AustralianSuper’s shift to agile ways of working with Atlassian cloud automates 100,000 tasks a year

Challenge: AustralianSuper wanted to shift to a cloud platform that would help teams adopt modern ways of working and reduce risk to improve retirement outcomes for members.

Solution: The company migrated from Jira and Confluence Server to Atlassian Cloud to lay a platform for agile work and a DevSecOps delivery approach.

Impact: AustralianSuper has drastically improved project delivery speed, collaboration, and risk management through a mature DevSecOps framework supported by Atlassian cloud tools.

Caretakers of members’ retirement

AustralianSuper, the country's largest superannuation fund, is entrusted with the retirement funds of 3.4 million Australians. Representing approximately one in ten Australian workers, the company is committed to helping members achieve their best financial position in retirement.

AustralianSuper acknowledges that technology investment is critical for improving products, services, and member outcomes. They’re embracing a cloud-native strategy to make software development and collaboration easier for their incredible team, allowing them to improve release times and remain focused on innovation.

Empowering teams to become more agile, collaborative, and focused on meaningful work

AustralianSuper relied on legacy versions of Jira and Confluence Data Center for many years to support software development functions. While this approach worked well initially, the use of Jira and Confluence was limited by a traditional waterfall style of delivery in the design and configuration.

The opportunity to streamline processes and modernize ways of working was appealing, and informed AustralianSuper’s decision to migrate to cloud-hosted platforms. Atlassian cloud provided a robust and resilient way to scale a collaborative DevSecOps model focused on continuous delivery for project teams.

“As we embrace a DevSecOps model within Technology Services, it's important that our focus on sequencing and managing work across multiple teams is effective. The foundation of our approach is in continuous improvement, aligning with our strategic goals to ensure we remain responsive to the needs of members,” says Mike Backeberg, AustralianSuper Chief Technology Officer.

Exploring “the art of the possible” with a new model and new tools

Once they migrated to Atlassian cloud, AustralianSuper started transitioning to a continuous delivery model centered on providing incremental value. 

After evaluating their current state and key goals, they identified three focus areas:

• Enhancing demand management processes

• Developing a prioritization framework to support matrixed teams

• Increasing collaboration and accountability through Jira dashboards and Confluence pages

Throughout the process, the Technology Enablement team supported and assessed different technology teams using Atlassian cloud tools, with a focus on efficiency and risk management. Colleagues were also provided with training and coaching to help them develop a deep understanding of the new processes.

“I love using Atlassian tools because they’re so user friendly. Colleagues are really easily adapting to our new ways of working, so the change management piece has been easier than we expected,” says Jasmine Burgess, AustralianSuper Technology Enablement Lead.

A new service optimization framework empowers colleagues to make decisions and work more efficiently

Leveraging Atlassian cloud tools, AustralianSuper has empowered teams to collaborate more effectively, deliver faster, and embrace an agile DevSecOps framework. They have built out a new demand management framework in Jira that splits work by tiers.

“With Atlassian products, we've seen a marked acceleration in our maturity and delivery speed. Our prioritization processes have become more robust, contributing significantly to our enhanced delivery capabilities,” Jasmine says. 

AustralianSuper colleagues also enjoy using the Atlassian cloud platform to share knowledge, connect on projects, and access a community of global colleagues who all use the same processes, methods, and tools.

Migration to cloud unlocks insights and streamlines maintenance

Migrating to Atlassian cloud also unlocked access to Atlassian Analytics, which AustralianSuper’s teams rely on to gather insights used to better prioritize tasks, manage demand, speed up delivery, and reduce risk.

“Using Atlassian Analytics has simplified our toolset, enabling us to harness the full potential of the Atlassian suite,” Jasmine says. “This strategic move has embedded our Demand Management Process, accelerated our maturity growth, and enabled us to deliver with greater speed, manage risks effectively, and prioritize with precision.”

Connecting colleagues

Jira supports the connectivity between technical and business colleagues through collaboration on priorities and managing the workload across teams. 

Use cases now extend beyond technical staff, enabling other teams across the Fund to manage daily activities. For example, Jasmine is working with Member colleagues to support service delivery.

 The next two priorities are to standardize use of the Atlassian tools across global teams, and to develop a single analytics dashboard for management reporting and monitoring.

“We wouldn’t have been able to move to more agile ways of working without the right tools in place,” Jasmine says, “As we continue on this path of refinement and optimization, we remain dedicated to delivering exceptional value to our members, ensuring that Technology Services at AustralianSuper continues to be flexible in dealing with what comes next.”