What an amazing time we had down in Portsmouth for our Christmas party. ACE Solent was looking to send 2023 out with a bang as we celebrated the brilliance that was the server products. They gave so many companies a great platform to work with as well as many of us, including myself, a career. ACE Solent were joined by Andy Fernandez from Hycu. They gave us a great presentation around the importance of data retention and securing your data, regardless of whether it is a SaaS product.

Only in the last year did I start to truly understand the scale of the Atlassian community. I always knew the community website existed and have loved the openness and help received from it. But this last year I felt like I wanted to do more to give back. I felt like coming a community leader was the right step. Bring small intimate events to Atlassian enthusiasts like myself to the south outside of London.

Last week we managed to see this all the way through. We finally managed to launch the ACE Solent chapter last week. This week I just wanted to discuss a little on the community, why it is vital to product success and a little on this specific event.

Atlassian has been developing software for over twenty years, with Jira first coming out in 2002. Since then they have seen huge amount of ups with a few downs here and there. The trouble with all of this is that the software & therefore the business itself has a lifespan. An expiry date in which the product now is obsolete. So how does any company continue to not only make their existing products relevant, but continue to invest and create new products, keeping the company at the cutting edge?

Teams often struggle to roll up and estimate above epics. Why? mainly because it is a finger in the wind estimation because they are not able to look back over previous work for similar sized items to understand timings etc. We have all seen this issue before, so here is how I solved it in my day job.

Automation is currently the rage, but that’s for good reasons. It is making our lives as humans simpler and has for thousands of years. When someone mentions automation, a first (and semi natural) response is “that sounds like too much work to set up”. We as humans are inherently lazy. We see the mountain ahead rather then what’s beyond. While no automation is perfect and yes can take time to fine tune, they are there to make simpler in areas, so we can focus on areas that need that attention.

Check out the latest episode of Appfire’s best of show. Sergejs and I talk through the importance of tech debt and what to do for your Atlassian environment.

TEAM ‘23, THE FLAGSHIP EVENT FOR ATLASSIAN IS SET TO BE A BANGER!

I mean, come on. We all know what is happening next week. But just in case you didn’t, Team ‘23, the flagship Atlassian event is in Vegas where we will get a chance to hear all the biggest announcements with all of our fellow Atlassian enthusiasts. There are four tracks you can choose from, depending on your needs to help fit the agenda and event around you.

Since it’s inception, Atlassian has always surrounded itself with agile ways of thinking. But like all, times have moved on, but the mindset of challenge the way we do hasn’t. DevOps pushes this mindset. It brings forward two major areas that have often struggled to see eye to eye in a way that is only beneficial for all members of staff and the business. In this article we learn what Atlassian did in 2022 and are doing in 2023 to improve their tools to facilitate DevOps.

Automation has changed so many aspects of our working lives. Right back from the earliest signs of automation with the automatic water collection in Egypt or the printing press in the 1700’s Exelate shows us how automation is constantly there to make our lives easier and more effective. So with automation making our lives easier, is there ever a point where it can become too much? Is there ever a time where we need to genuinely think to ourselves it is time to stop? Well lets take a look.

Tech debt is all something I think we have experienced. While we all aim to not add technical debt to what we maintain, sometimes it is inevitable. While it may be inevitable, there are things we can actively do to better reduce and mitigate it. Last month Appfire and I had the privilege of holding a breakout session at the Atlassian Unleash event on this very topic, so let’s get going!

TEAM ‘23, THE FLAGSHIP EVENT FOR ATLASSIAN IS SET TO BE A BANGER!

This year, we return to Vegas, for what is predicted, to be with 4000 of our fellow Atlassian users. There are four tracks you can choose from, depending on your needs to help fit the agenda and event around you.

So that’s a wrap for here in Berlin. Atlassian Unleash was a blast for so many reasons, including having a chance to present with Appfire on reducing tech debt, so lets break it down and see what we learnt. Atlassian wanted the Unleash event to deep dive into the agile & DevOps experiences within the ecosystem. We saw the keynote focus on some of Atlassian’s newest adventures in the form of Jira Product Discovery & Compass.

Talented teams can create amazing software with great organisation of the product strategy and end user experiences. Jira Software has helped these teams by bringing them further structure to their work. However, developers spend their lives coding, and are often in Jira the least, which can create disconnect between the tickets and their code. This can cause headaches for product owners (POs) or project managers (PMs) overseeing the vision and releases. So how do we keep developers coding, but keep transparency for the PMs and POs to build strategy and understand current standings?

Jira has always been a widely customisable and comprehensive application. It’s highly useful in many companies because it allows teams to work in their own individual ways, without affecting other teams. However, if not properly managed, Jira can end up with huge maintenance time for administrators. This blog contains some quick easy steps on hot topics for how to get and keep your Jira under control.