Sessions by track

Distributed teams are on the rise, but running teams on opposite sides of the globe are tough. Time zone mismatch, cultural barriers between teammates and clients, and a lack of face-to-face interaction are just some of the challenges that have to continuously be solved for. Come learn how SkuVault adjusted their Jira workflows, team communication, and other processes while nurturing a culture that keeps teams in sync regardless of geo.

In agile, business people and developers work together in harmony on a daily basis. Right? In reality, this relationship is very tricky. As a response to this, Atlassian adopted the "Triad" model to try and connect business, design, and engineering. But last year, the Jira team found that our model wasn't functioning as designed, and it was impacting our customers. With the help of the Atlassian Team Playbook, the team was able to uncover the issues and host a healthy debate on how to fix it. The results taught us that maybe even models should be agile, too.

In this talk you'll learn:

• How to improve communication and collaboration without undergoing a major agile transformation
• Tips for breaking down barriers between your product team and marketing
• How you can measure team health and build an open and transparent culture from within

In the intensive care ward of the hospital, dedicated teams rotate across 12-hour shifts to provide critical care to patients. In this environment, effective teamwork is a matter of life and death. Steve King, Senior Product Manager at Atlassian, has become intimately familiar with the people and processes of Intensive Care Units over the past decade, where he's learned to appreciate the individual roles and team processes that help transition patients from crisis to controlled recovery.

So how do these teams operate so effectively? Are the skills and methods only applicable to short-term, critical situations? And how can we apply these practices to software, business, and other professional teams? Steve will cover all this and more as he provides tips and templates you can use to build trust, make critical decisions, and effectively share knowledge on your own team.

It's challenging to ensure your teams' work aligns with broader company-level vision and goals – and disconnects can be costly. Both customer value and progress towards the company's BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) can suffer.

World-class companies such as Google, Intel, and Amazon rely on OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to communicate strategy to and among teams. OKRs are opportunities to learn and act; teams that are able to fail, learn, and act faster will ultimately be more successful in an ever-changing environment.

But how do you actually implement OKRs? And what's the right approach to generate alignment? Join Otto Ruettinger, Head of Product Management at Atlassian, as he walks through Jira's journey of implementing OKRs. You'll gain practical OKR tips and insights from our failures and triumphs to accelerate your own teams.

On the surface, OpenX was nailing agile: 22 teams delivering software on a 2-week release train with some teams actually executing both Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) processes. But a major question still lingered: Were teams shipping features that delivered enough value to the business? Come learn how OpenX rebooted their Agile organization in just 100 days by tweaking agile and portfolio practices and the configuration and usage of their Atlassian tools. The 100-day ride isn’t for the faint of heart but proves it's possible to re-focus an agile organization to maximize ROI.

Atlassian's internal Confluence is its secret sauce: where teams and friendships are formed, debates rage, and roadmaps are course-corrected thanks to insights from ground-floor problem-solvers. But nobody uses Confluence quite like Atlassian does...

Join Caspar Krieger, a Senior Development Team Lead at Atlassian, prolific Confluence contributor, and self-appointed cultural steward, as he shares the techniques he's learned over the past 5 years to break down email culture and unleash collective intelligence. You’ll learn how to onboard new hires so they don’t drop off, find out how to cure the email disease and gain easily-teachable skills to break down organizational silos and build a cohesive culture.

Giving open, honest, and empathetic feedback is a difficult yet critical skill to have when collaborating with others. Join Dan North, a technology and organization change specialist of over 25 years, as he discusses a number of feedback models and techniques, and shows you how to apply them in your own organization.

He will explain the infamous and much-misunderstood “sandwich model” of feedback, how it works and why it usually doesn’t, and help you avoid feedback pitfalls. You'll leave the session feeling better equipped to offer feedback, more resilient when receiving feedback, and more aware of your own motivations for doing so.

I'm a product designer. I'm also a black woman. I care deeply about the intersection of those identities as they apply to myself and others. Design and diversity, at their core, are a practice in focused, actionable empathy. In this talk, I'll review how I learned to systemically generate this flavor empathy with a comprehensive product design process, all through the lens of tackling one of my biggest challenges in self-care: kinky-curly hair. Regardless of who you are, or what your background is, there's a little something for everyone to take away from this. You will leave with an understanding of the end-to-end design process, how to systemically identify, challenge, and mitigate bias, and even a thing or two about how to have great hair.

Bugs in production, failed deployments, system outages...they're all inevitable parts of building and shipping software. What matters most is how you respond when things go wrong and how you ensure the same issues don't happen again. Post-mortems are key for establishing root cause and preventing duplicate issues, but only when teams feel comfortable speaking candidly without guilt or worry that their job is on the line. In this session, you'll learn how to conduct blameless post-mortems that teams of all kinds can use to achieve more constructive outcomes and stronger camaraderie.

Wanting to get more out of your meetings? We get you! Meetings aren't always great for a number of reasons. For some groups of people (e.g. remote workers, women, and introverts), simply speaking up and being heard is a unique challenge.

Everyone has different experiences, perspectives, and thus approaches to problem-solving. Diversity of thought leads to more effective decision making and spurs creative thinking. When not all voices have an equal chance to be heard, we miss out on valuable insights and the next big idea.

This talk walks you through tactical strategies, like the Fist of Five, to overcome your biases and give all parties a chance to have a say. Learn how to invite more perspectives to unlock your team's potential and achieve better outcomes.

Every software team writes code, but some teams produce fewer bugs than others. Every software team creates new features, but some teams develop features users love and others don't. What do high-performance teams do differently, and why our team members more focused, satisfied and relaxed? They truly work together. No 10x rockstar programmer can achieve what a well rounded, enthusiastic team can.

Sven, former team evangelist at Atlassian now K15t, examines how the best software teams set and follow goals, integrate new members fast, monitor and continually improve team health, embrace transparency, use a playbook to guide them through every phase of development and much more. He shares techniques like bugfix rotations, OKRs, feature buddies, open demos, sanity checks, and more that help teams work more effectively to produce awesome results.

What do you do when you have a burning Atlassian question or hit a roadblock while trying something new with a product? Did you know there's a whole treasure trove of solutions to your problem (and thousands of others) just waiting to be discovered by admins and users like you? Come learn from an Atlassian community power-user, Fabian Lopez, on how to make the most out of the Atlassian online community, Atlassian User Groups (AUGs), Company User Groups (CUGs), the Champions program, Atlassian coaches, and more. These resources will become your best allies as you navigate through challenges and triumphs along your Atlassian journey.

How do you make a significant cultural shift in an industry known for being slow and resistant to change? How do you unite a global workforce, remove constraints to collaboration and creation and facilitate a common platform? Christiaan Veerman and Danny Zuccaro of TD Securities wondered the same and turned to Atlassian practices to help. By embracing the Atlassian Team Playbook and creating an internal user group they were able to drum up the credibility and enthusiasm needed to create widespread change. Learn what they learned, the benefits they've seen, and tips for doing the same in your organization.

It's common for technical and non-technical teams to remain siloed, even when they sit right next to each other. And while it's often easier to stay in separate lanes, a lack of communication and transparency is harmful to how teams get work done internally (distrust, duplicate work, etc.) and what customers experience externally (inconsistency, confusion, etc.).

Come learn how teams across Atlassian use the Team Playbook – by both creating and dogfooding plays – to open up dialogue, build trust, increase efficiency, and improve crucial practices like project management and incident response. You'll leave feeling empowered to select and facilitate plays that will create a more open and collaborative culture among teams at your own company.

Remote work is a hot topic and for good reason! It comes with great benefits such as access to diverse talent and geographical freedom. But it also brings up unique challenges and fears that can be hard to move past. Vincent Kok, Trello Engineering Manager, will discuss how the Trello team has successfully embraced remote, and how your organization can do the same without sacrificing relationships or productivity. You'll learn about the tools and practices Trello relies on, and leave feeling empowered to either strengthen your current remote culture or build one from scratch.