Almost every organization today realizes the far-reaching benefits of adopting the Atlassian suite of products. Yet, when it comes to implementing them, not everyone achieves success. Read on to uncover the 5 things you are doing wrong with your Atlassian implementation.
Common Atlassian Implementation Mistakes
Business processes are growing more complex with each passing day. To manage them effectively, many organizations are looking to invest in Atlassian tools. But given how complex business requirements are and how intricate Atlassian features are, Atlassian implementations fail for several reasons.
Here are 5 common Atlassian implementation mistakes you should steer clear of:
1. Adopting a Big Bang Approach
Every Atlassian product offers an array of modern features and capabilities. But not every feature makes business sense for every organization. Implementing an Atlassian solution via a big bang approach is more likely to do harm than good.
2. Using Too Many Tools
Any Atlassian implementation requires the adoption of tools to streamline the process. But using too many tools can be devastating. Not only would it lead to higher costs, but it would also prolong the setup process. In addition, it would cause data to be scattered, impacting overall productivity and decision-making.
3. Underutilizing Tools
Using too many Atlassian tools is as damaging as underutilizing them. Many organizations fail to leverage tools because of a variety of reasons: lack of sufficient tool knowledge, absence of a skilled team, and competing priorities, among others.
4. Carrying Out the Wrong Integrations
Atlassian tools like Jira and Confluence offer an array of integration capabilities. To make the most of these capabilities, many organizations end up choosing the wrong tools (or the wrong techniques) to integrate with Atlassian.
5. Not Training Users Enough
Atlassian is known to deliver employee experience at scale via its easy-to-use and understand user interfaces. Yet, when it comes to driving adoption and maximizing ROI, user training is paramount. Organizations that do not train their users enough often experience user productivity and efficiency plummeting.
Top Tips
If you want to ensure a successful Atlassian implementation, you must embrace certain best practices. Here are some tips:
1. Take a Customized Approach – But with Caution
Every organization is different, which makes every Atlassian implementation unique. Therefore, instead of implementing any Atlassian product in one go, it makes sense to take a customized approach. But even this must be done with caution. To make the most of any Atlassian implementation, you must make time to conduct a detailed study of your business needs and challenges and deploy capabilities in a phased manner. To meet the unique needs of different teams, optimize the implementation at the team level, and enable insights needed for strategic decision-making.
2. Appoint an Implementation Champion
Successful Atlassian implementation requires skills and knowledge that, unfortunately, not many organizations possess. Appointing an implementation champion is a great way to streamline deployment. A champion can carry out a thorough evaluation of the existing IT environment. They can also bring in a good understanding of integration challenges and knowledge of integration tips and best practices, thus enabling a higher implementation success rate.
3. Standardize Workflows
Every organization manages projects with different attributes. With involvement from several business areas, workflows are bound to be complicated. If you want to improve Atlassian implementation success, you must look to standardize workflows. Adopting company-wide team-level standards can enable alignment from the organizational to the team level. Such standardization can minimize confusion while also enabling an employee experience that is seamless and straightforward.
4. Up Your Change Management Game
For mid to large-size organizations, Atlassian instance sizes are larger and more complex. Since the impact of system unavailability or turnaround of support requests is relatively high, it is important to improve your change management game. The right change management strategy can enable a standardized approach to change request handling. It can also improve team communication, minimize stress, and enhance decision-making.
5. Invest in Long-term Training and Coaching
Regardless of how easy-to-use the tools might seem, adequate Atlassian training is critical for various reasons, including improving workforce skills and increasing engagement, which eventually translates into the bottom line. Investing in long-term training and coaching can help bring everyone up to speed and ensure they are on the same page. To do this, make training a continuous process. Appoint skilled trainers, enable different types of training to boost knowledge retention, and act on employee feedback to improve long-term outcomes.
6. Engage with the Right Partner
Relying on already burdened in-house teams for Atlassian implementation often leads to unfavorable outcomes. If you want to drive long-term success, you must engage with a skilled and proficient Atlassian implementation partner. The right partner can ensure the accurate and timely implementation of different Atlassian components that align with your business needs and goals. With a comprehensive evaluation, robust roadmap, and skillful implementation, a partner can enable end-to-end visibility into your Atlassian instance, reduce downtime, and enhance your team’s productivity.
Every business model is unique and requires a tailored approach to Atlassian implementation. Identifying your requirements and choosing capabilities that align with the goals and objectives of your business can go a long way in improving the success rate of your Atlassian implementation.
Learn how enreap can help in the seamless onboarding, customization, and scalability of your Atlassian instance.
