The Teamwork Lab
Exploring the future of work through research and experimentation
Our mission is to help every team thrive by making human and AI-powered teamwork feel easy: clear, connected, and focused on what matters most.
The Teamwork Lab is Atlassian’s incubator for teamwork innovation. We apply organizational research and hands-on experimentation to create evidence-based practices that make teams stronger.
Our approach
Study how teams work and what blocks them
Research spans thousands of knowledge workers and
Fortune 500 leaders
Test and refine new ways
of working
Experiments inform products
and practices
Translate insights into clear practices for modern rhythms, rituals, and habits
Teams work better together and get the most out of the tools they use
From research to reality
Our research informs:
How Atlassian teams work
Shaping practices and ways of working internally
How we build our apps
Guiding product design with real team insights
How we support customers
Turning lessons from research into tools and guidance that help teams collaborate better
Meet the research team
Molly Sands
Head of the Teamwork Lab
Alisa Yu
Senior Research Manager
Benjamin Ostrowski
Lead Behavioral Scientist
Conor Donegan
Lead Principal Researcher
Sara Gottlieb-Cohen
Senior Behavioral Scientist
Allison White
Lead Behavioral Scientist
Sami Nesnidol
Lead Behavioral Scientist
Robert Garza
Senior Learning Experience Designer
Maddie Dietz
Research Operations and Community Manager
Katrina Jackson
Community and Change Lead
Halina Mader
Senior Creative Designer
Anna Brown
Senior Content Manager
Morgan Weaving
Senior Workplace Researcher
Eliza Sarasohn
Narrative Strategist
Our Featured Research
The State of Teams 2026
Uncoordinated AI transformation costs the Fortune 500 $161B each year. See how the top 14% of teams use AI differently to deliver results faster, together.
AI workslop is a standards problem
It’s easy to blame AI for workslop proliferation. But a quick conversation about standards can easily and systemically fix the problem.
How to use AI to plan a team offsite that works
In-person gatherings are high-effort and high-stakes. Planning one is an ideal use case for an AI agent.
The smartest way to cut AI costs isn’t to use less AI
A survey of 1,000+ knowledge workers shows AI’s true costs are coming into focus. The takeaway for leaders: the path to lower spend runs through better context, visibility, and tool choice, not tighter limits.
How The Browser Company moves so fast: 3 habits you can borrow
Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab went inside the startup behind Dia and Arc to learn how it keeps AI speed from getting trapped in slow systems.
Don’t outsource the spark: how to balance human thinking and AI
AI jump-starts speed, but human friction sparks the ownership, peer collaboration, and genuine originality teams need to thrive.
Want more confidence in AI? Give it more context.
New Atlassian research finds the bigger predictor of whether AI helps at work isn’t how much people use it — it’s how much of their work it understands.
How one leader rebuilt his feedback loop with an AI agent
Most leaders think they’re good communicators. Fernando Garcia Valenzuela decided to find out.
AI polish makes it harder to spot problems. But there’s a quick fix.
Reviewers were 22% less likely to catch flaws in AI-polished drafts. Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab found a fix that takes five seconds.
When is AI useful, or just a habit? A Play/Pause break helps teams decide.
Knowing when to reach for AI tools at work – and when not to – is an important skill. Teamwork Lab shows you how to refine it.
You don’t need a team of AI experts. You just need one.
New research from Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab found that adding a single AI superuser made teams more likely to achieve a top score during ShipIt.
The tech we love to hate is the tech we’d hate to lose
New research from Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab finds that even as knowledge workers are uneasy about AI’s broader impact, they increasingly embrace it at work.
New research reveals how AI is making jobs bigger
New research from Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab finds that the more people use AI, the more their capabilities expand—suggesting AI is broadening what workers can do, not simply replacing them.
AI made your people faster. But it’s your office that’s slowing them down.
AI made individuals faster, but your office is still designed for the old bottleneck. Atlassian research reveals a new framework for the AI-enabled office.
New research shows honesty about AI use at work is backfiring
New research from Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab finds that workers who disclose using AI are judged as 10x lazier than peers doing identical work, unless their company has built a culture that celebrates it.
Stop counting who uses AI. Start finding who’s transforming with it.
At Atlassian, we’ve gone through three evolutions of how we measure employee AI adoption. Each time we changed the metrics, we learned something telling about what the old numbers were hiding.
Is AI flattening your team’s creativity? Here’s how to tell.
AI can make “good enough” thinking the default. Use this framework to spot the risks of AI over-reliance and decide when humans — not models — should lead.
The AI efficiency paradox: What to do when AI boosts productivity but not results
Atlassian’s new State of Teams survey of 12,000+ knowledge workers shows AI is helping individuals work faster, but business results aren’t catching up. Here’s why that gap exists and what leaders can do about it.