team culture
UConn finally lost, but here’s why they’re still winners
Just after my first season coaching my seven-year-old son’s YMCA basketball team, a friend posted this video on Facebook: Geno Auriemma, the head coach of the women’s basketball team at the University of Connecticut. His team’s 111-game winning streak, the longest in history, was recently snapped. My heart just soared watching this. First off, everything […]
Want better meetings? Meet Helmut, the rubber chicken
Don’t we all love meetings that go on forever? And people who love listening to the sound of their own voice? Obviously, the answer is “no”. Do we all want better meetings? Yes! I’ve sat in I-don’t-know-how-many business meetings over the course of my career where the discussion went forever, but was going nowhere. The […]
Kitesurfing with ex-presidents: what Richard Branson taught me about leadership
If I told you that you were going to meet a 66 year-old business man worth 7 billion dollars who owns his own island, you’d greet that person with certain assumptions and expectations. Right? Well, when I met Sir Richard Branson for the first time, I brought in my own assumptions of what he’d be […]
Inside Atlassian: how to make team decisions without killing your momentum
It’s hard enough making decisions by ourselves. Sandwich or salad? Coffee or tea? T-shirt or button-down? Now imagine if your whole team was in your closet, helping to choose your outfit. The teams we work with represent a wide variety of expertise and experience, and that can cause conflict when a decision needs to be […]
Moving down the corporate ladder
On the go? You can listen to this blog using the player below. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/311607484″ params=”color=0066cc&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] “I don’t think I’ve been doing a very good job lately.” Not the way I usually kick off 1-on-1 meetings with my boss. But that day, it’s what needed to be said. I’d been managing […]
Inside Atlassian: stopping team dysfunction before it starts
This is not the story of a team that was obviously broken. On the surface, we looked like your typical, high-powered marketing team. Busy, ambitious, and fueled by constant pressure from crazy deadlines. We played nicely together, collaborating early and often. We respected each other. We liked each other. Collaboration, respect, a bit of office-appropriate […]
Establishing a single source of truth across the product organization
Josh Elman, Partner at Greylock Ventures, once said that the most important thing a product manager does is document decisions. Document decisions – really? With all the things a PM has to do, from setting the product roadmap, to aligning with the strategy of the business and the needs of the customers, it can be […]
The surprising benefits of using emoticons in the workplace
At Atlassian we kind of emoticons. We use them constantly in our team chats and conversations, and they’re a big part of our company culture. We love them so much, we thought we’d conduct a study of how they are used in the workplace to see if anyone else feels the way we do. Our […]
Teamwork is really f*cking hard – here’s how to make it better
Society loves to celebrate and glorify the individual – Jobs, Musk, Lebron James. We all do it. But individuals don’t accomplish monumental achievements on their own. Success is driven by teams. From sending a rover to Mars to decoding the human genome or building driverless cars, teams accomplish far more than any single person ever could. Take […]
How I escaped work silos with Confluence
Before I joined Atlassian, much of my professional life had taken place in corporate environments where work and communications were compartmentalized into neat, but stifling silos. It was rare to experience spontaneous, cross-functional creativity or be privy to a range of ideas in development. Exposure to the inner workings of other teams was limited to […]
The me in team: personal productivity tips to boost your team game
You’ve heard a coach say: There ain’t no “I” in team! And that’s true enough. But, there is a “me.” (You take the m from the end and the e from the second position… oh, never mind.) At Atlassian, we believe good teams are made up of individuals with distinct strengths that collectively drive teamwork […]
How to build a kick-ass agile team
Despite sharing common values, there is no formula for the perfect agile team. Some implement scrum while others use kanban. Agile purists prefer co-located teams, but business realities sometimes necessitate distributing an agile team across geographies. Most agile teams possess all the required skills, but sometimes it’s necessary to call on specialists for specific work. So how do you know whether your team is on the path to greatness? Read on.
The importance of empathy in coding interviews
A loss of color to the face. Sweaty palms and clammy handshakes. Cracking voices and fumbled words. Yes, I am describing one of the most-feared elements of any job search: the interview. At Atlassian, we’re all about teams and how they work together to create great things. And in this pursuit, it’s essential that we […]
When I grow up, I want to be… a development lead?
It’s not quite what I had in mind when growing up, but right now my role title tells me I am a team lead. In the course of my time in this role, I’ve learned that being a team lead is something my fellow developers are interested in doing someday, so I want to share about my experience. This is what I’ve learned in discovering what it means to be a team lead.
Inside Atlassian: building products, DevOps style
Let’s say your engineering team has gone agile. They work in sprints, collaborate, and are building a lot of great features. But there’s just one catch: you still have to wait for the release train to leave the station, and customers aren’t getting value fast enough. At Atlassian, we’ve discovered some best practices for building products, DevOps style. Let’s start with feedback; because no matter the product, your success is solely based on your users.