How Atlassian IT Strategy Eased Crisis Management

We’ve all heard and lived by way of the tales about how IT groups at a lot of an organization designed very considerably an right away pivot to equip and help workforce to operate from household as governments issued remain-at-household orders and shut down non-essential businesses to avert the unfold of COVID-19.

We are now all a couple of months past this second of crisis and residing in a new sort of typical.  While some businesses are shuttered, most likely without end, on the other side a lot of staff are humming absent productively from their household places of work. Zoom video clip meeting calls are typical. Some companies are making the most of technology investments they designed a year or additional ago. And IT leaders are rewriting their technology budgets for 2020 as they take into account the ideal way forward for 2021.

Jenna Cline

Jenna Cline is one of them. As the head of IT Method and Setting up at organization software program provider Atlassian, she was at the middle of the organization’s pivot to operate from household in early March 2020. Atlassian really experienced place with each other a undertaking power to keep an eye on the coronavirus a couple of months prior to the shut down in March, Cline claimed, so the company was prepared to make the choice.

“But from an IT place of look at, it was a very speedy transition,” she claimed. “We like to joke it was: Shock! You are supporting a one hundred{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} remote workforce!”

Atlassian was in a sturdy placement to do that, but continue to, it was a large change, according to Cline.

1 of the major problems and achievements was figuring out how to shut the books remotely for the initially time at any time for the finance tech groups. Another challenge was making sure that all new hires acquired laptops.

“If we have been performing this as a prepared event, I believe about what are all the things are we might have in location to make confident it went smoothly,” she claimed. “We almost certainly would have prepared a twelve- to eighteen-thirty day period highway map.”

Rather it occurred just about right away. Other things adjusted, far too. For instance, Atlassian experienced generally held a weekly inner city corridor assembly in excess of video clip. Nevertheless, inside a 7 days of the company going remote, the number of folks viewing the city corridor reside quadrupled.

The new typical

Atlassian’s 4,five hundred workforce all-around the world will be working from household at minimum until eventually the end of the year, Cline claimed.

The company is at present in the midst of its IT funds planning course of action, and so Cline could not remark about any shifts in IT spending still. Nevertheless, as an IT strategist, Cline did say that Atlassian strives for a well balanced IT financial investment portfolio. When it really is enterprise as standard, the company invests in a few types of jobs — scale jobs that aid the company develop, transformation jobs that aid the company alter, and incubation funding. As the company goes by way of its planning course of action, selections are designed on how to balance investments in these a few parts.

Image: Olivier Le Moal – inventory.adobe.com

In a time of crisis like this one, you could believe that it would be a very good notion to cut that incubation funding. Which is one thing for a time of abundance. Throughout the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, IT companies are wanting for sites to maintain funds. But Atlassian’s look at of incubation funding might go outside of just a awesome-to-have issue.

So significantly “there hasn’t been any job that we’ve necessary to prevent,” Cline claimed. In fact, some of what the company expended on incubation funding final year, specifically on RPA (robotic course of action automation) has paid out off in the existing crisis, according to Cline. The company released bots for finance processes.

“We are ready to get advantage of that this year,” Cline claimed. “That allows us maintain scale and growth.”

Read all our coverage of It’s reaction to COVID-19 right here

Jessica Davis has expended a job masking the intersection of enterprise and technology at titles which includes IDG’s Infoworld, Ziff Davis Enterprise’s eWeek and Channel Insider, and Penton Technology’s MSPmentor. She’s passionate about the sensible use of enterprise intelligence, … View Comprehensive Bio

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