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JIRA CASE STUDY – Macadamian Technologies

Macadamian Technologies is a software engineering services firm based in Ottawa, Canada. Specialising in helping software and hardware companies develop new products, Macadamian helps many successful technology firms meet tight deadlines and release products to market faster. Its labs have developed products for some of the world's most successful independent software vendors.

Macadamian needed an issue tracking and project management solution to better control issues across multiple projects. Not only did this critical process have to be more effective within the organisation, it also had to be made available to customers to improve efficiency and visibility.

Francis Beaudet, Chief Architect with Macadamian Technologies explains, "Our customers increasingly rely on us to provide access to our source tracking, bug tracking and document tracking process. We wanted a product we could open up to customers — flexible, professional, simple to use and most importantly secure."

Macadamian had been using DevTrack, which lacked the depth of features they needed. They were considering the open-source Bugzilla when they discovered Atlassian's professional issue tracker, JIRA.

Why JIRA?

Installation was extremely straightforward. Beaudet explains, "This is one of the easiest pieces of software I have ever installed and implemented. The trial version took only 12 minutes before I was up and running. It would have been more cost prohibitive for me to spend two days installing Bugzilla, which made the decision to adopt JIRA an even easier one. And of course it's got a great looking interface."

Beaudet and Sylvain St-Germain, Development Manager with Macadamian, were immediately impressed by JIRA's appealing, simple and professional interface. Critical to their decision they felt confident this application could be shared with customers and enhance their value proposition in the marketplace.

"We've looked at all the issue tracking tools out there, and it is not worth considering anything besides JIRA. It's so completely seamless, we forget JIRA's even there — it's like the telephone."

Francis Beaudet, Chief Architect

The Solution

Macadamian rolled out JIRA on a per project basis, to groups of 2-10 people. From the outset, JIRA was opened up to customers, and adoption of the product was rapid, with universally positive feedback.

Sylvain St-Germain said, "Our staff immediately took to JIRA because it immediately made their lives that much easier. Our customers say it's fantastic, and that has really helped drive our ongoing success as an organisation. Email notification of live issues was definitely a key driver here. A familiar environment, email makes it easy to work with JIRA and really helps new users migrate painlessly to the platform."

The Results

The major benefits to Macadamian include improved internal and external interaction, and more effective project management. The ability to share more information with customers in real-time, drawing them into the development process, has been an important strategic advantage for Macadamian. Stronger communication and a direct feedback loop resulted in not only deeper customer relationships and more valueable project outcomes, but ultimately greater customer satisfaction and trust.

Beaudet continues, "Before JIRA, the process was more complex and took far longer. Our customers now feel that they are an integral part of their projects, especially when the customer is in the United Kingdom for example. JIRA bridges the distance so that it feels like they are in the next room. And because the interface is so professional, our customers want to use it."

The reporting tools and filtering capabilities alone have allowed the team to know more about a project. And it's not just software development projects getting all the attention — JIRA has become the tool of choice for managing business projects, and lately even for procuring office stationary! Beaudet adds that although they've rarely had to use Atlassian's legendary support, "the response time has been astoundingly quick". From Macadamian's perspective, JIRA has easily paid for itself several times over.