scrum, retrospectives, backlog grooming, and demos? Shorter sprints mean more time is spent in these meetings. This becomes even more essential if you do not have dedicated roles (scrum master, product owner).

What we see in 1-week sprints is that teams can lose a full day (twenty percent of the sprint!) of each sprint to demos, retros, and planning. So the shorter your Agile sprints are in scrum, the more often you're having these ceremonies.

Size and Scope of Tasks

Is your work small enough to be completed in the sprint length? For example, if you are often not completing work in 1 sprint, a longer sprint in scrum may make sense (or you may just need to work on improving properly sizing your tasks).

Feedback Cycle

How often do I want to see and evaluate completed work? Is it acceptable to go 4 weeks without demonstrating the work that's being done? Do you need to know every week? Sprint length determines how often you see sprint demos and complete sprint retrospectives.

Inspection and Adaptation

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to optimal Scrum sprint length, and iteration is the key to scrum - so don't worry if your first choice doesn't work for your team. That's what your retrospectives are for, after all!

For more background on how we do Agile at Scale, read our case study on how Praecipio Consulting helped an enterprise client accelerate their Agile transformation.

Is your organization going through an Agile transformation? Learn about this robust framework and how our team can help your organization drive successful business outcomes through our Agile at Scale implementations. 

Please reach out if you have questions or are considering how to migrate your team to an agile approach.

The popularity of Jira Software has skyrocketed in the last few years, thanks to its excellent features and easy adaptability to agile development models. If you are considering using Jira or are already using it, ask yourself a fundamental question. How do you make the best use of the various features Jira presents? 

Let’s start with Jira Epics. Often, development teams tend to jump right ahead into crafting user stories, sprint planning, and so on without huddling around Epics. While sometimes it could be because of the nature of the user story, it is often because the end-users are unaware of what an Epic is and how it helps organize your stories and streamline the development process. 

Here is a simple guide that will help you understand the concept of Epics and how to effectively use them in Jira.

What Are Jira Epics?

Epics are, in essence, a big goal or a task that can be broken down into related sub-tasks. While this is the general idea behind Epics, every team may have a slightly different way of implementing Epics. Some consider it similar to a project hierarchy. Some make it strictly goal-based, some base it on features, and so on. In Jira, Epics are created as special issue types similar to tasks and stories. Each Epic can have associated users, workflow, states, and so on.

Epic Vs. Story Vs. Task

So what differentiates a task or story from an agile Epic? While tasks and stories tend to be standalone pieces of work, Epics are more complex, with several tasks grouped under them. 

They have custom fields that help identify the issue hierarchies within the Epic, such as the parent-child tasks.

• The various tasks within an Epic could be executed in a parallel manner or may have dependencies.
• Epics also have data fields, such as a start date and a target date.
• Epics are coarser and span several sprints, whereas tasks and stories are more detailed and are planned for a limited sprint length.

What Is The Difference Between Epic And Feature In Jira?

Often used interchangeably, Epics and Features tend to confuse Jira users. While Epics and Features are similar issue types that can be broken down into smaller tasks or stories, the significant difference is how they are placed in the issue hierarchy.

Epics are much bigger and are are often the topmost parent in issue hierarchies. Epics can consist of Features, and these Features can further be broken down into individual user stories. Epics represent a more extensive set of requirements or project goals, whereas Features are more focused. 

Why Are Epics Important In Jira?

There are many reasons why using Epics is an excellent way to plan your agile software development projects. Let us list out a few:

Organized Project Outcomes

It helps organize project outcomes in terms and makes it easier to communicate project progress to concerned stakeholders. 

Not all stakeholders can have the technological knowledge to understand the project progress via individual user stories. Epics present an easy way to abstract the project’s status and quickly raise the measurable outcomes to stakeholders.

Helps Achieve Specific Targets With Ease

Lists of Epics allows teams to establish the priority goals and the necessary metrics to track such goals.

Facilitates Optimized Project Execution

Epics are organized to allow for a detailed design before user stories are taken to implementation. They, thus, help with an optimized workflow and flexible decision-making as the project progresses.

Allows For Better Innovation

By allowing DevOps teams to define and design their project via Epics, you can promote innovation and excellence in terms of product design and development.

How Do You Create Jira Epics?

Jira is well equipped to help you integrate Epics into your project planning phases with ease.

Here is how you can create an Epic issue in Jira:

• Create a new issue
• Select issue type as ‘Epic.’ Fill in the details such as epic name, description, and such. Click create.
• Once created, you can link other issues or create new issues from within the Epic view.

Cool Things You Can Do With The Help Of Jira Epics 

• Integrate Epics with project backlog for efficient project planning
• Track project progress with roadmaps
• Derive useful visualizations such as Epic swim lanes and Epic link on cards on the kanban agile boards.

So what else can you do to make the best out of this feature? Let us start with the basics. First, understand what an Epic is and know the various workflows and requirements uniquely available for Epics. 

Then, use these features to get on track with your agile project management and other methodologies.

Try not to create Epics that do not have a defined scope. Epics should close unless the Epic you are running is actually a theme and not new in reality. Make sure you're aware of the subtle difference so you can utilize Epics appropriately.

The sooner you implement Jira, the better your results will be. Jira is incredibly comprehensive, and many struggle to get the most from the platform. Praecipio can help you make use of the various automation and process optimization tools that Jira gives you. Having expert guidance will go a long way in helping you save costs, time, and resources. Reach out today!

There are many definitions and uses of the term Enterprise Service Management in our industry. It can be confusing but it's worth defining because Enterprise Service Management is a powerful framework you'll want to leverage extensively in your digital transformation. So, what is Enterprise Service Management or ESM?

Is it even called "Enterprise Service Management" now?

Let's start with the first word of this phrase, Enterprise. In 2021, Praecipio conducted a survey on the state of Service Management. One of the questions we asked attempted to get right to the heart of this particular debate:

Is it called "Enterprise Service Management"?

Source: Praecipio 2021 State of Service Management Survey.

Service Management originated within IT organizations (and is often referred to as IT Service Management, or ITSM). Enterprise Service Management then was often used to describe the application of Service Management's principles and practices for teams outside of IT.

Service Management in Practice

A good way to get a feel for Service Management is to look at some examples of how it can help various functions within an enterprise. We've seen customers use Service Management to level up across their organization with amazing results.

Whether the customers are internal or external, every organizational function is in the business of providing service. The facilities team provides well-maintained, functional physical spaces. The accounting team provides financial record-keeping and reporting. Human resources provide talent recruitment, employment policy, and wellness programs. The IT helpdesk and customer support teams are also classic examples, and the list goes on.

While all of these teams serve different purposes, they all deliver services to customers. In that light, they share the practices and capabilities of Service Management. Each team needs to manage these common attributes in order to deliver an exceptional service experience Some examples include:

• Request intake
• Resource workload
• Incidents (when things don't go quite as planned)
• Knowledge sharing
• Metrics and improvement
• Change

Each team often has a variety of use cases for some or all of the list above. Problems arise when each team or department is using its own customized program or solution. For example, when teams try to work collaboratively, having siloed tools creates friction and slows down processes.

This is what Service Management was designed to address.

Frameworks Guide Us

The most effective way to adopt Service Management is to work from a comprehensive framework, like ITIL 4. Looking at the highest levels of ITIL, the practices, we get a sense of how it can be used to define and improve service delivery.

The largest ITIL practice area, Service Management, is comprised of 17 practices, including Service Desk, Availability Management, Change Control, Incident Management, and Validation/Testing.

Managing your organization’s service delivery using these practices produces an upward spiral of improvement and capability. As consultants, this is where we spend most of our time, designing and configuring the Atlassian Service Management tools to enable these critical practices.

In Conclusion

While it's tempting to start with tools as a solution to service delivery challenges, you must first begin with the practice and treat the tool as a supporting component. This enables you to define critical policy and strategy decisions that align the entire organization instead of losing focus and having to constantly reinvent the wheel. Additionally, this mindset will set you up for success in preparing your teams for the ever-changing business landscape of our digital future.

To read more about Service Management, check out our blog on how Service Management is More Than an IT Service Desk. 

There's a big wide world of Service Management out there and it can be a little confusing to navigate! Let us be your guide! Get in touch and let's determine how Praecipio can best help you adopt and accelerate Service Management throughout your organization.

What is a spike in agile software development? 

A spike, a term often used in SAFe, scrum and other agile frameworks, is a task designed to answer a question or gather information, rather than produce a product. An agile team will choose to include a spike in their sprint to support or prepare for future work if that work requires more information before it can be started. In short, a spike is an opportunity to research, test or explore the unknown before work begins. Creating a spike allows your team to dedicate time in a sprint to finding out more information in a defined time-box – or a set amount of time. 

Why Should I Use Spikes? 

The benefit of using a spike is that it helps agile teams anticipate and prepare for the amount of work they will need to do to accomplish a task. For example, if the work turns out to be either more or less effort than you expected, it could throw off the team's ability to complete the work they committed to. In other words, a spike helps scrum and agile teams with estimation and prevents them from falling behind on sprint goals. 

Who Typically Initiates a Spike?  

Anyone on a scrum or agile team can and should initiate a spike if they feel they are not prepared to begin a specific task or story. Typically, if a team member takes on a task and recognizes that they need more information before they can begin, they can create a spike to help them prepare. It can be frustrating to find out mid-sprint that a story is much more work than you thought because you didn't really know what it required yet. When running in sprints and trying to manage velocity, it helps to build in room for uncertainty. It may be that there's a piece of work that needs to be completed, but we're not really sure how much work that's going to take. In these cases, using spikes can be a huge help. 

Related Article: Sprint Planning: How Long Should Sprints Be 

How do I use spikes in Jira?

One of the ways to manage spikes in Jira, is to establish them as their own issue type and then, once solved, convert that issue type from a spike into a story when you are ready to begin work. You can link it back to the spike using the JIRA issue links for record keeping. To start your first spike, follow these steps: 

1. Determine who on your team will take on the spike
2. Create a ticket to represent a spike in your backlog
3. Determine the amount of time, or time-box, that you are willing to spend on your spike 
4. Complete the necessary exploration or design during the sprint to create an estimate for the original story
5. Close out the spike and update the original story with the new estimate 
6. Convert your issue from a spike to a story 

Using spikes in your sprints can make your teams more reliable – by giving you a better idea of what's going on, with less pressure to know everything up-front.

Looking for more guidance on your agile transformation?  Contact us, one of our experts would love to talk with you and see if it's a good fit for your organization.

Workato is a powerful iPaaS (Cloud-Based Integration Solution) tool that enables your organization to integrate your go-to applications and automate workflows seamlessly. An easy-to-use, block-coding approach to building recipes allows you to unlock the ability to create limitless integrations and automation.

Building Blocks

Automations in Workato are defined by a recipe that contains step-by-step instructions on performing tasks or processes. A recipe is made up of two key components: a trigger and one or more actions. But before we can start looking at triggers and actions, we must first learn about application connections.

Application Connection

An application connection contains information that Workato uses to connect and authorize the use of an application. For each application, you need a new connection that has credentials to connect to the application. Workato uses the application's API to change its objects; therefore, it may require OAuth-based authorization, API keys, or other authorization methods.

First, make sure that your account has the necessary access to make changes within the instance.

For example, a connection made to Jira Cloud will require your email and API key, and a connection made to a hosted Jira environment will need your username and password. Once you make the necessary connections and Workato can access the application, a trigger can be configured to kick off the recipe.

Trigger

A trigger is the starting point for any Workato recipe, and almost any application can be configured to act as a trigger. Note, for all new applications, a new application connection is required. For example, a trigger can be a newly created issue in Jira. In this case, anytime a new issue is created, the recipe will start, and all of the tasks that you define are automatically executed.

Sometimes, triggers can be generic and could cause the recipe to run during unnecessary events. In this case, a trigger condition can be applied to eliminate excessive noise. To continue with the previous example, if you want to perform tasks on a newly created issue from only one project in Jira, then apply a trigger condition to ensure that the recipe starts when a new issue is created for that specific project.

Once the recipe's starting point is defined, you can add the subsequential actions required to complete—and eventually automate—your process.

Action

Before you start a recipe, you first need to define the process. This is done with the help of actions. An action is a single operation performed within an instance. For example, you can create issues or comments in Jira, post a message to Slack, update the standard of custom records in Salesforce, and much more.

Actions can also be logical elements such as conditions, loops, or error monitoring to help you create the desired automation. This can help perform more complicated processes and save time and resources for your business. For even more complex requests, you can run Ruby or JavaScript code as an action to help fill in the gaps between the built-in actions.

Next Steps

Workato is an effective tool when appropriately leveraged, unlocking the full potential of each device. Many of your day-to-day tasks can be automated to reduce human error and increase efficiency so your teams can instead focus on more critical tasks. For comprehensive information about any application connection, please refer to the Workato Documentation.

Our consultants are experienced in integrating a wide variety of technology platforms. Check out the press release on Praecipio Consulting receiving 2020 Workato Partner Award for IT Automations. We are ready to answer any questions you might have.

Contact us to learn more and see how you can maximize Workato to connect your go-to apps and align your entire organization with digital business goals.

There are a multitude of technical optimizations you can implement to ensure your Atlassian tools are high-performing and provide maximum value. As a quick example, using your single sign-on (SSO) provider to log in to Atlassian products ensures a unified login experience and decreased time spent on user management. First, let's look at why organization-level optimization is so important.

A core ITIL practice: Continual Improvement

ITIL 4 (IT Library Infrastructure) is a flexible framework for managing services. From IT to HR to facilities to customer-facing support, we're all providing service whether our customers are internal or external. We at Praecipio Consulting champion the ITIL framework throughout our customers' organizations because it focuses on business value and embraces digital transformation. When the practices of ITIL are consistently applied across an organization, we've seen incredibly positive impacts on key metrics like profit, resolution time, customer & employee satisfaction, and more.

ITIL management practices are broken up into three areas: General, Service, and Technical. Continual Improvement is one of the critical practices in the General category. In fact, the ITIL handbook calls it out as "one of the key components of the ITIL Service Value System, providing, along with the guiding principles, a solid platform for successful service management." (ITIL® Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition, 4.6.2)

(Diagram Source - Atlassian ITIL 4 white paper)

We recommend you start with Continual Improvement to establish a baseline assessment and identify priorities. Establishing a regular review and improvement cycle per the Continual Improvement practice guidance allows your teams to progress and adapt iteratively. We must stress: it's a practice, not a one-time activity. The cycle should continue indefinitely.

Survey says...

Earlier this year (2021 Q2), Praecipio Consulting conducted its State of Service Management Survey, which involved surveying respondents from various departments and who work with organizations of different sizes across various industries. You can watch our webinar and download the entire report filled with data-driven insights about how diverse teams-from Legal, HR, Marketing, and beyond-are adopting Service Management principles to address business challenges and improve ways of working.

One of the takeaways we learned from the survey was that the Continual Improvement practice is vastly underused.

Which Service Management processes and practices are being applied to departments outside of IT?

Source: 2021 Praecipio Consulting State of Service Management Survey

48% adoption means half of the organizations aren't using Continual Improvement practices, despite its critical role in the ITIL framework.

Let's look at some easy ways Atlassian tools can help implement the critical Continual Improvement practice.

Confluence: your Continual Improvement home base

Make sure you have a place in Confluence for each team to gather and organize the outputs of the Continual Improvement practice in one place as they iterate through it over time:

• Business vision, mission, goals, and objectives
• Baseline assessments
• Measurable targets
• Improvement plans
• Results to plan

As you roll out new processes or enhancements, leverage Jira tickets and/or Confluence pages for capturing user feedback. Remember, in Confluence you can quickly create Jira tickets by highlighting a sentence or two of feedback and clicking the Jira icon that appears.

The low adoption of Continual Improvement is often attributed to the practice getting "lost in the shuffle." It requires sustained commitment but the buy-in is often easier after participants and leadership see the systematic improvement it facilitates. To get started, schedule Continual Improvement activities and require they be maintained as a priority. If you have Confluence Team Calendars, schedule your team's recurring Continual Improvement activities so you stay on track.

When it comes to running Continual Improvement activities, Atlassian has created several great playbooks which include Confluence templates:

• Health Monitor
• Premortem
• 4Ls Retrospective
• Retrospective

Jira: reporting to guide Continual Improvement efforts

One of the primary drivers for using Jira to manage work is accurate, easy reporting on your process performance. How long is it taking to start working on issues and incidents? What percentage of requests are serviced within an appropriate timeframe? How many requests are for contract review? How many incidents were caused by circumventing the change management process?

The answers are at your fingertips when you start using Jira. Based on our customer engagements, here are a few tips and reminders.

Check the metrics

This seems obvious but in the heat of battle, it can be easy to sideline performance monitoring. Routine is your friend here. How often are the right people putting eyes on actual performance? Build in metric review to your recurring team and leadership meetings. Incorporate the data as a starting point into your Continual Improvement activities (e.g. Health Monitors and Retros). It can also help to automate pushing metrics to interested parties via filter subscriptions.

If you need advanced metrics that are not possible with the built-in tools, get in touch. The upcoming Jira Data Lake allows you to access Jira data using your existing BI tools. There are also several fantastic Marketplace add-ons for providing advanced analytics.

Let's look at a few often overlooked metrics.

Jira Service Management satisfaction scores

After issues are resolved, Jira Service Management can send the reporter a quick survey asking for a star rating and additional feedback.

Again, don't forget to check these scores so you're not missing out on one of the most critical barometers of process and team performance: customer perception. The comments can be a rich source of discussion starters for your Continual Improvement reviews.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Some teams negotiate with customers for specific response and resolution times. Others create internal goals. Whatever your team's situation, we recommend establishing realistic targets in order to maintain a continual focus on this critical behavior. Jira Service Management allows you to easily set and track performance to whatever SLAs you establish. 

One of the benefits of SLA reporting in Jira Service Management is its visibility. Throughout the system at any time, you can see where every issue stands in relation to your service goals. Not only does this help prioritize issues in real-time, but it also gives support staff instant context into how the customer is experiencing the request interaction. Overall (aggregate) SLA reporting is also available for a high-level view.

MTTA, MTTR

These slightly intimidating acronyms are actually pretty simple calculations:

• Mean Time To Acknowledge (MTTA): The clock starts when the request is submitted and stops when work on the issue starts. Note MTTA should be included in the MTTR calculation, explained next.
• Mean Time To Resolve (MTTA): The clock starts when the request is submitted to Jira and stops when the team marks the request resolved (the timer restarts if the issue is reopened). This includes time to acknowledge and research the issue, coordinate with other teams/vendors, implement changes/fixes, etc. This is the critical metric for your customers, who are likely blocked until their request is resolved.

Like SLAs, these metrics give you a sense, in the aggregate, of process efficiency. It can lead to Continual Improvement investigations into why the numbers aren't on target. Maybe the backlog is too big (i.e. MTTA is a high percentage of MTTR) so tickets are waiting too long for an available team member to start working them. Perhaps MTTA is fine and the issue is a downstream process with another team that is blocking your team.

Continual Improvement continues

We've just scratched the surface of the ways you can use your Atlassian tools to drive your Continual Improvement practices and optimize your organization. Whether as a source of data-driven retros and regular health monitors or as the central hub for managing the assessments and plans generated from Continual Improvement activities, Atlassian tools will turbocharge your Agile work management journey.

Check out our blog and learn about whether Atlassian Tools are right for your business. If you're not sure you're realizing the full benefits of your Atlassian suite, give us a shout to discuss what parts of Atlassian optimization you should start focusing on today!

If you’ve seen the potential benefits of Enterprise Service Management (ESM) but are unsure whether your organization’s current ITSM tool is suitable for enterprise-wide use, you're not alone. Many teams often wonder if the use of IT Service Management (ITSM) capabilities currently in place can be leveraged in other business functions to improve operations and outcomes. To help, this blog outlines five things to look for in an ITSM tool that will make it a fit-for-purpose ESM tool for your organization.

Before that list of five “things” though, it’s worth stating a key point when using your organization’s ITSM tool across the enterprise.

A key starting point when looking for an Enterprise Service Management tool

There’s no doubt that successful Enterprise Service Management, like ITSM, is dependent on fit-for-purpose technology enablement. It’s important, however, to not see ESM as simply the use of a corporate ITSM tool by other business functions. Instead, successful ESM requires a change in mindset to service-based thinking, and the intelligent adoption of ITSM best practices. Additionally, it also mandates the use of the ITSM tool in a way that doesn’t force-fit the other business functions to IT’s language and ways of working.

Importantly, there’s also a need for organizational change management to facilitate the execution of your ESM strategy delivery project. This is because this is the introduction of new ways of working and is thus a people change initiative not a technology.

5 things to look for in an Enterprise Service Management tool

The right Enterprise Service Management tool will help your whole organization, especially now that the need for remote and socially distanced working has limited the ability for people to work with manually reliant processes and practices. In many ways, the replacement of these with new digital workflows, in particular, is going to be an important need of your ESM tool. But this is just one of many things you’ll need. In fact, we recommend your chosen ESM ticks the proverbial boxes against the following list of five key needs:

1. Non-functional capabilities – These are the capabilities that, while not directly delivering the required digital workflows, allow an ITSM tool to fully meet the needs of ESM. To start, there’s the need for ease of use – for both service requesters and service providers. In many ways, these need to be consumer-like, with “consumer-grade” the new “enterprise-grade” when it comes to corporate technology. Then there are needs related to scalability, domain separation, and appropriate access controls – with human resources (HR) in particular needing to ensure that employee-related information is only accessible by those authorized to do so. Finally, there’s a need for domain-specific knowledge management to ensure that searches for help or automated recommendations – again for both service requesters and service providers – are focused on the business function context.
2. Core service management and digital workflow capabilities – These are the digitally-enabled capabilities that help work to both flow and to be achieved. This includes request handling, whether these are requests for help, information, service, and change. Where for business functions such as HR, terminology such as “case management” will need to replace IT’s “incident management.” Importantly, these digitally-enabled capabilities are not simply the ability to move work between different groups, there’s also the need for automated routing, queue management, notifications and alerts, approvals, and service level targets to help ensure that work is moving efficiently – from the initial need through to the required outcome. It also includes self-service and self-help capabilities which provide a structured work intake method and the ability to “deflect” simple employee requests (including employees requesting updates on their requests) respectively.
3. Cross-capability enablers – These are capabilities that enable the employee-touching service management capabilities in #2 to work optimally. For example, knowledge management capabilities allow service providers to undertake work that’s outside of their individual experiences. It also enables the self-help capabilities that empower employees to help themselves to quicker solutions with a consumer-like service or support experience. Another example is reporting and analytics capabilities that not only help to ensure that operations and outcomes are meeting business needs and service-provider obligations but also help to identify improvement opportunities.
4. Platform-based capabilities – The ability to create business-function-specific workflows and applications that extend ESM beyond the core capabilities (that were designed for ITSM scenarios). This can cover both capabilities that are applicable to multiple organizations (perhaps even industry-specific) that are created by the tool vendor, its partner ecosystem, or the tool customer. And capabilities that are somewhat unique to your organization – a bespoke solution to a business need or opportunity. Either way, the ability for business function personnel, and not just IT’s application developers, to create these extended solutions using codeless drag-and-drop functionality is a key enabler in both rapid cross-enterprise tool success and benefits realization.
5. New technology adoption – These are capabilities that allow both individuals and teams to be better versions of themselves. Two timely examples are collaboration and machine-learning-based capabilities. In terms of the former, the aforementioned need for remote and socially distanced working requires digitally-enabled teamwork and wider collaboration capabilities. Whereas the latter offers a wealth of opportunities that allow business functions to be all three of “better, faster, cheaper.” Whether it’s the use of machine learning and automation to accelerate process operations and outcome delivery. For example, in intelligent request triage where the technology decides which group to route a request to based on historical data patterns and in the automated escalation of requests when circumstances change or a service-level breach is likely. Or the use of machine learning to share knowledge more effectively. This could be through the provision of automated recommendations to service-provider staff or context-based self-help knowledge provided to service requesters either via traditional portal searches or newer chatbot capabilities.

The above list of five things to look for in an Enterprise Service Management tool is not necessarily everything that your organization will need but provides a great start.  If you want to find out more about the opportunities of ESM and the tools that can facilitate this framework, reach out to Praecipio Consulting and we're happy to walk through the process. 

Organizations are rapidly moving toward new work management styles, especially in the age of digital transformation. If you work in project management, you've probably heard the term "Agile" at some point in your career. Maybe you've considered taking this approach with your teams, and have already done some research. "Scrum" is another term you've most likely heard during your research. Although this is a term used in rugby, it is also a specific methodology teams use to work in an Agile manner. At Praecipio Consulting, we've assisted many teams 

with their move to Agile, using the Atlassian toolset to support and ease their journey. We've also worked with many teams who use Scrum specifically, but many use different frameworks - using Scrum is not a requirement to be Agile. Let's take a moment to understand the difference between Scrum and Agile.

What is Agile?

Agile is a project management style in which organizations use an iterative process to continuously deliver work while consistently receiving and incorporating feedback throughout the process. Flexibility is key, so teams can quickly adapt to market changes and customer needs. Agile has a set of principles and values organizations are expected to follow, laid out in the Agile Manifesto. The Agile Manifesto does not delve into specific practices and activities teams should follow in order to work in an Agile way: it serves as a north star for organizations to align to in their Agile journey. There are a few Agile frameworks teams can use to work in an iterative manner, such as Scrum and Kanban. Agile puts an emphasis on people over processes and tools, and gives autonomy to the people on those teams. With that being said, it is up to the teams to decide which framework works best for the way they work and the work they're delivering. 

What is Scrum?

Scrum is one of the many frameworks teams can use to work in an Agile manner. It is mainly used by software development teams, and relies on time-boxed iterations called Sprints. Sprints are made up of the work developers commit to completing within that iteration, typically 2 weeks. The work scheduled in each sprint is based on priority and team capacity, and is carefully estimated to ensure teams can commit the work they've delegated to the sprint. This framework is very detailed, and prescribes a set of specific roles and events, including:

• A Scrum Master, who protects the teams and ensures they are able to do their work without impediments.
• A Product Owner, who manages and grooms the product backlog ensuring the anticipated work aligns with the needs of the customer and business.
• The development team who actually complete the work in the sprint.

As I mentioned above, Scrum is a way teams can work if they're on their Agile journey, but it is not the only option. There are other Agile frameworks that may work better for teams.

How Do Agile and Scrum Differ?

Now that we know a bit more about Agile and Scrum separately, it's easier to lay out the differences between the two. Agile is more of a general philosophy that paints a broader picture around working in an iterative, flexible manner. Scrum is a specific Agile framework and is more granular than Agile. Although both rely on iterations: in Scrum they're specifically time boxed and called Sprints. Scrum also prescribes specific roles and ceremonies, while Agile focuses on the overall principles in the Agile Manifesto. Scrum is also more focused on the team level and the delivery of work. Agile can be scaled across an organization using other work frameworks such as the the Scaled Agile framework, or SAFe, as well as Large-Scale Scrum, styled as LeSS. 

With that understanding in mind, maybe you're ready to start your Agile journey! The Atlassian tools, such as Jira and Confluence, are built to support Agile and the specific frameworks. Jira Software makes it easy to get started with Scrum by providing an out-of-the-box Project template. At Praecipio Consulting, we focus on ensuring the Atlassian tools facilitate your Agile journey by implementing best practices and incorporating our extensive experience working with Agile teams. Reach out if you have any questions around Atlassian and Agile - we're here to help.

So, your organization is investing in an Enterprise Service Management (ESM) strategy. It’s a great move! But could it be doing more? Well, if your organization is doing what most organizations do, the short answer is a resounding “yes.” Now, you might think that the opportunity here is the wider use of IT Service Management (ITSM) capabilities across your organization – in other business functions – which will, of course, be beneficial when executed well. But instead, I’m referring to the wider use of available ITSM best practices. Especially since the new version of the ITIL ITSM best practice guidance – ITIL 4 – introduced so much new Service Management guidance.

Looking at Service Management adoption levels

The world of ITSM doesn’t see as much statistical data as it used to, unfortunately. This is also true for Enterprise Service Management, where any adoption-level statistics usually refer to how many organizations are “doing” ESM.

This, however, is a difficult percentage to pin down because of the likelihood that apples are being compared to oranges rather than other apples. For example, the corporate ITSM tool might be used by another part of the organization to fulfill a need, but there’s no Enterprise Service Management strategy. Or where there is a strategy being executed, it might be for half a dozen other business functions, but it could also just be for just one. It’s very similar to where an organization can quite rightly say that it has adopted ITIL when it’s simply using a small part of just one of the 34 management practices in ITIL 4.

What’s more interesting and relevant for this blog post is the relative level of ITSM/ITIL process adoption as part of enterprise service management strategies, i.e. the ITSM capabilities that are more likely to be shared and perhaps adapted for other business functions such as human resources (HR), finance, legal, facilities, security, procurement, and customer services/support.

The adoption levels of Service Management processes by other business functions

During Praecipio Consulting's recently published State of Service Management survey, we saw fairly broad adoption of some Service Management practices outside of IT. In fact, more than half of respondents told us that the top six practices were implemented in their organizations. That's a great improvement from previous surveys on this topic, but it shows there's still plenty of room to apply the power of the other Service Management practices. 

To download the entire report for a detailed look into Service Management adoption across a wide variety of organizations, follow this link:  2021 State of Enterprise Service Management Report - Praecipio.

Of course, the above percentages are also influenced by the relative adoption levels of each ITSM capability by IT organizations themselves. For example, if only 60-70% of IT organizations claim to employ problem management best practices, then it’s highly unlikely that the third of organizations that don’t use it would try to share the capability with other business functions.

The key focus is that Enterprise Service Management strategies or approaches are sharing ITSM capabilities that can be considered the domain of the IT Service Desk, such as the ability to deal with requests for help, information, service, and change, all while enabling capabilities such as knowledge management, self-service, and workflow automation/platform-based capabilities.

Hence, while we talk of Enterprise Service Management as the sharing of ITSM capabilities with other business functions, it’s only a small subset of ITSM capabilities that are commonly shared. And organizations and their various business functions could further benefit from the greater adoption of other ITSM capabilities.

Taking enterprise service management beyond the service desk

There were many opportunities to extend the use of ITSM, or ITIL best practice in particular, with ITIL v3/2011. The introduction of ITIL 4 not only increased the guidance content from 26 processes to 34 management practices, it also:

• Presented the guidance from a Service Management, rather than an ITSM, perspective such that it’s more easily understandable and accessible outside of IT
• Built the guidance around the concept of the co-creation of value through Service Management

The latter of these in particular is something that should now be included in the extension of Service Management capabilities – including the use of ITSM tools – to other business functions. The obvious caveat is that it’s highly unlikely to happen without IT itself transitioning from ITIL v3/2011 to ITIL 4 first.

This future transition offers up a suitable decision point for the ongoing focus of an organization’s Enterprise Service Management investments: if the IT Service Desk’s capabilities are changed in light of the new ITIL 4 guidance, then the same would also benefit the other business functions that currently operate their variants of the original ITSM capabilities. It’s also a great opportunity to understand which other ITSM capabilities – both old and new – would additionally benefit the operations and outcomes of these business functions.

Examples of enterprise service management beyond the service desk

Even before the release of ITIL 4, some existing ITSM/ITIL capabilities were readily suited for and would have benefited other business functions. Problem management is a good example, with Customer Service/Support departments and Facilities teams able to employ similar problem management capabilities to IT – across people, processes, and technology – to identify and remove the root causes of regularly seen/reported issues.

Another good example is Continual Service Improvement (CSI) – which is now simply “continual improvement” in ITIL 4. After all, every part of your organization would likely benefit from having a formalized approach to the improvement of operations, services, experiences, and outcomes.

With the broader scope of ITIL 4, there are many additional practices that can be shared with other business functions to drive improved operations and outcomes, such as organizational change management, risk management, service design, strategy management, and workforce and talent management.

So, your organization’s Enterprise Service Management strategy could encompass far more than the IT service desk elements of ITSM – where the benefits outweigh the costs.

Hopefully, this post has you thinking about your organization’s current Enterprise Service Management successes and the potential for even more going forward. If you would like to find out more about the opportunities to improve the operations and outcomes across your entire organization - or if you need to get started with Enterprise Service Management - get in touch with us at Praecipio.

What makes a great team? Is it the people, process, or tools used?

Of course, all three components are essential to make a successful team. But even with the right technology and incredibly talented people, sometimes you don’t always get the desired results.

This has been the case for the hugely popular Atlassian tool, Confluence. The online knowledge base and wiki solutions are of immense help for teams to get real-time hyper-access to all types of information from anywhere, anytime, and from any device. Confluence also provides a great way to build team collaboration and helps track all your essential documents with a centralized version control system. But not everyone seems to be using it to its fullest potential. Here are some excellent tips that can help you unlock the true potential of the tool.

Confluence Best Practices: What Is The Best Way To Organize Your Confluence Space?

Confluence serves as the centralized knowledge base across your organization. So, you have to understand that it is not just for personal use or for a particular team’s benefit. Everything stored in Confluence should be named and organized to make it easy to search for and navigate the topic in question. The main goal of Confluence is to make information sharing and knowledge discovery more accessible and more collaborative. Consider making your documents easy to find for anyone, even when they’re complete beginners to the system.

Here are some significant criteria you should keep in your mind when creating new Confluence pages and organizing your current information:

• Information organization and structuring of your spaces and pages
• Formatting and style
• Ease of information gathering and search
• Integrations with other tools

Why Does Having A Mature Confluence Space Matter?

So why is it essential to keep your Confluence Space neat and clean? Well, for starters, the very reason why you use Confluence is to make discovery and information-sharing easy. When pages and spaces are sloppy and disorganized, searching for information and keeping track of all the different versions of data stored in Confluence becomes too difficult.

Here are some reasons why you should always aim to maintain a mature confluence space:

• A mature Confluence space is decluttered and helps you search for and make edits to the information quickly.
• By reorganizing the page trees, you can identify obsolete pages and make sure they are correctly tagged to get accurate information.
• With proper version control of your pages and documents, you can ensure that information is up-to-date and accurate.

A well-organized Confluence space can easily integrate with other Atlassian marketplace apps and efficiently incorporate page archiving, page discovery, and information identification.

When you have a well-organized Confluence:

• It becomes easy to identify outdated data and take the necessary action to archive them or update them properly.
• You’ll save disk space and lower database storage requirements by identifying duplicate data and removing old and inaccurate data from Confluence.
• If your Confluence space is mature, deletion of data, identification of large attachments that are no longer needed, backup, and restoration become more efficient.

Some Tips On Decluttering Your Atlassian Confluence Space

Here are some tips to help you achieve a mature Confluence space required to make your team more efficient.

Start Making Use Of Spaces

Many beginners tend to create pages and store them in their Confluence just as a standalone document. This method can be an organizational mess when you have thousands of documents that range in topic from installation instructions to meeting notes stored in one space. Start creating and making use of spaces. Spaces help create an information hierarchy and act as a home for various types of content. Spaces are also a great way to implement effective content management and knowledge management within Confluence.

For instance, you can create a separate space for a particular project or team, Confluence allows you to create as many spaces as you want. It's important to remember to associate your pages with the relevant space to avoid orphan pages. You can also have team spaces, project spaces, and personal spaces. Once your spaces are ready, assign parent pages and child pages to organize the pages and form a meaningful content hierarchy.

Make Use Of Page Templates

Remember, when you add something to Confluence, it is not just for your use. It is shared, stored and versioned as more people access the document. So it makes sense to follow a proper structure and consistency to your documents. Use pre-defined templates or create a custom template that makes it easy for anyone to understand and navigate through a page quickly. You need to ensure that your pages are aptly formatted and easy to navigate. Making use of templates will help you achieve that and more by enforcing uniformity across your pages.

Space Layouts Help You Highlight The Most Important Content

When designing your templates and page content, use a hierarchy that will display the most critical content at the top to make it more visible to readers. You can also customize the space around the page to add custom sidebars and search bars or any custom macros to enable faster information discovery.

Categorize Your Spaces

By categorizing your spaces, you can help Confluence users get access to related information quickly. For instance, content marketing space, customer insights, user persona, and such can be grouped into the marketing category, whereas your project management documents can be grouped in another category.

Archive Old Pages

Eliminating old pages helps you maintain an organized page track and helps people find what they are looking for quickly. For example, if the user searches for a topic and finds two documents on the same topic, they might get confused about what to follow. Archiving old and outdated pages allows users to gain clarity and always receive the most up-to-date information.

Promote Collaboration And Engagement

Make it easy to share the confluence pages across your team members. Confluence can be of enormous help as a collaboration tool to create transparency at work and promote productivity. Allow users to get ownership of the confluence pages and enable sharing options. You can also promote internal blogging to enhance a transparent and open culture. You can also measure your engagement with the analytics functionality provided by Confluence to see the active reader count, most active users, the popular spaces, and common searches.

All this information can also help you build better Confluence governance and a user experience that fosters collaboration.

Creating a Confluence infrastructure to support your ITSM and other teams can be a time-consuming task, mainly as your organization is growing and information updates begin to be overwhelming. As an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, we'll help you get the most out of your infrastructure and enhance it to meet your business goals now and as your company grows. Contact us today!

One of the coolest parts of working with the Atlassian suite is the ability to see the wide variety of industries that use the tools in different ways. In my role working with clients I have seen how every company has adapted the tools slightly differently to make them work best for their processes, and help them make that process even smoother.

 While doing so I get to see firsthand how they communicate internally and externally. 

It becomes clear that while many of the tools that we use in our day-to-day jobs are great at facilitating communication, it can be hard to figure out exactly which tool we should be using for what. Here at Praecipio Consulting, I could reach out to my colleagues or clients lots of different ways – a Slack message, a comment on a Jira issue, a comment on a Confluence page, an email, or I could skip all of that and just call them directly. Sometimes, I'll see a combination – a Slack message to verify if a call is okay, or an email that follows a comment on a Jira issue to make sure that I've seen it. 

While Jira and Confluence is often the most direct way, many organizations run into the issue of mismanaged notifications that means people filter out all of their notifications (for detailed guides on how to fix that in either tool see How to Solve: "Too Many Jira Email Notifications" or How to Solve: "Too Many Confluence Email Notifications"). Ultimately, what's most important is that the team is consistent enough in their usage that you know where to find the information you need. 

Given that, here are my recommendations:

Jira

Use Jira comments for all communications specific to the issue at hand. This keeps the information tied to the subject, easy to find in the future, and permanent. You won't have to worry about having deleted an email if you've got all of the comments on the issue themselves. 

Confluence

Follow the same guide as above – if you've got a Confluence page about a subject, keep the collaboration in one place! You can use either inline comments or page comments to track the communication. Even resolved inline comments stick around, so if you need to reference this in the future, no problem. 

Chat (Slack, Teams, etc.)

Great for informal chats, quick clarifications, and funny gifs – but I try to keep any official decisions either out of the chat, or copied to the issue/page that holds the content on the subject we're discussing. If you're using a tool like Workato to integrate your Jira and Slack instances, you can even have your Slack messages added to the issue directly. 

Email

If you're going to be emailing about a ticket, just include the issue key in the Subject and CC your Jira email address, and the email will be added to the comments of the issue. This way, for folks who prefer working in email, the communications aren't lost. Otherwise, I try to send as few emails as possible.

Call (Phone, Slack, Zoom, etc.)

I'm a millennial, so let's just say this is rarely my first choice. Most of the time, for quick conversations I prefer chat, but, especially as more workers are moving remote, this can replace the quick stop by your desk that you may be used to. 

Ultimately, the above is how I manage communications internally and with clients, but which tool you use for which purpose is far less important than that you're consistent. The less time you have to spend hunting down information the better, so agree as a team how you'll communicate and stick to it!

If you are having trouble managing your teams' communications, contact us and one of our experts will be glad to help.

Pushing work is generally considered to be the process by which someone will finish their work and then hand it off to a teammate, regardless of whether or not that teammate is ready for it. This type of behavior is commonly referred to as "Throwing something over the fence" - 

though it can also elicit comparisons to seagulls, pigeons, or other mischievous birds who come in, drop something unfavorable, then turn and fly away. The clear implication is that a person who pushes work typically does not pay attention to nor care what happens after it leaves their hands.

Pulling work, on the other hand, is generally considered the action by which someone will finish up what they are currently working on, then go out in search of the next work item. Typically, there is a known stack of work that person can pull from, ideally ranked by highest priority. The implication in this case is that the person has completed their current work (or is blocked) and has the bandwidth for new work.

Which work environment would you rather be a part of?

Ignore Salt-N-Pepa: don’t push it.

In our experience, teams that have built a culture of pulling work see two main benefits: a better working environment and more accurate metrics. As described above, a push-heavy culture can result in friction, frustration, or even animosity between teammates. Perhaps just as detrimental, a push-heavy environment can actually skew the data and give misleading insights.

When the culture transitions to becoming pull-heavy, the seagulls – and their unfavorable somethings – disappear! Teams are better able to manage their workloads, and the data become clearer and more useful.

A simple way to begin establishing a pull-heavy culture is to add neutral zones at the points of handoff in your process. These neutral zones represent areas where no team is adding value – rather, the item is finished with the previous part of the process and awaiting the next part. An example would be a “Ready for QA” column. When the development team is done with an item, they can move it to the Ready for QA column. QA can then manage their own workload and pull the work into their process when they have the bandwidth to do so.

This change is likely to generate new insights and improve the way your team is working. For instance, it should now be possible to determine when an item is actually being worked on as opposed to idly waiting for someone to pick it up. This can better inform managers how throughput can be increased. Additionally, it becomes easier to focus on high priority items, as lower priority work should remain in the neutral zones until the high priority work is completed. Having a team lead periodically prioritize work in the neutral zone will further improve the process as team members can simply select the first work item that meets their skillset.

Create a more autonomous and less frictional environment for your team: focus on pulling work through your process, not pushing it. 

If you're curious on transforming your team's culture and create the ideal environment to get work done, contact us, we'd love to help.

If you work in tech, you've most likely heard of the term "Agile". Agile is a framework typically used by software and project management teams to deliver better quality work to customers in a more timely manner. Depending on the way organizations approach their journey to becoming Agile, there are various methods they can use to get there. One of the most popular Agile frameworks is Scrum, which proposes teams lean on time-boxed iterations, called Sprints, to complete their work. At the end of each Sprint, Retrospectives are to be completed. Retrospectives are meetings where Scrum teams discuss how to improve the way they work; they are typically held every 1 or 2 Sprints. They give the team a chance to come together and discuss what they liked, what they disliked, or what they felt could've gone better during the Sprint.  Many teams neglect to complete this step, even though it is one of the most important items teams can leverage if they're aiming to truly be Agile. Thinking about Retrospectives and their benefits made me realize how useful they can be for all teams, not just Scrum teams. 

Retrospectives and Non-Scrum Teams

Retrospectives are great for non-scrum teams in that they push teams to look back and reflect on the work they've completed. This reflection is key for future work, as teams can avoid past mistakes or time-eating efforts that negatively affected the efficiency of their last project. They can do the same for the items that lead to success in their previous projects so the team can consistently deliver their best work efficiently.

Additionally, retrospectives are great for promoting team unity and trust across the team members. When team members can openly share their honest opinions about how the team is doing, team communication improves, leading to better quality work and better relationships between team members. Any team can benefit from this, no matter how the team goes about completing their work.

Consistent reflection and analysis of completed work are excellent tools, even if the team isn't using Sprints and your work isn't necessarily time-boxed. At Praecipio Consulting, we hold retrospectives after the completion of every engagement. Looking back on the wins and losses, I can't help but feel a sense of pride amongst my team members on the work we delivered. Setting aside this time for the team to come together and communicate with one another allows our delivery teams to grow and bond with one another. Not to mention, the work we produce increases in quality and the processes behind that work become more efficient. 

If you are curious about Agile, and would like to see if it's a good fit for your organization's needs, contact us and one of our experts will get in touch.

Previously, we looked at why digital asset management is important for your organization. Today, we're exploring Atlassian's solution for tracking your organization's valuable assets digitally: Insight. Remember, we are defining assets as anything that helps you get work done: lab equipment, computer hardware, cloud infrastructure, mobile devices, software/SaaS licenses, tools, work stations, furniture, etc.

In our industry, digital asset management is usually thought of as a component of "service management." Service management was traditionally considered an IT function (often manifested in the form of an IT help desk). In recent years, however, we have been implementing these practices across the organization—from legal to human resources to finance—because they dramatically increase the speed and quality of how work flows.

This expansion of service management practices beyond the IT organization means more teams are taking advantage of Atlassian's asset management tool, Insight. The impact of this trend is often quite remarkable as processes are formalized, streamlined, and consistently monitored. Teams using Insight get additional process benefits. Unlike inflexible, legacy Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs), Insight uses an open data structure which allows your teams to manage any resource important to their service requests. Including assets in your service management practices is a big step forward.

Think about how work gets done in any part of your organization: your process workflows. It typically starts with the (internal or external) customer submitting a service request, like a new employee onboarding, a facility request, a contract review, etc... The request is picked up from the queue by an agent who will take actions to move the work forward to resolution. Many actions may be needed along the way: obtaining additional information, forwarding to another team, making a configuration change, creating an account, procuring a requested item, repair equipment, provide updates back to the requester, etc. These actions are all turbo-charged and made easier through Jira's functionality and built-in fields. But is there something missing? Yes, assets! Almost every request involves procuring, repairing, replacing, upgrading, decommissioning, or dealing with assets in some way. A Jira issue, by default, doesn't include fields to track data related to assets.

We could employ custom fields to create a drop-down list of assets, but we quickly run into limits with this approach. As discussed in the former post, assets usually have many attributes, such as serial numbers, vendor/service contacts, documentation, relationships to other assets, etc... There's no way to stuff all of this information into a custom field. Using multiple custom fields is cumbersome for agents and for reporting/tracking due to data entry accuracy issues. In addition, we can't establish relationships between assets represented in custom fields; these are important for being able to see all assets located in a certain location or seeing what other assets will be impacted by removing or changing an asset, for example. We need an integrated solution that's tailored to managing our assets within Jira tickets.

Insight's basic functionality allows customers and agents to link an issue to a complete, dynamic asset record. This is incredibly powerful by itself, but that's not all: with asset management handled by Insight, we can do so much more to help work flow smoothly as part of digital transformation initiatives. Insight can automate ticket assignment based on any asset attribute, like location, model, or vendor. This prevents front-line support from spending time reassigning tickets to the appropriate queue and removes that wait from the request's resolution time. Alerts to stakeholders can be sent automatically. Should safety and engineering teams be alerted when tickets involving security systems, networking hardware or other critical infrastructure are opened? Automated discovery can be a crucial feature for audit/compliance and having an accurate picture of what assets are being used to in your business. We are amazed at the flexibility of Insight to help customers manage all of their needs around assets.

Are your assets managing you instead of the other way around? If so, get in touch, and let's apply the power of Insight to your business.

A question that I'm often asked is: Why have so many different roles on a scrum team? If a developer on a scrum team has the experience to act as the Scrum Master as well, is there any harm in consolidating? Short answer: Yes!

Although having one team member covering multiple roles seems more efficient, it can cause more problems than its worth. Before putting a team member in multiple roles, it's important to consider the following challenges.

Context Switching

Statistics show that it takes an average of 25 minutes to resume a task after being interrupted. Jumping between tasks that require completely different mindsets and skills require a huge context shift. Having a developer who is switching between working on code and managing blockers for the team can actually reduce efficiency. It may be more effective to have a Scrum Master working as a Scrum Master for multiple teams. 

Skills & Training

The skills needed to be a successful Product Owner (PO) are different than those needed to be a Scrum Master, which are different than those that make a good developer! The Scrum Master should have a high level of emotional intelligence and act as a leader for the developers. Developers should be subject matter experts, familiar with the best practices and best ways to implement the PO's requirements.

Conflicts of Interest

The Scrum Team is designed to have certain checks and balances – each role is well defined so that they can focus on the subject matter they are there for. When you start consolidating roles, there's a high risk of conflicts of interests. This is very clear when organizations try to combine PO and Scrum Masters – after all, one of the major jobs of the Scrum Master is to protect the team from scope creep, represented by the PO. Additionally, the Scrum Master unblocks the development team if needed, and helps facilitate the scrum ceremonies – an important part of that requires allowing the team to work through issues before utilizing your authority to pull in outside stakeholders. 

It can be tempting to try and combine your Scrum roles, but we strongly recommend respecting the division of responsibility that has been established. 

If your teams are having trouble with their scrum roles, have any question or just want to chat, contact us, we'd love to help!

If you've ever asked the question, "What is Atlassian Confluence?" you might have received one or more of the following common answers:

• "It's a wiki."
• "It's a knowledge base."
• "It's an enterprise-friendly collaboration workspace."

And although these answers may be accurate, they aren't that illuminating if you're not already familiar with terms like "wiki" or "knowledge base." Confluence is meant to be used by everyone in your organization; every additional contributor increases the value of your instance. On your Confluence journey, it's important jargon doesn't intimidate users before they even get started! They are much more likely to jump in if you use simple, clear language and explanations.

As always, we're here to help! Let's look at each of these common methods of explaining Confluence and some alternate approaches.

What's a wiki?

Since most users are familiar with Wikipedia, Confluence champions may assume the first answer above ("it's a wiki") is a good way to employ the time-honored tactic of starting with something users already know. However, while most users have read a Wikipedia article, there is very little chance they've actually written or edited content on the site. This is where the analogy doesn't take us as far as needed for new Confluence users.

For most users, Wikipedia is just another read-only page on the web. Even if aware Wikipedia is user-editable, they almost certainly don't have the experience of easily creating and editing wiki pages and then having the content immediately available to other users. It's powerful, but hard to really "get it" if you haven't actually done it before.

This concept is critically important in understanding Confluence's value:

You can create and edit content that's immediately available to your team, or even our entire organization on Confluence. It's as easy as editing a document in a word processor but more powerful because you don't have to worry about how others will access the new content.

What's a knowledge base?

Next up in common ways to explain Confluence: the term "knowledge base."

This is even more unfamiliar to most users outside of IT. We may be able to better meet users where they are by using the phrase Frequently Asked Questions, aka the infamous "FAQ." Thanks to it's popularization as a go-to spot for answers on many websites, this might be a better entry point to explaining the value of Confluence as the central repository for an organization's knowledge.

We're all familiar with the struggle to find answers in our organizations. Our clients have tackled this challenge by centralizing their knowledge in Confluence. Users need to know:

Confluence is the single place where we store our FAQs. When you have a question, it should always be your first stop. Since you generate new organizational knowledge each day, help teammates (and yourself!) by storing answers, historical information, and future useful content in Confluence!

What's a workspace?

The problem with the term "workspace" is overuse. We hear it used to describe project management systems, collaborative editing in documents, physical locations (e.g. desks, lab tables, kitchens, classrooms), the main area of an application where content is manipulated, and even online portals. And that's just the beginning of things that get called "workspace."

We need something more precise when describing Confluence. Sometimes it's better to use an example to illustrate the value of Confluence instead of abstract jargon. Quickly explain how you or one of your teams have used Confluence. The more germane it is to users's daily responsibilities, the better. In other words, avoid using a software dev team's use case when talking to the accounting department. While Confluence can enable very complex use cases, stash those for advanced users. With new users, make it approachable and the value immediately obvious.

Drinking our own champagne

Recently at work I joined a three-person ad hoc team to reach out to attendees at Atlassian Community Events about career opportunities here at Praecipio Consulting. We started with a single Confluence page and simply attached one Keynote file as the starting point for our presentation. That's it. It took our team lead 15 seconds to create our team's "workspace."

During a subsequent remote meeting using collaborative editing we added sections to our page for talking points, an email template to event leaders, a table for tracking progress, and a Team Calendar to prevent schedule conflicts. All of us updated the document simultaneously. Additional meetings generated additional content sections, sub-pages (e.g. lessons learned), and more.

Because this was a one-time effort, a full project-management system or "plan to plan" would've taken longer than our actual project. But not having Confluence would've made it much harder to stay organized and make quick progress. Confluence is flexible and grew with us as our project evolved. Confluence also stores every edit as a previous version which can be referenced if the change information is ever useful (e.g. when did we reach out to a particular city last?). Since it was so successful, we'll likely repeat this effort in the future. Our work is stored in Confluence for when that day arrives. The wheel will not need to be reinvented, even though Confluence made that first round very efficient and effective.

That simple, thirty-second example of a one-page project "workspace" demonstrates several components that make Confluence so powerful:

• Quick ramp-up and flexible for any kind of work
• Evolves and grows with your team as needs change
• Real-time collaborative editing allows everyone to stay on the same page, even in remote meetings
• Add-ons and features, like Team Calendars, add deeper, dynamic functionality
• Confluence automatically versions edits, allowing us to go back in time if needed

The Journey to Confluence Success

Making Confluence approachable for new users is a critical first step in successful Confluence adoption, but it's not the only one. Here are some other resources to ensure your success.

Professional Services

Confluence is easy to get started with, as long as users aren't intimidated by jargon. It's also easy for it to grow out of control without some guardrails in place. To prevent your Confluence from becoming an overgrown forest - and to make it easy, especially for your newer users - a good design for space organization, permissions, add-ons, and more will save you lots of pain. Praecipio Consulting engagements range from accelerators to get up-and-running on common Confluence use cases to custom-designed engagements tailored to your organization's specific requirements. Let's discuss what would work best for your situation.

Training

Atlassian documentation is great but most users don't read it. We offer instructor-led training to make sure your users get the practical how-to knowledge they need to be effective with Confluence from day one. Contact us for more details.

Atlassian University

For learning the basics of Confluence, you can always direct users to Atlassian University which offers on-demand online courses.

Atlassian Community

Finally, Atlassian has a thriving user community which meets online and in-person every day. Check the forums to see if your questions have already been answered or, if not, post it.

Confluence can dramatically streamline knowledge and project management. It can become one of your users' favorite tools for getting work done. We're experts and ready to help. Please get in touch and let us know how we can help.

Good reporting capabilities are essential to Agile teams using Jira Software - and for good reason! Data visualization tools are essential for promoting good communication and collaboration. One of the most sought-after reports is included in Jira Software out of the box: the burndown chart. Read on to learn how Jira makes it easy to generate and share the burndown chart with your team and stakeholders. 

The Inputs

1. A Scrum Board: In Jira, the burndown chart is accessible through Scrum boards only.
   • To create a scrum-type board, follow these instructions from Atlassian. Column mapping is a key configuration point, as it's the basis for the burndown chart. 
2. An Estimation Statistic: Determine how your team will measure work, and set an estimation value on each of the issues in your sprint.
   • Jira accommodates for Story Points, original time estimate, issue count, or any custom field, provided that the custom field is a numeric custom field type.
   • We know that this can be a sticking point for your team and asked our Principle Amanda Babb to shared her thoughts about Scrum Team time tracking to help you along the way. 
3. An Active Sprint: Once your sprint starts, begin to review your team's progress. 

The Interpretation

Once the sprint starts, you can review the burndown chart along the way to understand the amount of remaining work in a particular sprint and gather feedback on the sprint itself. Below are a few scenarios that the burndown chart captures:

Scope Creep:

Scope creep is often unavoidable, so it's necessary to understand when they occurred especially if your team is no longer on target to meet its sprint goal. Here, the burndown chart reflects an increase in scope.

Opportunity for Alignment: 

It's important for the team to collaborate and land on an estimate for each work item in the sprint - not so much for the actual estimate itself but more for the shared understanding based on the requirements. This is often seen in both over and under estimates on the burndown chart. Below, the burndown chart reflects where some work was overestimated; the team is on track to complete the work well before the end of the sprint. 

Plateaus: 

Plateaus on the burndown chart are typical when you have a team who is either new to Agile as a whole or new to working together. It's an indication that the team got off to a good start early on, but didn't carry the effort through the remaining work items. 

Ready to learn how Jira Software can help your Agile teams collaborate and communicate while working in Agile sprints? Drop us a line!

The change to remote work has forced Information Technology (IT) teams to quickly and efficiently serve their customers. Due to this, many people talk about using ITSM processes or ITIL strategies to help their teams.

ITSM vs. ITIL

When looking at ITSM and ITIL, it gets confusing. Are they the same? Or completely different? What does an IT team implementing these practices look like? To answer these questions, we first have to understand the differences between ITSM vs. ITIL.

What is ITSM?

Atlassian defines Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) as a way IT teams manage the end-to-end delivery of IT services to customers. This includes a defined set of processes to design, create, deliver, and support IT services. 

I think of ITSM simply as a set of tools you can use to improve your IT team. Just like you would use a handsaw to cut a piece of wood or a screwdriver and a screw to connect two pieces of wood together, you have to think about what you would like to accomplish with your IT team and which tool would be best for the job. 

ITSM processes focus on your customer's needs and services rather than the IT systems behind the scenes. These processes, when implemented properly, can help cross-department collaboration, increase control and governance, deliver and maximize asset efficiency, provide better and quicker customer support, and reduce costs across the organization. Just look at how this global leader in electronic payments saved $4 million by implementing ITSM best practices.  

What are some of these magical processes? Glad you asked! 

1. Service Request Management
   Any incoming inquiries asking for access to applications, software licenses, password resets, or new hardware is classified as Service Requests. These requests are often recurring and can be made into simple, duplicable procedures. These repeatable procedures will help IT teams provide quick service for the recurring requests. Applying well-designed practices to your Jira Service Management application can streamline the process for an organization's customer to create Service Requests and for internal IT teams to act on the Service Requests.

2. Knowledge Management
   The process of making, sharing, utilizing, and managing data of an organization to attain its business objectives can all be a part of Knowledge Management. Creating a Knowledge Base (KB) for IT teams to create content is crucial for teams to learn from the past and maximize productivity. Having a collaborative workspace, such as Confluence, for all teams to work within can help create one source of truth of information. KB articles can also be shared with your customers through the Jira Service Management portal to help resolve common or simple Service Request without having to contact the IT Team.

3. IT Asset Management (ITAM)
   IT Asset Management (also known as ITAM) can help ensure valuable company resources are accounted for, deployed, maintained, upgraded, or properly disposed of. Because assets have a relatively short life-cycle, it is important to make the best use of all assets. Integrating tools such as Insight with your Jira instance can help track all valuable assets throughout your organization conveniently within Jira issues in real-time.

4. Incident Management
   Any process that is responding to an unplanned event or downtime will fall under the Incident Management bucket. The only goal of Incident Management is to make sure that problematic services are brought back to their original operational status in the shortest time possible. For any incident to be quickly resolved, the original reporter has to be able to quickly communicate with the proper IT team asking for help and the IT team must be able to easily communicate back with the reporter to gather any relevant information needed to solve the problem. Jira Service Management can help make this crucial communication effortless.

5. Problem Management
   Taking lessons learned from an incident and determining the root cause of the problem so that future incidents can be prevented or, at minimum, limiting downtime is the basis of Problem Management. Once a root cause analysis is performed on an incident and documented within your Confluence instance, the impact of future incidents can be reduced.

6. Change Management
   Change Management can be used to control and understand the impact of changes being made to all IT Infrastructure. The Change Advisory Board (CAB), a group of individuals tasked with evaluating, scheduling, and validating a change, can be leveraged to better maintain and ensure the stability of your IT Infrastructure. By taking advantage of Jira, employees can easily suggest changes and the CAB will be able to review the proposed changes, approving and scheduling the change as they see fit.

To see these processes in action, let's consider a tangible example that will help bring it all together:

"Austin Snow" is a new employee at your company. As part of the onboarding process, they will need a brand new laptop. As their manager, you submit a Service Request to your IT team through the Jira Service Management Help Center. An agent in your accounting department is then assigned to this task. Using information from a KB article that has been built out in a Confluence page, the agent can see that they are supposed to put in a purchase order for the new device. From the Confluence page, the agent also knows to add this new asset in Insight and assign ownership to Austin.

Once the laptop is delivered and Austin tries to access an application and finds that they get a 404 error message. Austin reaches out to the IT team through the Help Center to create an incident with them. The IT team then proceeds to investigate this issue. They can find the root cause of the problem and fix it. Using the lessons learned from this incident, the IT team performs a root cause analysis (RCA) for the problem. As a result of the RCA, it is found that a change to the organizations' infrastructure can help prevent this problem in the future. The IT proposed the change to the Change Advisory Board (CAB) who then investigates the impact of this change, weighs pros and cons and schedules an outage window to perform this change. 

As can be seen in this example, ITSM processes can help quickly fulfill requests, transfer knowledge, keep track of assets, respond to problems, identify the cause of a problem, and implement any changes needed to prevent problems in the future. 

What is ITIL?

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of best practices designed to support a company's IT operations. ITIL was introduced in the late 20th century as a series of books by a government agency in Great Britain in an attempt to help the British Government provide a better quality of IT service at a lower cost. ITIL v2 condensed all of the content in the early 2000s into nine publications. These two older versions are seldom used; most organizations currently implement ITIL v3 or ITIL 4.

ITIL 4

Most recently, ITIL 4 took into consideration the latest trends in technologies and service management to help organizations as they undergo digital transformation. ITIL 4 consists of two main components; the four dimensions model and the service value system (SVS).

The four dimensions model lays out four key areas to consider to ensure a holistic approach to service management. These four dimensions are Organizations and People, Information and Technology, Partners and Suppliers, and Value Streams and Processes. The four dimensions have to work together to help ensure that any Product or Service provided to the customer is able to provide value in an effective and efficient manner.

For example, in the above Austin Snow use case, the Organizations & People would be the HR Team performing the onboarding, the IT team helping deliver the laptop, the Support team handling the outage, and Austin Snow themself. The Information & Technology would be all the tools, Jira Service Management, Insight, etc. that were used to help Austin. The Partners & Suppliers would consist of the internal IT team in charge of the service request and incident management or any other external team that was leveraged to deliver the request or fix the incident. Finally, the Value Streams & Processes would consist of any well-defined procedures that were used to help deliver the service to Austin.

Source: AXELOS, “ITIL Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition” (2019)

The service value system lays out how all the components of an organization have to work together to provide maximum value. To accomplish this, 5 main elements are used to produce Value from an Opportunity or Demand; Guiding Principles, Governance, Service Value Chain, Practices, Continual Improvement. 

Guiding Principles help define how an organization will respond in all circumstances. These principles should be considered when making any decisions. Governance defines how an organization is directed and controlled and always stems from Guiding Principles. The Service Value Chain is a set of inter-united processes used to deliver a product or service to a customer. Practices are resources to help perform work. Continual Improvement is how the process can be improved to help provide the most amount of Value to an organization. When all of the elements of the SVS are implemented and used properly, an organization will be able to capitalize on every Opportunity. The four dimensions must be considered with all elements of the SVS to ensure a great quality of service is provided to your customers. 

How are ITSM and ITIL Different?

Now that we have laid down a foundation for ITSM and ITIL concepts, let's discuss ITSM vs. ITIL.

These two concepts are not opposing ideas. ITIL is a framework of ITSM, meaning ITIL takes the concepts and values of ITSM and lays out a set of defined best practices that organizations can easily apply to their business to help improve IT services. In other words, ITSM processes describe the "what" while ITIL best practices describe the "how". 

ITIL is not the only ITSM framework; frameworks or processes such as DevOps, Kaizen, Lean, and Six Sigma are also implemented by organizations. ITIL is the most popular ITSM framework to help improve IT service delivery.

Modernizing Your Business Operations

To summarize comparing ITSM vs. ITIL, ITSM is a defined set of processes to design, create, deliver, and support IT services. ITIL, a framework of ITSM best practices, can be used as a set of guidelines to quickly adopt ITSM principles into your organization. 

Praecipio can help modernize your operations by extending service management capabilities to all teams in the organization.  We’ve seen it all when it comes to poorly managed ESM, and our team of experts brings together your people, processes and technology to meet your business needs. 

If you have more questions on ITSM vs. ITIL, contact us to learn how your organization can benefit from these powerful methodologies.

A sprint retrospective is, in practice, a meeting scheduled after every 1-2 sprints in which the team comes together to discuss how to improve the way they work. The meeting can follow several formats, with the most common consisting of each team member sharing what is working well, what isn’t working, and any new ideas they have to improve. Some examples of takeaways from the meeting might be “Our daily standup is helping to keep everyone on track,” “We need a better process for reviewing tickets after QA is finished with them,” or “Let’s try estimating with story points instead of time values.”

Retrospectives were introduced to make sure the team is constantly in communication about how to improve. This process is commonly known as a feedback loop, and is one of the hallmarks of any good Agile process. Feedback loops have been discussed as one of the most important parts to becoming successful, either as a team or as an individual, a claim backed up by copious amounts of business literature full of research and examples on the topic. A prime example of this can be found in Talent is Overrated by Geoff Collins. While not a perfect book by any means, Collins does a wonderful job of explaining the importance of feedback loops. The argument posits that the way humans improve at anything is to do the thing, look back on the thing and analyze it, figure out how to improve performance of the thing, then do the thing again. The retrospective helps teams to do the middle two parts of that process.

Here are some tips for running a successful sprint retrospective:

Get on a consistent cadence

Doing retrospectives too often will lead the team to resent them. Doing them not often enough will greatly reduce efficacy and result in an inability to put into action the ideas brought up in the meeting.

Prepare ahead of time

Before the meeting, encourage team members to spend a half hour thinking of what is working well, what isn’t working so well, and ways to improve. That way the team can most efficiently use everyone’s time when they come together for the retrospective.

Bite off what you can chew

Instead of trying to implement all the new ideas after every retrospective, focus on determining which ideas are the quick hitters: those that have a big impact, but are easy and quick to implement. By adding the one or two best quick hitters each week, the process will evolve at a sustainable pace. Over time, the team will likely run out of quick hitters, giving you a chance to implement the more intricate ideas. 

Are you making the most out of your teams? If you need assistance with Agile, get in touch, we'd love to help.

When we initially set out to write a piece about how to implement an IT Modernization Strategy, we quickly realized there is not only a lot to consider when weighing the possibilities, but also a lot of context required to lay a meaningful foundation. We want to discuss what IT Modernization is and what it means for your individual business, as well as other terms and ideas to help define the overall picture.

What is IT Modernization

We'll begin by exploring the motive behind IT Modernization, and identifying the traits that make up the profile of an entity that is looking to implement IT Modernization in their enterprise.  Overarching themes include Digital Transformation, Capital Expenses vs Operational Expenses, Legacy Systems, how Cloud fits into the picture (because it's no longer a question of "if" cloud fits into the picture), as well as others.

There are several questions to ask when trying to nail down the motive- we'll be working through these questions in our series:

• Why would you be interested in IT Modernization in the first place?
• What are some of the apparent benefits of IT Modernization? 
• What would IT Modernization look like in your organization and how?
• What would a rollout plan look like?
• When do you tackle certain things over others?

By the end of this series our goal is that you will have the foundational understanding of IT Modernization that will help you answer these questions.

The Basics

If you've worked with Praecipio before, you know we like to start simple - so let's begin with the basic question "What is IT Modernization?"  To oversimplify the concept, IT Modernization is a process of assessing an individual system or group of systems in your organization with the intent of establishing the best possible balance of cost and efficiency. One of the challenges we often call out is that this can look vastly different depending on the context of what it is being applied to.

As part of an IT Modernization strategy there can be some aspects of your business where it makes sense to move in a more digital direction, for example migrating on-prem resources to virtualization or the cloud. While the overarching goal may be to get to the cloud, there are different paths that you organization may take based on your specific context. In the case of moving  an application to the cloud, there are the branches hosting the application on a digital platform like AWS or moving completely to a more SaaS model and allow it to be maintained by a third party.  And of course, for some other aspects of your business it could make more sense to maintain an on-prem solution but update the infrastructure. The key thing to consider here is how you can balance the cost of maintaining whatever aspect of your business you're assessing with the amount of performance proficiency it is providing.

Another term you'll often hear mentioned in the same breath as IT Modernization is Digital Transformation.  It's true that these often go hand-in-hand, but the main difference to consider is that Digital Transformation gets into the explicit changes you have to make in order to keep pace with the digitization of aspects of your business, like products, assets, and processes. IT Modernization is more of a strategy for improving your business through cost savings, efficiency or improving on how agile your business can be. More often than not, Digital Transformation will be a key part of your IT Modernization plan, but they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The Breakdown

With that in mind, let's start to identify the motive a business might have for exploring IT Modernization and what attributes make up its profile. The first question you have to ask is "Why would you even be interested in IT Modernization?" The short answer is every business should be thinking about IT Modernization on some level. We exist in a world where the only true constant is change, and as time progresses the main thing that we're betting on is that our technology and business landscapes will continue to shift. The most successful businesses will adjust business practices to match - if you're not willing to embrace the change and make it work for you, your competitor will, and they'll be happy to take your market share off your hands. Additionally, IT Modernization benefits the business, either by lowering your operating costs, or empowering you to be more efficient managing resources and development. Thinking about ways you can Modernize aspects of your business is just good business.

So how do you this? What does it look like?  Well, we've touched on the two key factors associated with Modernization: Cost and Efficiency.  There are a couple schools of thought when it comes to the approach and how you can execute modernization, outlined below.

The first approach would be considered a more traditional approach. This approach involves making incremental changes made over time targeting the most costly or bottlenecked aspects of the business. From this you can attempt to figure out how you can make them more efficient or cost less, or maybe a combination of both. The main benefit of an approach like this pertains to risk: changing pieces incrementally allows you to carefully consider those changes and their impact on the business as a whole. Incremental changes can also be very good for the bottom line since it allows you to budget changes over time.  One of the potential downsides to an incremental approach is it can be limiting. Taking the time to make incremental changes can take.. well... time.

On the other end of the spectrum there's the end-to-end or holistic approach.  This is about what you'd expect: instead of incrementally making changes you're making a plan to implement broad changes across your organization as a whole. This requires careful planning and consideration of what elements need to change in what sequence, to truly understand the potential impact across the organization. One of the benefits of this approach is it keeps the organization from advancing in a siloed manner, which can lead to less efficiency as a whole. In one instance, that might mean two different business groups moving their application to two different cloud solutions that offer the same functionality. Whether your approach is more incremental or end-to-end, it's important to try to take into account the potential impact across the business and ensure groups coordinate the efforts.

Modernization  Mechanisms

When it comes to implementing IT Modernization, it's important to understand that it is much more than a simple update to your technologies. Rather, the approach should be thoughtful and well planned, with an eye to the future and a willingness to embrace the new and sunset the old. At a high level it is important for your teams to identify out of its legacy software or assets what can can be invested in - whether through legacy software modernization or replatforming- and what should be divested from. Reaching a decision on the best path forward for each application will take time - legacy modernization is not an all or nothing endeavor. We'll spend dedicated time in future posts discussing how you can best approach application modernization. 

It's Just the Beginning

As you consider what IT Modernization means for your organization, keep in mind that there is not a one size fits all solution. Our goal is to provide helpful context to help you define what an IT Modernization approach could look like and what success would mean to your organization.

At Praecipio, we enjoy helping our clients reach their IT Modernization goals and bringing teams up to speed with digital demand. If you'd like to learn more about how we can help, please reach out to us!

With Atlassian's upcoming release of Jira Data Lake for Jira Software Cloud, it's a good time to review the jargon we might stumble on in the reporting and business intelligence (BI) space. So let's jump into the (data) lake!

One word of caution: the BI industry has many players with varied opinions. Some terms get used and reused in multiple ways. One example is the emerging use of "lakehouse" - a combination of "data lake" and "data warehouse." Here we'll stick to as close to canonical as possible but expect to see terms used differently as you research.

Why does BI even matter? What are KPIs?

Your organization has systems (e.g. computer applications) which create and contain data. That data is extremely valuable for fact-based decision making in your organization. 

A CTO or CIO is able to more effectively allocate help desk head count with ready access to accurate metrics (also called Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs) like Mean Time To Acknowledge (MTTA) and Mean Time To Resolve (MTTR). (Note: MTTR is a tricky acronym. As Atlassian notes, there are at least four common incident management metrics that share this abbreviation! This stuff can be confusing...)

To provide these valuable, up-to-date KPIs to decision makers, we turn to BI. This industry is a dizzying array of technology components which take various approaches to achieving BI's primary objective: turning raw data into actionable insight. Often, we need to integrate multiple BI components to get from point A (data in the source system) to point B (reports used for decision making).

BI solutions often leverage a data lake or data warehouse to store business data.

What is a data lake?

A data lake is a central store of raw business data. The data lake is not typically used by the source systems whose data it contains.

The lake is designed to be accessed by tools like Tableau, PowerBI, and Qlik in order to analyze and produce insights from the data. We'll call these analysis and presentation applications "BI tools." To continue the lake analogy: if the BI tool is a fishing rod, then the data is the fish.

A data lake typically uses a file store technology but when it comes to Jira Data Lake, we don't really need to know much about the underlying tech because Atlassian Cloud takes care of choosing, configuring, hosting, and maintaining it for us. One less thing on our plate? Great!

All we need to do is connect our BI analysis and presentation tools (Tableau, PowerBI, Qlik, etc.) to Jira Data Lake. Boom! We're ready to start creating reports, graphs, dashboards, and whatever else we need to answer questions for our organization.

How is a lake different from data warehousing?

As mentioned earlier, some BI solutions use a data warehouse instead of a data lake. Some use both. While the line has blurred between the two, lakes are usually more unstructured than warehouses.

The initial data lake concept encouraged organizations to dump all of their raw data into the lake, including data from relational databases, flat files (e.g. CSV files), videos, and more. The promise that smart software and ever-increasing computing horsepower would eventually create solutions for accessing the overwhelming amount of data in the lake hasn't really come to fruition quickly enough. And many data lakes turned into data swamps. Lakes these days, like Jira Data Lake, are more purpose-built and have better designs for preventing a descent into swampland.

A data warehouse is more structured and normally designed with transformation processes on the front- and/or back-end that clean, normalize, and handle any other standardization before presenting it to our BI tools. These processes are represented by the "T" (Transform) in some more acronyms: ETL (Extract Transform Load) or ELT. The result is more predictable and accurate, but the cost and time to create these transformation processes is much higher.

Why use a data lake?

Why invest in this effort to centralize data in lakes or warehouses? Our BI tools can often connect directly to our application's database. Wouldn't it be easier to skip the lake/warehouse?

Eliminating the data lake or warehouse would simplify our solution design but experience has shown multiple issues with the direct-connect approach.

The most critical issue is often the potential load a BI tool can place on an application database. BI queries often require large swaths of data which can only be fulfilled through heavy workloads on the database. In addition, BI tools often don't optimize queries for performance. BI workloads can cause database contention and application stability should always be prioritized over BI needs. With today's easy-to-use BI tools accessible to a larger and less technical audience, this issue has only become more prevalent. Connecting our BI tools to a data lake prevents risking any application stability issues.

The next most common issue we see is needing to combine data from multiple systems. Since your organization doesn't just use one system, combining data across the organization is how so many powerful insights occur. For example, tying Jira KPIs to financial data is one way leaders can more easily understand technical metrics. But financial data is stored in the accounting system, not Jira. A direct connection to an application's databases only allows access to that system's data, preventing cross-system data analysis. While some BI tools allow you to perform "cross-database joins," performance is often unacceptable and some links are just not possible. Often the data from different systems needs to be cleaned and standardized before it can be linked for analysis. Doing this in a data lake/warehouse is far more efficient than attempting it "at runtime" in BI tools. When we first centralize our data we have the ability to combine data from as many systems as needed.

BI is all about trends over time. Some applications don't maintain much, if any, historical data. A direct connection to these systems doesn't allow for time-based analysis. The historical data simply doesn't exist. Lakes allow us to snapshot data at regular intervals in order to perform valuable time-based analysis.

Finally, with cloud apps like Jira Cloud, we don't have the option to connect directly to the application database. The only data access is often through APIs which can be slow for analysis and suffer from many of the same issues mentioned above. Jira Data Lake provides performant, safe data access.

Data lakes arose from the need for flexibility. No two organizations use the same systems or have the same data needs. Your organization's data needs will also change over time. The direct connection to an application database is too tightly coupled and doesn't provide enough agility to provide BI insights.

If you're wondering if this powerful new tool is a good fit for your organization, or have any questions about anything Atlassian, contact us, one of our experts would love to help!

Ah, a fresh, new month. For so long there was always at least one day where my email inbox was flooded with many, many calendar invites for recurring company-wide meetings, holidays, and deadlines. After carefully clicking “Accept” on each invite, I’d think, “there’s got to be a better way.”

Atlassian’s Team Calendars for Confluence offers a great solution, and it's included with Cloud Premium subscriptions! Let’s take a look.

Image source: Atlassian

What is Team Calendars for Confluence?

The plugin adds a Calendars tab to each space and you can create multiple calendars using built-in or custom event types. Each user also gains a “My Calendars” page which rolls up all Team Calendars they’ve watched. This is centralized, always up-to-date, and customizable calendar management.

Why use Team Calendars?

Clear the clutter. While Team Calendars helps avoid periodically flooding everyone’s inboxes with invites, it also prevents tasking someone to reissue invites to new team members who onboard mid-year. Even those of us who aren’t new can avoid getting peppered with calendar updates when inevitable changes occur.

Visualize. Team Calendars display events as a live calendar, which is a visual metaphor instantly grokked by most everyone. Select between week, month, list, or Gantt-like timeline views. Assign different colors and icons to event types to further visually distinguish your layout. We often see clients using Confluence tables to list out dates. Tables capture the event data but require unnecessary mental overhead to comprehend and can’t be combined with other calendars to spot opportunities and conflicts.

Crowd-source your calendars. Team Calendars allow any user to add and edit events, keeping calendars comprehensive and accurate. Most calendar systems don’t allow this or it’s too cumbersome. In Confluence, it can also be restricted when needed.

Let’s TAke Control of Calendars

At Praecipio, we’ve helped organizations use Team Calendars for an incredibly diverse set of use cases. Here’s how we suggest you get started. 

Corporate holidays and time off (vacation, medical leave, volunteer time off, etc.) are often some of the first calendars created since they have major impacts across the organization. Keeping these events in context with your day-to-day planning in Confluence increases their visibility and prevents conflicts.

Holidays and time-off are just the tip of the organization-wide event iceberg. Take a look at your work calendar and you’ll see lunch & learns, committee meetings, submission deadlines (expense reports, timesheets, benefits enrollment, etc.), social events, and more. Centralizing all of this in Confluence can result in a major productivity boost and a calmer work life.

Next, each team should consider the events unique to their work and create logical calendars to match. Marketing teams need to keep content creation, campaign schedules, and ad runs coordinated. Dev and product teams always need to have their release schedule handy. Client-facing teams may need to schedule around their clients’ external schedule of milestones, holiday, and deadlines. IT and service desks will need to keep support professionals informed of planned maintenance and outages. Each team will find they have many calendars and events to keep track of – and they’ll likely do a better job when using Team Calendars versus the invite model imposed by most calendar systems.

Using Your Calendars

Now that you’ve got calendars setup, you’ll always find them under the Calendars tab within your Confluence space. This tab rolls up all calendars in the space (including calendars linked from other spaces) so you can see holidays, time off, deadlines, and happy hours all in one place. 

But wait! There are additional convenient ways to access your calendars!

• Embed a calendar into a Confluence page with the Team Calendars macro
• Link to an existing calendar in another space so that it shows up in your space’s Calendars tab (example: most spaces will likely link to the official corporate holiday calendar)
• Each Confluence user will see all of the calendars they’ve watched in their My Calendars page
• Integrate Team Calendars into your personal calendar in Outlook, iPhone, etc. Share these instructions with your users!

Caution

Like all Atlassian tools, it’s easy and intuitive to get started with Team Calendars. Here are some more considerations to make it an even smoother journey.

Calendar Names. A Confluence space’s view permissions are used to determine calendar visibility by default. Team Calendars does not enforce unique calendar names. For admins and others who belong to many Confluence spaces, having 27 calendars all named “PTO” makes it hard to find the correct calendar. We recommend including the space name or key in each calendar name. For example, “PTO - IT Help Desk” and “PTO - Marketing.” 

Beware when deleting custom event types. Deleting a custom event deletes all events assigned that event type. Move events currently categorized under the event type to another event type before deleting.

Migration considerations. Atlassian does not officially support Team Calendars migration but you can export and import each calendar manually to move your calendars. Custom Event Types are great but if you’re migrating to a new environment, make sure you are using the latest version of Team Calendars in both environments, otherwise custom event types may be lost.

Help is here! There’s an entire section of documentation for Team Calendars. If you need Team Calendars licenses (or are looking to migrate to Cloud Premium, which includes Team Calendars), need to migrate your Confluence environment, or need assistance with any part of the Atlassian suite, get in touch with us!

We're always looking for ways to keep track of our stuff, from old metal asset tags firmly glued to lids of the first "portable" computers to Apple's recent AirTag product release.

At work we call these "assets" because they cost money to acquire, maintain, replace, and are (hopefully) required for our organization's operation. (If assets are not being used, your digital asset management system should be highlighting that potential savings opportunity!) Keeping track of these items doesn't just make sense from a financial perspective, it's also required by law in many cases.

When it comes to asset management we're not just concerned with an item's current location. Surprisingly often, an asset's purchase price, age, vendor, warranty details, user assignment, support/maintenance contracts, service history, and any of hundreds of other details become critically important to keeping the asset—and therefore our business—running.

And we're not just talking about physical assets like desks, laptops, phones, tablets, tools, networking equipment, etc. The move to cloud means we can instantly deploy servers, licenses, and other IT infrastructure we'll never actually see or touch! How do I put an RFID tag on a cloud server?

With more devices and services being employed to operate our organizations every day, spreadsheets don't cut it. Given this amount of critical data to manage, the only way to keep up is to turn to digital transformation.

Traditional Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs)

The technology market has seen the introduction of many inflexible, expensive "solutions" to manage assets digitally. Traditional Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) have failed to deliver the necessary transformative power:

• IT is overpaying hundreds of millions of dollars in unused features in these legacy CMDB tools
• Customization requires specialized consultants (quickly adapting to the changing needs of the business is a core tenant of digital transformation)
• Legacy tools often result in slowing down the flow of work across teams instead of enhancing collaboration between them

Praecipio is transforming organizational service delivery with an Atlassian alternative built to deliver maximum value: Insight, now built into Jira Service Management. It is a modern, flexible digital asset management solution to easily define collaborative asset tracking that best fits your organization's needs, right in Jira.

Atlassian Service Management saves companies money by retiring their legacy tools. This explains why Atlassian is ranked as a strong performer in this market, having a strong strategy, and achieving a rapidly expanding market presence.

From employee and contractor onboarding to incident management to asset intelligence, Atlassian Insight for Jira Service Management can quickly get your digital asset tracking under control and flex to meet your constantly changing business.

Digital asset management done right doesn't just require the best-in-class solution, however. It's a cultural shift in the way IT is delivered as a service. Contact Praecipio to get started on your service delivery transformation now.

Since 2013, Jira Service Management has been Atlassian's solution to IT Service Management for both internal and external customers alike; more than 8 years of continual development has led to countless examples of how JSM has delivered value to its users. In this 2014 video, we can see how Puppet Labs used Atlassian's Jira Service Desk, now Jira Service Management, to resolve tickets 67% faster. Take it from Atlassian's ITSM Partner of the Year three years running, we love how JSM supports your IT governance strategy. However, when defining a service desk for your organization, one of the most important decisions that you'll make is around how you define your Request Types.

What are Request Types 

In Jira Service Management, the request type defines exactly what the customer sees and how the ticket moves and is displayed after it's been submitted. 

Request types allow you to map a single issue type to different kinds of requests. For example, you may have issue types like Incidents and Service Requests. That's how your IT team understand incoming requests and they have the benefit of being able to span multiple contexts. However, as an end-user, when I'm coming to the portal I'm not thinking in ITIL terms. I'm likely thinking more along the lines of "I can't login" or "I need a new computer." 

Request types allow you to represent both sides of the equation - the foundation of your portal are the issue types, but request types let you customize how they appear to customers in the portal. So, let's see what exactly we can do with request types.

What can I do with request types

• Map a single issue type to many different request types: If there are multiple requests that follow the same workflow, you can utilize a single workflow across as many forms as you'd like!
• Group requests: You may have multiple requests that can be logically grouped together, like Software and Hardware.
• Change field display names: Even thought they're filling out the Summary field, on a request you may want it to say "What problem are you experiencing?" or "How can we help."
• Show specific Jira fields: While an agent may need to see and edit fields like Team or Priority, you probably don't want your customer to see those on Create.
• Preset fields: If certain request types have some constant information, you can preset fields without needing to modify the workflow or use any automation.
• Customize how workflow statuses are displayed: If you don't need your customer to know that an issue is being escalated to Tier 2 or Tier 3, you can mask those statuses so all the customer sees is that the issue is "In Progress" and they won't receive notifications as it moves through that internal workflow. 

With that in mind, there are some best practices to keep in mind. 

Request type best practices

• Think about the customer experience! Why are they coming to the portal?
• Don't necessarily break request types or groups down by IT org structure. While this could be useful, there are lots of ways to route request types to the right place without having it affect the customer view.
• Use hidden fields on your requests to simplify the experience - if you know a system wide outage is always urgent, don't make the user complete that field!
• Use hidden components or Team custom fields to route to the appropriate queues. 

At Praecipio, we have the experts that can help you implement ITSM best practices across your entire organization.  Contact us, we'd love to help!

When we're in the process of creating a product, we want to see the end result. We have a vision of what the product will look like and how we want to get there, so it's tempting to try to get the product running as quickly as possible. However, if and when the product breaks or needs to be updated, we are going to be responsible for fixing it. With that in mind, we look toward Test Driven Development (TDD). 

Nobody likes folding laundry. It takes time, and not everyone appreciates the results (at least not initially). The next morning is a different story: When you wake up to a crisp stack of folded shirts, choosing an outfit is easy - there's no rummaging through a laundry bin and you know exactly what's ready to wear. Sometimes, an initial time investment such as folding laundry, can help us out in the future.

Testing the Feature

We could test manually, going through our list of features and testing each feature to make sure the product is operating as intended. Or, we might write automated tests once the product is finished. But like rummaging through a laundry bin, working through this retroactively can be complicated and we may miss important information.

Many developers use TDD to prevent dealing with this "laundry". Instead of writing tests during the QA phase of development, developers write automated tests before anything else. Imagine a developer adding a new feature to software that allows the user to change the color of the background. The developer first writes an automated test to check whether the background color is changed once a button is clicked. The test may initially fail. They would then add the functional code and use the automated test to make sure the feature works.

Why would a developer want to spend extra time writing tests before building a product?

First of all, TDD keeps development simple and goal-focused. Features are added only when they can pass a specific test. This means that the developer has to make sure that each feature is necessary and the objective of that feature is clear. With no objective, it's impossible to write a test to pass your objective.

The TDD time investment leads to time savings in the future. Although it takes more time to include automated tests in the initial development of a product, there is potential for time savings in the future. When a product breaks, it's clear which part of the code is causing the failure. This means that QA may go more smoothly as bugs or product upgrades arise.

Conventional development vs. Test Driven Development. Using TDD requires an initial time investment but can lead to time savings long-term.

Of course, TDD processes aren't the best for every team. When there are too many possible test cases (often seen in GUI development) it can become impossible to write tests for every functional situation. Like any set of processes a team uses, think about what makes sense for your situation. Does the product have finite requirements? Has QA testing used eaten away hours of time due to buried bugs? Making an early time investment can keep things orderly. Even if your sock drawer is destined to be a mess, think about how you're building your products.

Want to learn more about testing? Book a technical call with an expert.

When it comes to understanding the progress of work in Jira, Atlassian has some great options natively within Jira Service Management. Queues are available in each Service Management project in Jira and Dashboards are available in all Jira products. These features give users important insight into what teams are working on, but how do you know when to use which, and why? Having easy access to the progress of work in the system, as well as some of the stats that go along with the quality and completion of the work, is essential for any team's success. Below, I'll discuss the functionality of Queues and Dashboards in Jira and when one should be used over the other. 

What are queues?

Queues are groups of customer requests that appear in Jira Service Management projects. They are used by service desk agents to organize customer requests allowing the team to assign and complete customer requests quickly and efficiently. There are a few helpful queues that come with your service desk, but Jira Admins can also create custom queues if the ones in place are not the correct fit for the team. 

What are Dashboards?

A Dashboard is a page of reports and data visuals related to issues in Jira. Dashboards are customizable and can be tailored to meet the needs of various users throughout the organization. Individual users often create their own Dashboards to easily visualize what outstanding work they specifically need to get done. Teams can use them to see their overall progress of work. Management can use them to get a more high-level overview of the progress of work across the entire organization. Gadgets make up Dashboards and are often based on Jira filters or JQL. They typically come in the form of charts, tables, or lists. Dashboards are available no matter what kind of Jira project you're working in.

When to use queues vs. Dashboards?

Queues are great for agents and other folks who need to work on issues in a service management project. If queues are broken up by SLA's and/or priority, they help agents determine which issues are most urgent and need to be worked on ASAP. Then, agents can easily grab issues from the list and begin working on them. Queues don't give you any stats or overall status on work that's in progress or has yet to be completed. It's simply a way for those working on Jira tickets to organize them and decide what to work on.

While queues are limited to a single project, Dashboards can be used across multiple projects. They give more information on the work and can provide more details such as the time from creation to resolution, how many issues of a particular type were submitted in a given time period, and which agents completed the most issues. Dashboards are perfect for users who need to get an overview of what's going on, but don't necessarily need to work on the issues. Since Dashboards are meant for viewing Jira data, these pages are perfect to give higher-level users an insight into what's going on with the outstanding work. Using gadgets, these users can see where improvements need to be made if, for example, SLAs are continuously breached. They can also be used to see what works well for your teams. 

You have questions?  We have answers!  Contact us to schedule a call with one of our Atlassian experts.

What's a data lake?

Read up on the basics in our explainer.

At Praecipio Consulting we understand that the data contained within your Atlassian tools is a critical asset for your organization. To help customers more easily access their Jira data, Atlassian has developed Data Lake! As of March 2021, Data Lake is available to preview in Jira Software Cloud Premium and Enterprise.

Warning! Beta software should not be used for production purposes. Breaking changes are likely as Atlassian tweaks this functionality based on user feedback. Not all Jira data is currently available and permission levels are limited but Atlassian is quickly working through its roadmap. In addition only English field names are available, as of now. Therefore, any information presented here is subject to change.

Data Lake allows you to quickly connect the best-in-class business intelligence (BI) tools you've already invested in to query the lake directly.

Compatible BI Tools include:

• Tableau
• PowerBI
• Qlik
• Tibco Spotfire
• SQL Workbench
• Mulesoft
• Databricks
• DbVisualizer

Data Lake uses the JDBC standard supported by many BI vendors. Supporting an open standard provides tremendous flexibility and power in reporting on your Jira projects.

Once you've identified the components of your BI solution, you'll follow three basic setup steps:

1. Configure the JDBC driver
2. Connect your BI tool(s)
3. Navigate the Jira data model

You'll need your org_id and an API token for your Jira Cloud instance. Except for creating an API token (if you haven't already), there's no config required within your Jira instance. There are instructions for connecting to various BI tools in the Atlassian community Data Lake Early Access group. In addition, you'll find posts and diagrams to assist in answering business questions using Jira's data model.

If you're a Premier or Enterprise customer and would like to access the Early Access Program for Data Lake, complete this form to request access. You can also post questions and feedback for the devs in this group.

Are you interested in unlocking the power of data stored in your Atlassian tools? We're a Platinum Atlassian partner with years of experience helping customers leverage their Atlassian investment for even more value, so get in touch!

Have you found yourself in need of a solution where others can request for service, help and support without sending an email? Do you have stakeholders constantly asking for status updates on things they emailed you 20 mins ago? If so, you might be looking for a service desk solution, and Atlassian has a solution for you: Jira Service Management. Here are four things you shouldn’t do when converting to or just starting off with JSM:

1. Don’t forget about the portal. At first it might seem like extra effort because you can utilize SLAs and automation without a portal, but you will be doing your customers and yourself a disservice. That, and you might be spending more than you should.

   By utilizing the customer portal through request types, you can take full advantage of quick support requests with helper text, self service functionality, and customer alerting, allowing your agents to focus on resolving requests, and your customer to have a simple portal for updates and visibility.

2. Don’t forget about approvals. JSM makes approval auditing super simple. Through simple query filters you are able to generate reports around approvals. You can easily identify within the support requests, which approvals and who declined or approved. And all of this can be done through the customer portal (see 1 above), with one-click approval or denial.

3. Don’t forget about SLAs. When tracking performance metrics in your Service Desk, Atlassian makes it easy to configure SLAs, allowing visual references in the support requests as well as generating reports.

4. Don’t forget about Automation. Through simple “if..then” logic, Atlassian makes automating routine tasks a breeze. Tired of aging support requests junking up your resolve status? Add an auto-close automation to move them directly to Close without passing Reopen.

In their 2022 report, Gartner named Atlassian’s ITSM platform, Jira Service Management or JSM, as a leader in their Magic Quadrant for ITSM. By taking advantage of the powerful out-of-the-box features provided by Atlassian's Jira Service Management, you will be simplifying your life and delighting your customers. If you're wondering if it's the right fit for youryou organization's needs, or are looking for expert advice on all things Atlassian, contact us, we would love to help!

TL;DR: No!

Can one person hold both the Product Owner (PO) and ScrumMaster(SM) role in an Agile team? It's a question that a lot of companies starting their way through their Agile transformation will ask themselves (and us!). The Scrum team has three specific roles: Product Owner, ScrumMaster, and (most importantly) the Development team. It's clear why the question of combining SM and PO comes up so often - trying to figure out where current roles fit into the new dynamic can be a challenge for an organization, especially if your teams are now smaller and you don't have enough resources to fill the role of an SM and PO for each team. 

However, combining these roles is the biggest disservice you can do for your Agile teams. It may seem like a small tweak to the model, but given the functions of the two roles, you are setting up your teams for failure. Let's start with the definitions of these two roles so we can see why that is. 

Product Owner

The focus of the Product Owner is on the Product, as you might have guessed by now.  According to ScrumAlliance.org, "The Product Owner defines the what--as in what the product will look like and what features it should contain." The PO is responsible for maintaining the product backlog, and are responsible for communicating with stakeholders internally and externally to identify what the development team is working on. In their day-to-day, they are responsible for creating and prioritizing backlog items and communicating with the team expectations and acceptance of complete work items. 

ScrumMaster

The focus of the ScrumMaster is the team. "The ScrumMaster helps the Scrum Team perform at their highest level. They also protect the team from both internal and external distractions. ScrumMasters hold the Scrum Team accountable to their working agreements, Scrum values, and to the Scrum framework itself", as defined by ScrumAlliance.org. Where the PO is focused on What, the SM is focused on Who and How.  Arguably, the most important part of this definition is the emphasis on protecting the team. Internal distractions often come in the form of scope creep – new scope being introduced once work has already been committed to. In Scrum this often looks like new stories or bugs being introduced in the middle of a Sprint, and the job of the SM is to prevent this from happening as much as possible.

While I'm sure that we all know that some scope creep is inevitable (unless perhaps you're inhabiting the perfect utopia of business environments, in which case, I'll keep an eye out for my invite), but it can get out of hand quickly if there is no one on the team who is able to push back against the business. 

Okay, so why can't they be the same person?

By definition, the role of the ScrumMaster is to protect the team from the Product Owner (and the stakeholders that they are representing). Blurring the lines between these two roles mean that there is no one to push back when scope is added last minute, or ensure that the team is sticking to Scrum best practices, despite heavy workloads.

The most common outcomes that we see when these two roles are combined are:

1. Tons of scope creep. Just, loads of it. All over the place.
2. Sprint commitments are consistently not met because the team is being asked to do more work than they've agreed they are able to. 
3. Product Owners assign out work to the team , as they are now "Managing" the team. 
4. Buggier products –  after all, if I'm a developer trying to get through more work than I've acknowledged I can do, quality is inevitably going to suffer

Overall, not great!!

So what should I do then?

In a perfect world, you should have a single ScrumMaster per team, and Product Owner per product. This means that Product Owners can span multiple teams, if the teams are working from the same product backlog, but ScrumMasters are dedicated to a single team. If you don't have enough resources to commit to this model, in the short term, a ScrumMaster could potentially span more than one agile team - but I would say no more than 2 - after all, one person can only attend so many Scrum ceremonies while also being available to unblock their teams. 

However, the long term success of your Agile transformation means that it's time to start planning to fill those roles. Combining these roles will almost certainly decrease the effectiveness of your move to agile, as your teams are left unprotected and (likely) overworked. 

Looking for more information on Scrum best practices? Check out Sprint Planning - How long should sprints be?

There are a variety of ways to create projects in Jira – whether from a predefined template from Atlassian or from a shared configuration with an existing project. As Jira administrators, this is one of the first questions you'll be faced with when onboarding new teams to the instance. Let's walk through the different strategies, and why we prefer creating from shared configuration. 

Creating from a template

Creating from the Atlassian templates will create a new set of unique schemes to that project - new items in your instance that are not shared with any other project. To create from a template, simply select one of Atlassian's predefined models on the 'Create Project' page. 

The benefit of using these templates is that each of your projects are self-contained, and a model has already been put together by Atlassian. Configuration is not shared with any other projects, even if everything is exactly the same. This means that teams can adjust their workflows, screens, etc. without affecting anyone else. This can be good for teams who don't share any processes with other teams using Jira, and allows project administrators more control over their projects. 

However, for organizations that are looking to scale and/or standardize, this can be a huge headache.

Creating from shared configuration

Using a shared configuration means that you are reusing existing and established configuration items in your instance. Rather than creating new sets of schemes when a project is created, you create based on another project. For example, if you created from shared configuration, both the old and new projects will use the same workflows, screens, and field configurations. Note that they won't share any Jira Service Management specific configuration items, like request types or queues. 

Additionally, once a project shares a configuration with another project, Project administrators can no longer edit the workflows without being Jira admins, which has the added benefit of supporting the goal of standardization and scalability in addition to administrative governance.

There are pros and cons to each of the above, but ultimately, it is recommended that whenever possible, projects should be created from Shared Configuration.

While templates allow teams to have more control over their projects, it does not lend itself to standardization or maintaining a clean Jira instance. Although IT teams often request more options for teams to self-service with Jira project configuration, in the interest of scalability, allowing any user to create their own Jira projects is not a best practice. Jira projects should not be treated as "projects", spun up or spun down on a regular basis: as a best practice projects should be long-lasting and consistent. Additionally, from an administrative perspective, it can be challenging to manage the sheer number of schemes and additional items when trying to troubleshoot issues or maintain the instance.

Looking for expert help with your Jira instance? Contact us, we'd love to help!

This article is Part 5 of a 5-part series on Atlassian Single Sign-On (SSO). Read the rest of the series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Praecipio has partnered with our friends at resolution to bring you a series of blog posts on how to successfully implement Single Sign-On (SSO) with Atlassian tools. Resolution is an Atlassian Gold Marketplace Partner based in Germany that specializes in software development and network security. With more than 7 million users from 58 countries, resolution is the market leader for Atlassian Enterprise User Management Apps.

In Part 4 of our journey to Atlassian SSO, we followed the steps of ACME, a company with large instances of Jira and Confluence on-prem, planning a migration from AD FS to Azure AD.  

In particular, we took a detailed look at: 

• How users from the Atlassian directories can be seamlessly migrated into Azure AD building a no code integration with User Sync 
• How users can be mapped between Azure AD and the Atlassian applications even if usernames don’t match 
• How to connect users from different organizations (ACME and CU.com, a consultancy firm) each with its own Identity Providers, both for authentication and provisioning purposes. 

In order to complete the setup, however, ACME needs to add some restrictions to CU.com users to answer the following questions:  

• Who at CU.com must have accounts in ACME’s Jira and Confluence? 
• How long should access be retained? 
• How should access be revoked? 

Let’s look at how to automate the process for onboarding and offboarding consultants so that these are the answers: 

• Who should have accounts? Only contractors assigned to active projects. 
• How long should access be retained? Only for as long as the project is active. 
• How should access be revoked? Automatically, as soon as the project concludes. 

How to provision only contractors assigned to active projects 

Let’s quickly recap what ACME needs to set up: 

Challenges 

• Access to ACME’s Atlassian tools should only be granted to consultants who have been assigned to specific projects.  
• Consultants have a quick turnaround. It’s important to give them access quickly and deactivate them as soon as their assignments conclude. 
• It’s also vital to ensure that consultants only occupy licenses of the Atlassian products while they're on an active assignment. 

Implementation Steps:

1. The group that gives consultants access will be operated from the Contractor’s Okta and filtered in ACME’s User Sync connector. 
2. Specific project permissions and roles in the Atlassian applications will be managed locally.  This has important implications, as the Okta and local group settings must coexist and not overwrite each other. 
3. The synchronization between Okta and ACME will be scheduled to run every night (but users will also be updated when they login, eliminating wait times entirely). 
4. As a result of the synchronization, consultants who are no longer on active assignments will have both their access and their licenses revoked. 

Here’s the walkthrough: 

• Go to User Sync > Azure AD Connector > Edit > Advanced Settings 
• In Groups mandatory to sync a user, create a new entry 
• Add the group active-acme-jira-project 

•  every time the contractor logs in 
•  with each user sync. 

However, we can protect groups in both contexts from the User Sync connector.  

• To protect the groups in the connector, we go back to the Advanced Settings and add all the groups used to give permission to Contractor Unlimited consultants in the Keep these Groups field. Note that you can either include every group, or regular expressions, if there are any patterns.  

*

• In the cleanup behavior dropdown, select Disable Users. 

What does this last step mean? Consultants will be automatically deactivated in Jira and Confluence following this process: 

• When an assignment concludes, the consultant is removed from the active-acme-jira-project group 
• At 3am, the user sync connector runs 
• The user is removed from the active-acme-jira-project group in Jira, together with any other changes. 
• As a consequence, the user is deactivated in Jira. 

Bonus trick: With the right SAML setting, if the consultant logs into Jira after they have already been removed from the active group, the login will succeed but will also result in deactivation. 

We reached our destination! 

Congratulations! You have finished the journey to Atlassian Single Sign-On! Hopefully by this time you are on your way to an implementation that will last for many years to come. 

The sample implementation in the last two articles has offered a selection of very popular options among Atlassian on-prem customers. As you have seen, User Synchronization is very often a cornerstone of the implementation, since it permits use of the Identity Provider as a single source of truth to automate user on and offboarding. At the same time, it’s compatible with multi-IdP setups and access provision to partner organizations. 

However, the example is just that – an example. And it might be very different to what you need to solve. 

How can we help you? 

If you have any doubts or need help with advanced technical issues, there are several next steps. 

• Here at Praecipio, we'd be happy to help you get up and running. We have a long history of shared implementations with resolution.
• If you need help configuring the resolution SAML SSO application or the User Sync standalone that can be combined with the Data Center SAML, resolution provides free screenshare sessions every day. 

Best of luck on your journey to SSO. Interested in hearing how Praecipio can help with the rest of your Atlassian needs? Check out our Atlassian page here.

Read the rest of our Atlassian SSO Series:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 (you're here!)

Building Jira workflows can be overwhelming. As Atlassian Platinum Solution Partners for over a decade, we at Praecipio have spent a lot of time building workflows (seriously, A LOT). 

One piece of workflow functionality that we often see either ignored or abused are global transitions. A global transition in Jira is a transition to a workflow status that is able to be triggered regardless of where the issue is in the workflow. These can be very powerful, and we use them in some capacity in almost all of our workflows. However, there are a few things that we put into place to make these transitions easier to use. 

When do I use a global transition?

While these are not appropriate in all situations, we recommend using them in situations where users should be able to move to the status from anywhere else in the workflow. The most common use cases are "On Hold" or "Withdrawn" transitions, where users should be able to place the issue there regardless of where it is in the life cycle. It is understandable that users shy away from global transitions, as without specific configuration they have the potential to be confusing to end users and open up the workflow in ways we may not want. Keep in mind that global transitions should not be overused - using direct transitions allows for processes to be enforced, while global transitions are great options when you need to remove an issue from its normal flow.

With that in mind, we recommend the following configuration on all global transitions:

How to configure a global transition

Transition Properties

Opsbar-sequence is a transition property that allows you to determine the order of all transitions in your workflow. To use it, you assign numbers to each transition, and Jira will numerically order them on the issue view. 

Global transitions generally belong at the end of the list, so we usually give them a high number (100 or  500) so no matter how robust your workflow gets, they're always at the end of the list of available transitions. 

Conditions

Workflow conditions prevent transitions from showing when certain criteria are not met. As a best practice, we always add a condition so the transition is not available from the status it's going to – e.g. if we have a "Withdraw" global transition that goes to Closed, the condition should be "Status != Closed". If this condition isn't present you'll see the global transition available when you're in the status it's going to. 

Post Functions

One of the biggest issues that we see with global transitions is around resolution. Jira resolutions are an extremely valuable tool, and if you don't configure your global transitions correctly, they can affect your data integrity. So, 

If the global transition is moving into a "Done" status (e.g. Closed or Withdrawn), add

1. A post function that automatically sets the Resolution, OR
2. A transition screen with resolution that prompts users to enter a resolution before the transition

If the global transition is NOT moving into a "Done" status, add

1. A post function that clears resolution

With the above configuration, your workflows will be more user friendly while also ensuring that your Jira data stays clean. 

Still need more help with your workflows? Praecipio is an Atlassian Training Partner with a robust catalog of training, including Workflow help!

This article is Part 4 of a five-part series on Atlassian Single Sign-On. Click to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Praecipio has partnered with our friends at resolution to bring you a series of blog posts on how to successfully implement Single Sign-On (SSO) with Atlassian tools. Resolution is an Atlassian Gold Marketplace Partner based in Germany that specializes in software development and network security. With more than 7 million users from 58 countries, resolution is the market leader for Atlassian Enterprise User Management Apps.

With the goal of identifying realistic solutions, Part 3 of this series reviewed the top SSO requirements for Atlassian Data Center applications:  

• Are usernames consistent across user directories? 
• Are there multiple sources of identity? 
• Do you need to centralize user management on your Identity Provider? 
• Is there a need to automate user activation and deactivation? 

Then, we mapped possible responses to competing alternatives so that you could tell when Data Center SAML could do the job, and when it would be better to look for an alternative in the Marketplace. Go back to our detailed comparison if you want to dive into the enterprise customization options! 

In the following two articles we will see the four requirements come together in a killer implementation of resolution’s SAML SSO. Let’s follow the steps of ACME Services Ltd*! 

*ACME is (obviously) an imaginary company based on the hundreds of customer implementations that our support team has guided to completion. 

The starting point  

1. As part of a larger effort to centralize user management in a central team, the company ACME Services has decided to migrate their Jira and Confluence users from a local Active Directory where users login locally with username and password to Azure AD.  SAML SSO will be used to connect with the Atlassian applications. 
2. ACME works for specific technology projects with Contractor Unlimited, a large consulting firm. Consultants will need access to ACME’s Jira and Confluence applications with their existing Contractor accounts, hosted in Okta. 
3. Obviously, only the contractors assigned to projects can have access, which should be revoked as soon as their assignment concludes. This step will be explored in Part 5 of our series. 

Note: While the scenario includes both Jira and Confluence, we will only cover the implementation in Jira as an example. Keep in mind that the steps are virtually identical for both applications! 

1. migration from the local AD to Azure AD 

Challenges 

1. Usernames sent from Azure AD are different from the local Atlassian usernames:  first.lastname@acme.com versus first.lastname 
2. ACME has a central IT department separated from the team of Atlassian admins, and collaboration between both teams usually takes time. To increase the speed of the implementation, it has been decided to transform usernames on the Atlassian application. 
3. Users from Jira must be first migrated to Azure AD, since it’s a historic instance with thousands of existing tickets. 

Prerequisites 

In this guide we will focus on the critical tips and tricks, but will assume that you already have a basic working configuration that includes: 

1. Creating a User Sync connector for Azure AD following the Configuration Guide for Azure AD. Do not sync yet! It's best to wait until the implementation is complete. 
2. SAML SSO configured with your Azure AD. Here is the guide 
3. Having read, understood and followed our guide on how to migrate the Jira/Confluence internal directory to User Sync to retain user history, groups, etc. 

It’s convenient to configure User Sync and SAML SSO in this order so that you can select an existing User Sync connector to provision your users during the SAML SSO setup. 

Important note: Migrations can be messy, so it’s fine if you have trouble solving the 3 prerequisites above. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from either Praecipio or resolution – we regularly host free screenshare sessions with our customers to get their SAML SSO implementation ready for production! 

Implementation steps 

In this walkthrough, we’ll implement username transformations on both the SAML SSO login process and the User Synchronizations via API. You may we wondering why the transformation must be completed on both sides. We asked one of our engineers, and here's what he said: 

"What happens when the SAML SSO app searches for a user during login and the user is not found? The login will fail. That's why you need to keep the transformations consistent on both sides. If User Sync creates a username “example” stripping the email domain that is stored in Azure AD, and then SAML SSO searches for a user called example@domain.com without stripping the domain before looking it up, it will fail to find the user." 

1. First, let’s instruct the User Sync Connector to copy user attributes from the local directory into Azure AD whenever a user is created. You can find this in the advanced settings of the Azure AD connector you have just created. 

2. Now we need to configure how usernames will be transformed as they are synchronized into Jira/Confluence from Azure AD. Go to Attirbute Mapping in the advanced User Sync settings, and click on Edit for the username row.

   1. Now it’s time to add the transformation. Here’s the regex example that would do the job of transforming elon.musk@acme.com into elon.musk:

Regular expression: ^(.*)@.*$ 

Replacement: $1 

3. Now we need to configure the same transformation in SAML too. 

 

• Use the template from the dropdown to strip the email domain 

• Click apply and save your SAML configuration. 

Note: The no-code option to strip the email domain from a dropdown will be included in the upcoming release of User Sync, both as a standalone and as a feature of the SAML SSO apps. 

4. Finally, ACME must change the priority order of the user directories, so that the User Sync directory is above the local one. To do this, go to User Management > User Directories in the admin section of Jira, and move the Azure AD directory to the top.

 5. Connecting users from multiple organizations into the same Jira

After the initial setup, Contractor Unlimited (CU.com) need access to Jira/Confluence. Since they also want to use SSO connected to their Okta, a new UserSync connector is configured for Okta. 

Challenges 

The final decision is that Okta should be triggered based on the Contractor Unlimited email domain. An alternative would be to show an IdP selection page where users can select whether to log in with Azure AD or with Okta. However, the central identity team at ACME prefers the ACME login to be a more branded experience without a reference to Contractor Unlimited’s Okta. 

Prerequisites 

• Setup Acme's SAML SSO, now with the Contractor Unlimited's Okta instance. Follow this guide. 
• Configure a User Sync connector with their Okta. Follow this guide. 

If you want to know more about the different IdP selection methods, you can watch this video tutorial. 

Implementation steps 

1. Go to SAML SSO > IdP Selection 
    
2. In the dropdown, choose select IdP by Email Address     
3. Now, let’s create a new rule item so that CU.com emails are routed to Okta for authentication 
4. In the rule, we’ll add the domain in the corresponding field. In this case, cu.com becomes cu\.com
5. Now, let’s test the email of any contractor to check whether the rule is triggered.  
6. Let’s now repeat steps 3-5 for acme employees and Azure AD. The result should look something like this: 
7. Finally, ACME decides to tweak the selection page a little bit so that it has the right look and feel. 
   To do that, they go to the page templates section of the SAML SSO configuration and navigate to the IdP Selection By Email Page Template (2nd template)
    
   
8. And that’s how it looks for them by simply changing the font and adding their logo! 

Next Steps: Setting up an automated process to provision and deprovision consultants. 

At this point, CU employees have access to ACME's Atlassian tools. The door is open. But ACME still has to make sure that the door can be closed so that only CU.com contractors who are actually needed can get in. 

In Part 5, the final article in this series, we’ll look at how to set up an automated process for onboarding and offboarding contractors so that they always have access when they need it, and they immediately lose it when their project is over--without manual work, and without any bottlenecks. 

Read the rest of our Atlassian SSO Series:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (you're here!) | Part 5

Root Cause Analysis: The Under-appreciated Hero

When implementing an IT Service Management (ITSM) system, I always look forward to spending time on root cause analysis (RCA). Of course Incident and Problem Management play the central role in ITSM design- it's crucial to give your teams, customers, and systems intuitive ways to communicate when something has gone wrong. However, it is equally important that organizations spend time identifying the key driver of these problems by performing an RCA to prevent them from reoccurring. This is because, at the end of the day, incidents and problems cost your organization money, and a good RCA can help save it. It's this viewpoint that has led me to dub RCA the under-appreciated hero of ITSM and in this post I will share with you the aspects of a successful RCA that can help vanquish problems once and for all. 

It's important to distinguish between Problem Management and Incident Management. In broad strokes: the goal of Problem Management is to get to root cause, and we can understand its goal to be increasing the meantime between failures by determining root cause of one or more incidents thereby addressing with appropriate change to prevent recurrence of the incident; in this sense it's a proactive approach. On the other hand, Incident Management's goal is to reduce the meantime to recovery by responding and resolving fast; its approach is reactive.

What is Root Cause Analysis?

The core function of root cause analysis is to uncover the core reason why a problem occurred. While there are many different tools and approaches to perform an RCA, I've consolidated the key steps into the diagram below: 

• Define the problem: First, make sure you and your teams align on "What happened?" and are speaking to the same problem.
• Collect Data: Then, the focus needs to be "How did this happen?" and gathering data around the problem, whether customer testimony or incident reports.
• Identify Casual Factors: Casual factors also help to answer "How did this happen," and in this step, teams should be guided to identifying fixable causes.
• Identify the Root Cause: Next, teams should leverage one of the techniques of the RCA process, such as the "Five Whys," Fishbone Diagram, or Fault-Tree Analysis, to drive to the root cause of all the causal factors. 
• Recommend and Test the Solution: After the root cause has been identified, teams should work to develop a solution that gets recommended to the Executive team for approval before testing can begin. Once approved, the solution should enter a testing phase, where it can be rolled back if not successful. 
• Implement and Monitor: Once the solution is implemented, teams should continue to monitor it in the production environment to ensure that it is working as expected. This active analysis step is why RCA is depicted as a cycle; if the solution did not resolve the problem, it could be that the problem was a casual factor and the team needs to begin the RCA process again. 

Why Does It Matter?

I've worked with teams who have a well-defined RCA process and others who are just beginning. I reference this diagram when we focus on RCA because it helps to illustrate how simple of a process RCA can be. There aren't rigid guidelines or rules to follow; organizations can adopt their own RCA policies. What many don't realize, especially those who have yet to adopt RCA as a business process, is that it has a big pay-off: cost savings.

Root cause analysis can be a cost saving tool for organizations for a couple of reasons. First, identifying and acting on problems early saves money. The longer a problem goes on the more money it costs the organization, and a properly deployed RCA process is built to help organizations become more proactive rather than reactive. Second, the main goal of the RCA process is to prevent incidents from cropping up again. If the incident does not reoccur, then there won't be downtime or lost production, saving money in the long run.  

How Can I Help My Organization Embrace RCA?

When working with organizations to implement an RCA process, there are several aspects that I help coach my clients on which can help the organization embrace RCA. They are:

1. Talk about what went well.....and what could have gone better
   1. When the team is starting the RCA process, guide them to start by discussing what happened and framing the problem. Then, go one step further and document what went well. This will provide you data and help to explain what is not the issue or what not to blame. It's equally important to talk about what could have gone better, as this will likely begin the discussion and documentation of your causal factors. 
2. Make it work for you
   1. In some organizations, "Root Cause Analysis" can be viewed as too formal and intimidating. I've come across some resistance to them due to their structure or even the invitee list. For these reasons, it's important to make sure you're adopting a RCA structure that feels natural for your organization. This could mean:
      1. Being mindful of the attendees, especially if the invitees include senior management and above. Ensure you include the right people in the room at the right time. Your front line team has the most firsthand knowledge of the systems or processes, and you will want them to feel comfortable participating candidly in any discovery meetings. 
      2. Having a neutral party leading the meetings. The leader shouldn't have anything to gain by the results of the RCA process and should be able to maintain a "blame free" atmosphere.
      3. Reframing RCA as something more approachable, such as a "Lessons Learned meeting,"  where the RCA process is still followed, but in a less formal way. Feedback and idea can be gathered via sticky notes and shared on a board so that it is anonymous for example. 
3. Root causes can only solve one problem
   1. Remember that the main goal of RCA is to avoid future incidents. Teams should not be applying a previous root cause to a current or future problem- if that is the case, then it indicates that rather than identifying the root cause, the team actually identified a casual factor. In these instances, I've coached teams to go back and take their RCA process one step deeper, for example asking another "Why" question if the "Five Whys" is used. 

The goal of Problem Management is to get to root cause. Incident Mgmt goal: reduce the meantime to recovery (by responding and resolving fast); reactive
Problem Mgmt goal: increase the meantime between failures (by determining root cause of one or more incidents thereby addressing with appropriate change to prevent recurrence of the incident); proactive.

Ultimately, where incidents and problems cost your organizations money, RCA saves it. It is for this reason that I think of RCA as an under-appreciated hero of ITSM. While the biggest barrier to accomplishing RCA can be time, putting in the time upfront to accomplish the RCA process will prevent repeat incidents from cropping up, saving your company time and resources in the long run. By implementing a few of these tips, I hope you come to appreciate RCA as I have, and if you have any questions let us know, we'd love to help. 

Custom fields can be an over-looked configuration point in Jira, and it's easy to see why: they're easy to create, modify, and make available for your users. Although Jira ships with several system fields, it's inevitable that teams using Jira will reach a point where they require additional fields to input specific information into their issues. But in order to maintain Jira's performance as well as instance hygiene, it's important that Administrators take great care when it comes to custom field creation. That's why today we're sharing with you a few custom field insights we've gleaned over the years. Read on to learn three things no one tells you about custom fields. 

1. Technically, there is no limit to the number of custom fields you can have. BUT...

Custom fields do impact system performance in Jira. Below are some recent results breaking down each configuration item's impact on Jira. Here, we can see that custom fields have an impact on the speed of running a large instance. Your teams may feel this impact in the load time of issue screens. As an admin, one indication can be having a long page of custom fields to scroll through. Additionally, this is often accompanied by longer than usual load time for the custom field Administration page. 

To combat this, Jira Administrators should partner with the requestor and other impacted users to determine some guidelines for creating custom fields. For instance, requiring the requestor to submit an example of how they plan to report on the custom field or having the Administrator ensure the custom field can be used in the majority of projects (>=80%). Execution is crucial here: once the guidelines are aligned with management and stakeholders, it's crucial they are followed to prevent your custom field list from unnecessarily growing.

2. There are native alternatives to custom fields.

There are a few usual suspects to look for when reviewing custom fields. Duplicate custom fields ("Additional Comments" as a supplement to the "Comments" system field), variations of custom fields ("Vendor" vs "Vendors"), and department specific custom fields ("Company ABC" vs "Vendor") are a few custom fields that can needlessly drive up your custom field count. To prevent this from happening, Admins can offer their business partners alternative suggestions to creating a custom field by looking at the following:

1. Utilize an existing custom field that may be more general, but is fit for the purpose to get the most out of what is already in place.
2. Rather than implementing a custom field, Labels or Components can be used to help organize issues and categorize them for future reporting.
3. Apply a custom field context to help maximize the potential for picker, select, checkbox, and radio button custom field types. Adding field context enables Administrators to pair different custom field select options or their default values to specific projects or issue types within the same project.

3. You can proactively manage custom fields.

Rather than waiting for custom fields to pile on and create a lag on the instance speed time, proactively scheduling time to scrub your instance for stale custom fields will help Administrators keep on top of their custom field list. This can be a visual check to understand what fields aren't associated to a screen- those are good candidates for removal- or if there are similarly named fields- those can be good candidates for consolidation. More information from Atlassian on how to identify and clean up these fields can be found here.

Ultimately, a well-maintained Jira instance includes a good understanding of custom fields and their overall impact on the system. As your instance grows overtime, the guidelines around custom field development will become all the more important. Bringing these tips to life will help your instance run at top speeds for your users. 

Need help making the best out of your Jira instance? Our experts know Jira inside-out: contact us and we'll get in touch!

This article is Part 3 of a five-part series on Atlassian Single Sign-On. Click to read Part 1 and Part 2.

Praecipio has partnered with our friends at resolution to bring you a series of blog posts on how to successfully implement Single Sign-On (SSO) with Atlassian tools. Resolution is an Atlassian Gold Marketplace Partner based in Germany that specializes in software development and network security. With more than 7 million users from 58 countries, resolution is the market leader for Atlassian Enterprise User Management Apps.

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we saw the main symptoms of a password disease that can be cured when applications are secured with single sign-on. We also took inventory of the core identity assets involved in an SSO implementation – including web applications, SSO connectivity, user directories, and opportunities to deploy identity providers (IdPs). 

In other words, we’ve looked at where you are. Now, it's time to look at where you want to go.  

Part of that journey involves making a final decision about the home of your user accounts once you move away from Active Directory. Will it be Okta? Azure AD? Some other vendor? 

Another part of that journey relates to extremely specific requirements that you will need to analyze to make sure that the implementation of single sign-on in Atlassian applications makes all stakeholders happy.  

In this article, we'll spell those requirements out. 

Write them down: These are the most important questions that you will need to answer in full detail before evaluating specific SSO solutions for your Atlassian applications. 

Question 1: Do your Atlassian applications support SSO out of the box? 

We saw this already in Part 2, but it’s worth revisiting. 

Your options depend entirely on the type of hosting of your Atlassian products, as you can see in the summary table. If you are on Server, you will plan a migration to either cloud or Data Center in the next couple of years, so that's where you should look. We won't consider SSO solutions for Server applications in this article, although the answer is easy: go to the Atlassian Marketplace. 

If you are on the Atlassian Cloud, your options can also be spelled out with 2 words: Atlassian Access. The good thing is that you need to search no more. The downside is that Access can be quite expensive, and there is no competition. 

In terms of functionality, Access has everything you could ask for. In fact, it does much more than just SSO, making it a high standard against which other solutions can be measured.  

Audit log, directory syncs, and lifecycle management are components that go beyond the basic SAML SSO functionality and towards a comprehensive Identity and Access Management framework on the Atlassian stack. 

If you're already on a Data Center license or planning a migration in the next couple of years and before Server End of Life in 2024, then you do have (or will have) SAML SSO out of the box. But the Data Center SSO offering is far away from Access. Which takes us to the next question.  

Question 2: Will Native Data Center SAML SSO be enough for you? 

Here are some facts:  

• Atlassian started providing native SSO capabilities with the SAML protocol in 2019. Originally as a free app, it’s now a preinstalled app for any Data Center customer. 
• While more functionalities are being added to the SAML-based authentication, the app is still behind. You can check their roadmap here. 

What this means is that if you have a simple need and a simple infrastructure, Data Center SAML SSO may work for you. Otherwise, you should look for a commercial alternative. In this article we will look at how common additional requirements are covered by resolution’s SAML SSO apps, with over 7 million users in 58 countries. 

Let’s have a quick overview of what the Data Center SAML SSO can do before we look at how additional requirements can be solved with resolution’s SAML SSO. 

A quick overview of Data Center SAML SSO: 

First, we'll cover the main functional requirements that Data Center will solve at a high level: 

• Authenticate users into Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket Data Center on behalf of an Identity Provider. Spoiler alert: you will need exact username matches on both sides (see question 3). 

• Create users into the Atlassian applications during their first login, without the user being prompted to enter their Atlassian password. This is commonly called Just-in-Time provisioning and happens with the information that the Identity Provider sends in the SAML response. 
  
• Update the information stored in the local Atlassian directory. This also happens during login exclusively and applies to the group memberships that define user permissions and access. 

There’s no question that these three functions alone are powerful. However, a more detailed examination is needed to ensure that you can effectively implement Data Center SSO with your current infrastructure. 

The following two questions are aimed at clearing up that part of the dilemma, before we embark on additional functional requirements. 

Question 3: Do you have different naming conventions on the Identity Provider and in the local Atlassian directories? 

If the answer is no, then Data Center SAML SSO will accommodate you right away. You can skip to the next question. 

For example, if you are implementing Azure AD the UserPrincipalName attribute will be populated with user emails. If you also have email addresses in the Atlassian username, the match will be perfect. 

But if the answer is yes, it will not work. When the usernames don’t match immediately on either side, it will be impossible for the Data Center SAML SSO to identify which user in the Atlassian database is trying to log in. 

This will happen, for example, if instead of the example above, there are full names in the Atlassian usernames. 

There are two workarounds: 

• Modifying all the usernames in your Atlassian applications to align them to the naming conventions in the IdP (Identity Provider). 
• Modifying usernames on the IdP side to align them with Atlassian (but potentially disrupting the rest of your connected applications). 

If you want a more elegant solution, you can use the user-mapping and transformation features in resolution’s SAML SSO.  

In our example, there are two different strategies to create a match with resolution's SAML SSO: 

1. The UserPrincipalName is mapped with the e-mail attribute, which can then be selected as the attribute that is looked up in the Atlassian database for authenticating users. 
2. The UserPrincipalName is transformed into the username by simply stripping the email domain.  

Note: No-code transformation options are quite varied. 

Question 4: Do you have to connect Atlassian applications to multiple identity sources? 

Enterprises rarely have a single, monolithic user directory. For historic and legacy reasons, but also because IT governance models give a lot of autonomy to geographic regions, it is most common to have a few user directories, even from different vendors. 

But even in more centralized approaches, large organizations tend to have separate user directories for different types of users, even if those directories are provided by the same cloud vendor. For example, Jira users and Jira Service Management agents could be stored in different instances of Okta. And it's even more common to separate customers and employees. 

If that is your case, then you won’t be able to use the Data Center SAML SSO app. 

On the contrary, in resolution’s apps, you can setup multiple IdPs and decide when each of them is triggered based on multiple methods: 

• The user’s decision on a selection page 
• The user’s email domain 
• Specific information included in the http request headers 
• Priority scores (by weight)
  

Note: Atlassian has put this feature on their short-term roadmap, but it’s unknown what will be possible with it and whether the setup will support dynamic IdP selections. 

Question 5: Do you want to centralize user management from your Identity Provider? 

In an enterprise setting, there is not a right or wrong answer to this question. It can make sense to manage users in every application locally. This usually happens when the IT team has the right expertise, and the company is small enough that change requests don't swamp the workload. 

But on a larger scale, a decentralized user management framework can become a major issue.  

What happens when user management is centralized? As employees are promoted, change departments, or are assigned to a new project, permissions can be changed directly from the Identity Provider alone. Then, they propagate immediately to all connected applications. 

The technology behind this benefit is a one-way synchronization from the IdP to the connected apps via API. Once set up, the sync will update users’ group membership at regular intervals and therefore automatically modify their access rights. 

Data Center SAML doesn’t have the ability to sync with IdPs, which exist both in Atlassian Access for cloud applications and in resolution’s SAML SSO apps. 

As you can see in the image below, resolution’s User Sync functionality provides connectors with most commercial IdPs. Connectors can then be configured so that they align to your group management practices and nomenclature. We will show a practical example of this in the next article. 

Question 6: Do you want to automate user onboarding and offboarding? 

User syncs are vital if you want to automate user management throughout the entire lifecycle.  

Besides the satisfaction of having the power to control every detail, few administrators enjoy onboarding new users into every application. They understand it’s a job that needs to be done. They also grasp the urgency of removing access to applications when an employee leaves the company. But sometimes they might be too busy to put that task at the top of their list or to double check that every access was effectively disconnected. 

User syncs can automate the three key on and offboarding jobs: 

• When a new employee joins the company, they have immediate access to every application without even having to login for the first time. 
• When an account is deactivated on the IdP, all accesses are immediately blocked. 
• Deactivate users temporarily when they don’t access an application like Confluence for a specific time (for example, 3 months)  

For the third job, it’s even possible to create a specific connector that takes care of the automatic deactivations. 

How to evaluate your answers: 

Until now we have looked at the main requirements that you must consider for your SSO implementation. It's vital to have a clear answer to all these questions before making a final decision.  

Now that you have your answers, let’s translate them into realistic options. 

 The table below summarizes your options, mapping combinations of answers with the most suitable SSO solution.  

To find which product we recommend for your use case, simply find the row that contains your answers. 

As you can see, there are three main possibilities: 

• If you don’t have any of the requirements listed in questions 3 thru 6, then Data Center SAML SSO might do the job.  
• If you answered yes to question 3, question 4, or both, then it seems like resolution’s SAML SSO will be your best shot. 
• If you answered no to 3 and 4 and you still want to automate user management, then you have two alternatives:   
  • The simple alternative is to go for a complete product like resolution’s SAML SSO. This will simplify your implementation and the number of touchpoints with support experts. 
  • The cheap alternative is to implement the existing functionality in Data Center for the basic SAML, and resolution's Users and Groups Sync to automate user management. This will give you the advanced features you need to manage users and groups, but at half the cost of the SAML SSO app. 

Now you know what’s your basic fit.  

Make sure to complete your evaluation going over all your additional requirements as instructed in the next paragraph. 

Continuing your evaluation  

We hope that our attempt at boiling down your implementation project to its essentials was successful and your scenario is realistically captured in the options above.  

But beware! These six questions leave out many details. To quickly cross-reference your feature wish list, we have published a full tour of customization options and how they compare to the Data Center defaults.  

Here’s a high-level preview. 

But if you want to learn how it works, have a look at the in-depth comparison resolution has prepared.

What’s Next 

In this article we reviewed the native SSO capabilities of Atlassian products depending on their hosting type and doubled down on what Data Center SAML SSO can do. We then focused on three major requirements that cannot be solved with it: username mapping and transformations, multi-IdP setups, and user management automations. Finally, we took stock of the combined requirements and presented the best solutions for each of them. 

Part 4 of this series will go even deeper into how to address these requirements with resolution’s SAML Single Sign-On. We will go over the implementation project of an imaginary company that has decided to migrate out of their Active Directory into a cloud Identity Provider. We will identify their challenges, understand the value that the implementation will create for the business, and offer reproducible how-to steps to solve their case. 

Read the rest of our Atlassian SSO Series:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (you're here!) | Part 4 | Part 5

This article is Part 2 of a five-part series on Atlassian Single Sign-On. Click here to read Part 1.

Praecipio has partnered with our friends at resolution to bring you a series of blog posts on how to successfully implement Single Sign-On (SSO) with Atlassian tools. Resolution is an Atlassian Gold Marketplace Partner based in Germany that specializes in software development and network security. With more than 7 million users from 58 countries, resolution is the market leader for Atlassian Enterprise User Management Apps.

In Part 1 of this series, we offered an overview of the most common pain points that can be felt across an enterprise when no single sign-on (SSO) solution has been implemented – or when it doesn’t extend to important corporate software like Atlassian tools. 

Now you understand that without SSO, end users will stick to bad password habits. Your Help Center will be flooded with password recovery requests. And, to the despair of your security experts, your admins will keep forgetting to deactivate former employees from Jira’s internal directory. 

So, what are you going to do about it? 

Luckily for you, we are taking the grand journey to SSO before your eyes. In this article, we’ll show you the exact steps to take inventory of your existing identity resources. Once the inventory is completed, outlining the implementation project and choosing the SSO vendors should be straightforward. 

Step 1: Take inventory of web applications 

What software do your employees use? Completing an inventory of all the B2B apps used in your organization is easier said than done.  

By some accounts, employees used an average of 191 accounts in 2017, with about half of the workforce using software that was not distributed to them by their IT department. 

When setting out to complete the list, try a "good cop" approach. Interview colleagues in different departments and explain the benefits of bringing every possible application under the roof of a unique, centralized login. 

A percentage of these applications will be small SaaS vendors where the head of the department paid with a corporate credit card without requesting a budget approval for it. These types of products have the greatest risk of becoming Shadow IT: unaccounted for and unknown to the IT department until there’s a problem. 

However, for the purpose of single sign-on you should only be concerned about the apps that are relevant: 

• They’re used everyday by some roles 
• They are essential to completing the employee’s job description 
• They have individual user accounts 
• They contain sensitive data about the company that shouldn’t be disclosed 

Atlassian tools like Jira, Confluence or Bitbucket meet all the criteria from the above list.   

In case of doubt, a quick scan of data sensitivity should be enough to convince you. Bitbucket is the repository for the company’s software, Jira Software has all the plans for the product’s future features, Jira Service Management contains hundreds of customer conversations, and finally, Confluence is used to organize and disseminate documentation, strategic business plans, and links to confidential assets. 

Step 2: Check which applications support SSO  

Once you know which web applications you need to connect to your SSO solution, you should do some quick due diligence:  

• Does the application support SSO natively?  
• If yes, what protocols can be used to connect it? SAML, OAuth/OIDC, SSH, or even older ones? 
• If no, are commercial connectors available that you can rely on to do the job? 
  
  

Atlassian on-premise applications, for example, do not support SSO natively. However, there are plenty of alternatives in the Atlassian Marketplace that allow them to connect to IdPs, mainly via SAML. Resolution’s SAML SSO is the most important example. 

In the case of Data Center, there is also a free SAML SSO app by Atlassian that covers a part of the SSO specifications, including authentication and some other aspects of user management. We will go into more detail in Part 3 of this series. 

For each of the applications in your inventory, you will have to ask yourself: Where are the application’s users? Are they stored internally in the application, or are they drawn from a corporate user directory? 

In the case of Atlassian users, there are three main non-SSO options: 

Option 1: Users are stored in Microsoft’s Active Directory 

Active Directory (AD) is starting to be a legacy technology from the time of Windows 2000, but it’s still the most common starting point for a lot of companies using Windows Servers.  

When your users are stored in AD, they can be synchronized with Atlassian applications using LDAP – then they will be able to use their AD credentials for the Atlassian login. 

Pros: It’s a well-tested option that is natively supported by Atlassian applications. Besides, many customers are already using the AD FS role to integrate with cloud services like Office 365 or Salesforce via SAML. And if they haven’t yet, they can do it for free. 

Cons: LDAP is a very poor choice in remote-first approaches: it usually requires firewalls and VPNs, it scales poorly in terms of performance, and it’s not supported by many cloud Identity Providers.  

Option 2. Users are stored in Jira’s internal directory 

Jira’s internal directory can also be connected to other Atlassian products like Confluence to be used as the source of users. 

Pros: Users don’t have to be managed in other Atlassian applications. They can be centrally run from Jira’s internal directory. 

Cons: The most important disadvantage is that Atlassian applications will still be siloed against the rest of your tools. Every time you adjust access and permissions for an employee, you will have to do it at least twice: once for Atlassian apps, then again for your other directories. Additionally, if Jira is down, your entire Atlassian stack will be unavailable. 

Option 3. Users are stored in multiple directories, but centralized with Crowd 

Many enterprises have multiple on-premise historic instances, each of them with their quirks and their settings. Often some are Data Center, others are Server. Rather than merging everything, standardizing and consolidating in a mega instance, it’s simpler to just accept the complexity and add Crowd into the mix to centralize user management. 

Pros: Federating multiple Atlassian instances with Crowd is fairly simple, and you can manage users and their permissions across different directories. 

Cons: Crowd is sold as an SSO solution, but that is only true for Atlassian products. If a user logged into Crowd tries to access any non-Atlassian tool where he doesn’t have an open session, he will be prompted to login. Also, Crowd cannot handle SAML responses from an IdP. 

Step 4. Analyze IdP opportunities 

You will need an Identity Provider (IdP) that can serve as the single source of truth for user identities in all your applications. 

A new IdP can be a significant financial commitment. However, sometimes you can get a top IdP vendor for free because you are already using their technology for other purposes. Let’s have a quick look at the most common scenarios. 

Have a look at resolution’s independent evaluation of the most important IdPs for more details. 

Scenario 1: Microsoft Active Directory 

This is the second time we encounter AD in this article, and it’s no coincidence.

If your administrators are already using Active Directory to manage employee access and permissions to your networks' resources, then you can have SAML-based SSO for free. Simply make use of the AD Federation Services role and start using AD FS as your Identity Provider. 

Scenario 2: Office 365 

A similar scenario to the above, but with cloud pieces of Microsoft’s game. If your company is on Office 365, then you can get Azure Active Directory for no additional cost.  

If you do so, keep in mind that the free version of AD FS has some important limitations:

• You can only use applications in the Azure app catalog (don’t worry too much, resolution is in the catalog) 
• Some advanced features like user assignments will only be available on a per user basis 
• Conditional access policies, including MFA (multi-factor authentication), will not be available at all. 

Scenario 3: GSuite 

Everyone has a Gmail account, and thousands of companies, particularly in the US, have adopted Google Workspace (formerly GSuite) for their office applications. If that is the case for your organization, then choosing Google’s Cloud Identity is simple. 

Cloud Identity Premium is included in the premium tier of Google Workspace with a cost of $25 per user, per month. 

Next Steps 

In this article we have seen how to build a comprehensive inventory of your identity assets that includes sensitive B2B applications, the user directories for your Atlassian users, and common opportunities for adding an IdP vendor from your existing stack. 

In Part 3 of this series, we'll go over the most vital questions that will help you define the scope of your SSO implementation. 

Will a simple setup be enough? Will you connect users coming from different directories? Will you automate user creation and deactivation? These are some of the considerations that will impact your project and what a successful solution will look like.

Read the rest of our Atlassian SSO Series:

Part 1 | Part 2 (you're here!) | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

As companies grow either organically or inorganically, many are faced with the decision of whether they should consolidate or keep their Jira instances separate. Today I'm going to address one specific flavor of this conundrum that I am often asked about, specifically with regards to separate instances of Jira Software and Jira Service Management. Some organizations choose to have separate instances for Jira Service Management and Jira Software, but I am here to tell you that is probably not necessary!

Although Jira Software and Jira Service Management are different products, there is no need to keep them separate. The most efficient companies use both in a single instance, so that teams can collaborate much more easily. As organizations adopt DevOps or start to think about it, one of the first things that is looked at is how IT interacts with the development organization. If these two groups are working in separate Jira instances, collaboration and clear understanding of ownership and handoffs is much more difficult. For example, It is much easier to link an incident that was submitted to the service desk to an associated bug if all of those tickets live in the same instance. While you can link to tickets in other instances, that requires users be licensed in both and have a clear understanding of where the work lives. Working in a single instance removes the need for potential duplicate licenses and ensures teams can communicate clearly. 

Occasionally teams use separate instances due to security considerations. However, in almost all situations your security concerns can be addressed by project permissions, application access, and issue security. There are few cases that Jira's native security features won't account for. 

Finally, let's look at this from a user experience perspective. One of the most prominent complaints that we see as organizations undertake their digital transformations are that users have to keep track of too many tools, a pain that I've felt in my career as well. Trying to remember where to log in for a specific subset of your work can be a headache. If your Jira Service Management and Jira Software instances are separate, they'll have two separate URLs that users have to navigate to. Signing into multiple locations and using different URLs adds an extra step where there need not be one.

Since you've already made the great decision to use both Jira Software and Jira Service Management, you might as well reap the benefits of the easy connection between the two so your teams can focus on what matters, rather than managing their tools. 

Are you looking to merge your Jira instances? Contact us, we know all about how to do that, and would love to help.

Throughout the course of this year, we've discussed implicit bias on our internal Social Justice team at Praecipio Consulting. Implicit biases are sub-conscious thoughts or stereotypes we have about a specific group of people based on their race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, appearance, etc. The feelings and thoughts we form based on these biases are ones we may not intentionally form or are aware of, but everyone has them. The team looked further into how these implicit biases affect the workplace and discovered they correlate directly to microaggressions. As we begin a new year, the Praecipio Consulting team is looking for ways to better our company culture, as well as ourselves personally, so addressing microaggressions and their effects on the workplace seemed like a great way to do this as a group, as well as individuals.

What are microaggressions?

According to Derald Wing Sue, microaggressions are the everyday slights, indignities, put-downs, and insults that members of marginalized groups experience in their day-to-day interactions with individuals who are often unaware that they have engaged in an offensive or demeaning way. The perpetrator of the aggression typically does not realize what they said or did toward the victim is offensive, which makes microaggressions even harder to call out or recognize. There are three types of microaggressions: microassaults, microinsults, and microinvalidations.

Three types of microaggressions

First, we have microsassaults. Microassaults are more obvious and are usually purposeful. They are often violent and directly target a victim. In the workplace, an example would be if a male coworker gropes a female coworker and plays it off as a joke.

Next are microinsults. Microinsults are the most common type of microaggressions. They are a bit more subtle and unconscious, especially compared to microassaults. They disrespect or demean another person, even if the perpetrator "meant it as a compliment." In the workplace, an example would be if a non-white co-worker was giving a presentation and an employee commented on how articulate the presenter is. 

Microinvalidations are very similar to gaslighting another person. They are often subtle and unconscious. Microinvalidations cancel the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of marginalized individuals. In the workplace, an example is when an LGBTQ+ employee confides in a straight employee about a microaggression they received, and the straight employee tells them they're overreacting. 

Microaggressions and the workplace

Although at the moment, a microaggression may feel like a joke or a harmless action to the person committing them, they have a large impact on the receiver, especially if the microaggressions occur repeatedly over a long period of time. Psychologists often compare them to death by a thousand cuts. Because of the manner of microaggressions, they are often not reported by employees. It’s important to understand what they are and how they affect others to ensure a safe and inclusive company culture. The first step in addressing microaggressions is to recognize when a microaggression has occurred and what message it may be sending. Think about your actions and your words: you may have positive intentions with your behaviors, but think about the impact they have on others. 

At Praecipio Consulting, the Social Justice team has compiled a Resource Library that the company can use to learn about a range of topics, a few geared toward microaggressions and how we can work to eliminate them from our environments. Below is a list of helpful resources around microaggressions that we have in our library. 

• Podcast: NPR Life Kit: Microaggressions Are A Big Deal: How To Talk Them Out And When To Walk Away
• Forbes article: 7 Common Examples of Microaggressions - Dana Brownlee
• Book: “So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo
• TEDXTalk: Eliminating Microaggressions: The Next Level of Inclusion - Tiffany Alvoid
• Project Implicit: Implicit Association Test

If you have read, watched, or listened to any of these resources, we'd love to hear your thoughts, and if you have any recommendations for other resources we should add to our library to learn more about microaggressions, let us know!

Nearly a decade ago, as an intern at a now-defunct startup in Austin, Texas, I got a question from a developer that haunted me for years after because I didn’t have a clue how to answer it:

“Michael, why is it that only the developers have to jump through the hoops of estimating our work, spending hours in sprint planning and retrospective meetings and making sure every hour of our day is accounted for and attached to a work item?”

After incredulously wondering how anyone could possibly question the divine and holy agile methodology that I had been zealously learning and implementing that summer, I realized that the developer had posed a wonderful question. Why was it that we only had these requirements for developers? Why didn’t we impose this same process on sales or HR or accountants or any other part of the business? Why wasn’t anyone asking upper management for a timesheet that said exactly what they had worked on every hour that day? I’ve thought about this question for a long time and have built up an answer, or rather a few answers and some capitulations, over the past several years of agile work.

First, development work is hard to understand. Even for developers it’s hard to understand, but for those without computer engineering degrees or years of experience, it’s nearly impossible. How do you explain to someone that developing a section of code that does something seemingly trivial is actually exceedingly difficult and can take several hours?

Second, the work is invisible. You can see code, sure (even if you can’t understand it), but you can’t really see data fetching, processing, rendering, or anything else going on behind the scenes. Coupled with the difficulty of understanding development work in the first place, this poses a serious issue for people trying to understand what’s going on in that bullpen. In contrast, people can see a sales call, an HR training meeting, or an accountant’s spreadsheet and understand quickly and intuitively the value that it brings to the business.

Which brings us to our third and perhaps most important point: it’s important for the business to know what development projects cost. Part of what product managers should be doing is understanding the economics of a given feature, bug fix, or other development effort: how many hours did the team spend writing, testing, rewriting, and deploying this code, and how does that translate to cost?

In my mind, these three reasons sufficiently answered why the business typically loves these processes and imposes them on development teams. But, they didn’t do a good job answering why other teams didn’t tend to have the same processes, often seen as restrictions, imposed on them. After all, isn’t some sales and accounting work invisible and hard to understand? Isn’t it important for the business to understand the cost of HR work? 

Because of this, I’ve come to firmly believe that there are several processes, standards, actions, and overall contributions, usually all attributed to the amorphous “agile”, that every team and business could benefit from. Stand-up meetings, among teams of 15 or less, can be a great way for the team to understand what everyone is working on, reduce duplicate work, and quickly squash problems. Kanban boards (or any similar variants) are wonderful for seeing all of the work in progress, matching different team members to their respective strengths, and prioritizing and organizing ongoing projects. Sprints, or at the very least increments of time which demand continuous planning and feedback, will certainly expose problems and bring about process improvements for a given team. 

It turns out the developer who asked me that question years ago was on to something. The business tends to pick on development teams because their work, in most offices, is the hardest to understand, the least visible, costly, and they’d like to get a better understanding of what’s going on. However, many agile practices would clearly benefit teams across the firm, including and especially those outside of development. Here’s to hoping we see businesses move in that direction in the coming years.

When using Jira Service Management to manage your team's service desk, it's extremely important to ensure that your end-users have a good experience. Otherwise, they may become frustrated with the tool and stop using it to submit requests. With the broad range of clients we serve at Praecipio Consulting, we've found one of the biggest keys to a successful service desk is clearly setting customer expectations and meeting those expectations consistently. Jira Service Management comes with Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) that teams can use to set those expectations and give customers transparency around them. It's important to set reasonable goals for your SLAs, and with automation you can make it easier for your agents to stay on top of those goals so your customers are satisfied.

Here's how:

Automate alerts to agents when SLAs are about to be breached

For your SLAs, it's important to be consistent with meeting the expected goals assigned to them. This allows your agents to build trust with customers and encourages customers to continuously use the service desk for their requests. With automation, agents can be alerted when time is running out on an SLA. For the automation rule, there's a trigger titled "SLA Threshold Breached" that works perfectly in this scenario. This trigger allows you to set when an alert should send to the assignee of the request based on how much time is left on the particular SLA. The assignee is then made aware that they need to make progress on the issue and can stay on top of the SLA goal. This, in turn, leads to a happier customer and an increased sense of trust in your agents. 

Automate alerts to customers if a ticket is pending their response 

It's good practice in a service desk to configure so that if a ticket is pending a response from the customer, a "Waiting for Customer SLA" is set to give them time to respond. If the time passes on that SLA (we don't receive a response from the customer after a certain amount of days), the ticket is automatically resolved. Before we automate this though, it can be helpful to send out an alert to the customer to remind them that the ticket is waiting on their response. I've seen customers become frustrated when a ticket is resolved without alerting them that it was waiting on their response, as they simply forgot about their pending request. Sending out reminders sets clear expectations with the customer that the ticket has not made further progress due to inaction on their end and gives them the chance to interact with the request before it's automatically resolved. Other times, you may not receive a response from the customer because they no longer need your assistance. In these situations, the automation to resolve tickets pending customer action after the "Waiting for Customer SLA" is breached can save your agents time and effort, as they don't have to keep track of the time pending a customer response and manually resolve the ticket themselves.

We've seen so many clients reap the benefits of using automation to help their teams stay on top of their SLAs. Not only does it build trust with customers and in your organization; it also fortifies your service desk and improves your the experiences of your end users and agents! If you need help with SLAs, or anything else Atlassian, reach out and one of our experts will contact you ASAP!

Atlassian's Jira Cloud is more popular than ever as companies continue to see the benefits in cloud-based technologies. For those of you already on server, the latest announcement from Atlassian might prompt you get to a head start on looking at migration options. I had the opportunity to work with Atlassian's Jira Cloud Migration Assistant (JMCA) earlier this year and now is a more pertinent time than ever to share those findings. 

What is the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant?

Jira Cloud Migration Assistant is an add-on introduced by Atlassian earlier in 2020 to help clients migrate their data from Server to Cloud. It is a migration assistant and should be viewed as such. There are many things that JCMA does well, but it does come with it's limitations and should not be viewed as a one-and-done solution for most organizations. With that being said, companies with small Jira Server footprint will get the most use out of the tool.

At a glance

What can it do?

• Jira Software and Jira Core Project data
  • Details
  • Roles
  • Screens and Schemes
  • Workflows
    • Most native workflow functions
• Issue data
  • Most custom fields
  • Issue history
  • Rank
  • Worklogs
  • Attachments
  • Comments
• Boards linked to projects being migrated
• Active users and groups from User Directories

What are the limitations?

• Jira Service Management- no Jira Service Management data can be brought over with JCMA at the time of publishing
• Third party app data
• User Avatars/Timezones/Passwords
  • Passwords will need to be reset after migrating unless the client is using SSO
• Global configuration items
  • Since JCMA operates at the project level no system settings will be brought over
• Certain custom fields
  • Single and Multi-version picker
  • URL
  • Select List (cascading)
  • Select List (multiple choice)
  • Project picker
• Certain workflow functions
  • Validator: required field, field changed
  • Condition: user in group, in project role, field value, subtask blocking
  • Post Function: clear field value, update custom field, copy value from other field, delegating
• Links to entities that are not migrated

I don't have Jira Service Management, but what's this you say about app data?

Unfortunately, Marketplace Apps will need to be handled on a case-by-case basis. The JCMA tool provides a mechanism for assessing which apps can be migrated from server to cloud, but does not migrate the data via the tool itself. Instead, the tool will scan your instance and provide links or paths (i.e. instructions) to external documentation if it exists.

These paths can be a bit confusing as you are taken to the individual app vendors' sites. These can be radically different from app to app. In our case, many apps did not have a path forward and, instead, we are prompted to contact the vendor.

What about users?

JCMA will bring over all active users and groups on each migration initiation (which may or may not be what you want). You have the option of giving the users product access before running the migration, but in my opinion, it is best to wait until after the migration in case things go awry. After running the migration, the users will need to be invited to the Cloud site.

Should I use JCMA? Or perhaps another method like site import?

When the instance to be migrated is small, well managed, and with little complexity, the JCMA tool will handle your data with finesse. The JCMA tool is also more useful in merges when you are trying to merge a small, relatively simple Jira Software Server instance with a larger cloud instance. This is due to the fact that the JCMA tool itself is very project-centric. However, an abundance of app data, complex workflows, and many external integrations can be some of the things that might stop an organization from using this tool. If you are in any way unsure, contact us -- we've got your back.

My Experience

Overall, I found the JCMA tool to be a simple and effective way to transfer small amounts of project data to a cloud instance. It does what it says it will do, with only minor hiccups along the way. My experience a few months back is likely going to be different with yours as Atlassian continues to invest heavily in Cloud offerings. As always, do your own reading and don't be afraid to ask for help.

Further Reading

If you've recently moved from a Confluence instance that was hosted by your organization to one on Atlassian's cloud, you may be noticing some differences in how the tools work! The experience is quite different, and we know that can be a bit overwhelming if you've spent a lot of time getting used to the server UI. The change will require some adjustments, so we've provided a quick overview of things to keep an eye out for so you can get back to expertly collaborating with your team.

Navigation

Let's start with getting to Confluence! You can of course access your instance via the new link provided by your IT team https://yourcompany.atlassian.net. But, if you're looking to get to Confluence from your linked Jira instance, the application switcher looks a little different. The application switcher now lives in the grid icon(). Select that and you can navigate to any linked applications, including Confluence. 

Creating pages

Page creation looks different in the new view - you'll notice that there is now only one option to create pages, the Create button. This functionality has made it a lot more intuitive to create pages from templates! In Server, users need to consciously make the decision to create from a template (selecting the '...') or a blank page. Now when creating pages available templates will appear on the right, allowing you to filter and search through templates. With this new navigation you can even see previews of the templates before you select them. 

Keyboard shortcuts

This is the change that threw me off the most when switching between the products, because I rely very heavily on shortcuts! Here are three that I use a lot that have changed:

To see a full list of shortcuts, you can select Cmd/Ctrl + Space while editing a page and a dialog will appear and display all of your options. 

Page layouts

The experience in Confluence Cloud is more mobile friendly, so pages are more narrow by default than previously. However, you can still expand your pages to span full screen if you've got a lot of content. Opening the page layout options hasn't changed - you select the icon in the editor. However, the page layout editing experience has changed so you can work on it within the body of the page, instead of at the top.

You'll notice the arrows pointing out - those allow you to span full screen for either the entire page (top) or the specific section (bottom). The same options to edit layouts are available but you can see them in-line instead, which makes for easier navigation while working them into your pages. 

Panels

The Panel macro is one of my favorites - I like the ability to break the page up visually, and they are a great way to do that. Atlassian has revamped how panels work in Cloud so that instead of having separate macros for different types of panels: Panel, Info, Warning, Note, Success, etc. they are all just one macro, and you can switch the coloring as needed by selecting different icons. 

Macros while viewing a page

The last change I want to highlight is perhaps my favorite. When editing Confluence previously, you might've noticed that when you insert macros, many of them appear different while editing vs. viewing the page. In cloud, we now see that macros like the Jira Issues macro pictured below actually shows the content while editing now. 

Switching between tools or views can be tough, but with Atlassian's cloud platform you'll see a lot of changes that make the user experience run more smoothly. Now you've seen some of the changes, you're ready to hit the ground running!

Thinking about switching to Cloud? Contact us to talk about how we can help!

In just a few weeks, the holidays will be here. Your partner may be already making needed plans to enjoy the much-needed downtime at home. But inside, you may have an uneasy feeling about work projects. Can you afford to take off and not fall woefully behind? Will important software-based projects stall? Or worse, crash and burn?

If the thought of taking PTO comes with mixed feelings, this article is for you. 

At Praecipio Consulting, we’re business process experts. Every day we work with executives from the world’s most respected companies. We surveyed our partners to learn their advice on how you can take time off to recharge your batteries and have your team keep projects moving at the same time. 

Christian Lane, our CEO, begins the conversation. “I love taking time off. It’s essential for my well being, and we require everyone in the company to do the same. It’s a non-negotiable. But when we do have key team members out, we have set expectations.”

Announce your plans and block off your schedule

Let your coworkers know not to schedule anything for you during this time, and be aware of these dates when you are discussing project deliverables. 

Bust your tail for 3 weeks prior

Put in extra hours if you have to, but I prefer to better use the time already allocated for work. Staying focused and being productive now will help you have peace of mind later. 

Empower your #2

For executives in senior management, there may be time-sensitive decisions that need to be made in your absence. It’s important to have a second-in-command that has full authority to make most decisions while you are gone. Have a meeting with this person about the parameters of this responsibility and make sure the other players on your team are aware of who you have delegated to. In addition to leaving decision authority in capable hands, you’ll likely see this person respond well and appreciate the trust. Understand that mistakes may happen, but it’s also a learning opportunity. 

Joseph Lane, Atlassian automation expert and one of our partners at Praecipio Consulting, takes a more tactile approach. He stresses that in the Agile mindset, effective managers must use the right tools that are purpose-built and customizable to keep critical business functions working effectively. If any project relies on any one person for completion, this potential single point of failure is problematic for the organization and stressful for the employee. When this key person needs rest and relaxation, business stops, and that’s expensive. 

More specifically, Lane is referring to the Atlassian suite of products: Jira, Confluence, Trello, and others. When used to their fullest potential, team members can work independently if needed and collaborate following a quality assurance process the company developed. Users and managers can almost instantly view the progress on a project and comment. Lane recommends having a clear system for accountability and escalation when challenges arise. If this is clearly defined before a manager goes on vacation, team members can bring in more people, access more resources, or find vendor partners to solve problems. Failure to have these processes in place means that projects could stall and teams lose momentum. Lane summarizes, “Be more process-oriented than person dependent.” 

Christian Lane encourages everyone on software teams to develop a mindset for responsibility. That means if you find a problem, you own it. See it through to a solution. He loves the idea of stress-testing your systems by creating fires. “It keeps people on their toes,” he says. An example might be inserting a snippet of code that wreaks havoc. Engineers must backtrack and see where it was introduced. Also known as chaos engineering, it’s the practice of experimenting on a software system in production to build confidence in the system's capability to withstand turbulent and unexpected conditions.

Still, totally unplugging, although the healthiest option, isn’t always possible. Lane tells a story of when he was conflicted about taking his laptop on an overseas vacation. “On one hand, if I took it, I knew I couldn’t help myself and work. On the other hand, if there was a legitimate emergency and I needed to log in, I wouldn’t be able to.” 

In the end, he decided to travel with his computer and stay disciplined to only look at his Atlassian enabled dashboard when he logs in. If he saw all green lights, he would close the laptop after just 5 minutes or so per day. 

In the end, great leaders are measured by how well the business continues without you. As leaders, our job is about driving continuous improvement. When you take off time, operations may not be improving and optimizing, but they should still continue. 

A recap for a stress-free holiday:

• Announce your plans, block off your schedule
• Bust your tail for 3 weeks prior
• Empower your #2
• Use the right Atlassian tools 
• Have process and systems for escalation in place
• Develop a mindset of responsibility
• Stress-test your systems

Now that we're rapidly coming up on the end of 2020, I'm taking time to pause my life and find things to be thankful for. Under normal circumstances, this exercise can be a great way to wrap up the year; after this year, though, let's just say that I had a harder time than normal pulling together a list. The truth is that despite it being a tough year, I do have a lot to be thankful for – I've made it through this year with a job and a home, something that many people are not experiencing this year.

As we enter the holiday season, the messaging that we see is increasingly commercial: Black Friday edges earlier into Thanksgiving, Small Business Saturday tries to pull focus locally, and Cyber Monday pretends like we're not online shopping for the first two, making it a trifecta of commercialism.

Giving Tuesday is an annual celebration on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving that encourages individuals and organizations across the country to do good. What better way to wrap up three of the highest spending days of the year by looking at how we can support others?

What we're doing

Here at Praecipio Consulting, we've stepped back and taken stock as well. Supporting our communities has always been a core value here, and we've been a member of Pledge 1% for years. We are proud to spend our time and money with organizations like the Flatwater Foundation, TreeFolks, and Bamberger Ranch. This year, we felt like we had to do more. At the beginning of June, the company began matching employee donations and doubling VTO toward relevant organizations.

This #GivingTuesday, we'll be taking it a step further and doubling employee donation matching for donations made on Tuesday, December 1st, as part of our continued dedication to supporting our communities. 

How you can get involved

That's what we're doing, but what about you?

There are a lot of ways to get involved, even in the middle of a pandemic. Check out local resources to find organizations that are accepting donations or for volunteer opportunities (if you're comfortable!). Events like gift drives and meal delivery are also great ways to contribute while still staying safe. Don't forget to look at local mutual aid funds for opportunities for even bigger impacts in your communities. 

Atlassian Certification Program (ACP) tests are a great way to enhance your Atlassian skillset and better leverage the tools at your organization. Atlassian offers a few different exams, depending on what aspects of the tools you're focused on and your current skill level. If you pass, you get a nifty badge you can place on your LinkedIn profile or email signature!

Here at Praecipio Consulting, all of our consultants have taken at least one of the available ACP tests, and we have some great tips and tidbits to share that will help you prep for the exams and understand what they entail.

A little bit about the exams

• Atlassian offers 6 different ACP exams
• Exams are typically between 70-80 questions
• Exams can be taken remotely due to COVID-19, but are proctored
• Depending on the exam, the passing score is between 60-70%
• You have 180 minutes (3 hours) to complete your exam

1. Take it back to your college days with study guides and flashcards

When studying for any exam, it's important to figure out how you best learn the material. Is it taking notes by hand so you don't have the distractions of a laptop? Or do you tend to lose loose leaf paper so you prefer to type out what you've learned? Either way, my best tip to prepare for your exams is to organize your notes into a comprehensive study guide. 

Atlassian requires the completion of specific courseware before you can take the ACP exams, and they provide downloadable PDFs for each exam topic. All of this information is great for your study guide. You can use a good ol' fashioned notebook for this, or, if you have access to Confluence, create your study guide there and then use macros and tasks to organize your notes with reminders of trouble areas to focus on 

Because the exams cover a lot of material, flashcards are another great way to memorize information. There are several online services that allow you to create flashcards for free, such as Quizlet. Repetition works wonders when studying for any exam, so be sure to review your study materials several times.

2. Practice in a test environment

If your way of learning is by doing, a great way to prep is by reviewing admin functionality in your Jira or Confluence instance, especially if you have a test or demo environment. Project schemes, permissions (project and global), and workflow functionality can provide helpful knowledge around exam items. Chances are, if you're taking an ACP test, you already have access to a Jira and/or Confluence environment, but if not, Atlassian offers a free Cloud instance if you're maintaining 10 users or less. Keep in mind that some exams only focus on Server functionality, but it's still great to get a visual for the items you'll be tested on.

3. Collaborate with others prepping for the exam

At Praecipio Consulting, we are all about teamwork. When other co-workers were also prepping for the test, we collaborated on our notes, shared our study guides, and had study groups. Sharing our thoughts and notes allowed us to each figure out our strengths and weaknesses around the exam material so we could help each other be successful. 

If you're the only one at your organization taking the exam, or are just deciding to do it individually, no worries - there are folks all around the world looking to get certified! If you venture over to the Atlassian Community, there are often discussions that folks have started to create study groups with members of the community (check out this post around the ACP-100). 

4. Stay in tune with your physical and mental state 

Prepping for and taking any exam is physically and mentally exhausting. It's important when studying to allow yourself breaks to better absorb the material. While you study, it’s a good idea to create incentives and goals around the study material. For example, once you are through half of your flashcards, you can reward yourself with wat