POM for IT – FAQs

Owned by Atlassian
Last updated: Aug 31, 2022
3 min read

 

We don’t have all answers at this point. We want to be transparent about what we do know and what we don’t yet know. There will be opportunities to ask additional questions as we progress on this journey.

 

Why is Atlassian IT evolving its operating model?

The main reason for making change is to ensure best-in-class delivery for our customers and become a strategic partner for our stakeholders.

Other benefits include:

  1. Improve our agility and speed of delivery

  2. Create stronger alignment with our business partners

  3. Enable a “test and learn” mentality and our ability to course correct

  4. Empower our teams to take full ownership for product success

  5. Stay relevant with delivery trends in the IT industry

What is the responsibility of a product team?

A Product team will be continuously responsible for the end-to-end lifecycle of a product including:

  • Developing the Product strategy/ vision

  • Delivering against the product including development/ configuration

  • Operating & enhancing the product

  • Maintaining the product life cycle

What does this mean for Atlassian IT teams?

This journey is truly about how we shift the way we do our work on a day-to-day basis. The product teams will have a clear business outcome and metric they want to improve. The people on the teams may change here and there based on individual career paths, but the momentum we create with these high performing teams will unleash innovation across the company.

As we roll out product teams and communicate team roles, managers and team members will have opportunities to dig into the details about roles and responsibilities to ensure what they’re are doing is of the most value.

How does this change how IT engages with business partners?

Having business-facing product management reside within IT is crucial to the success of this new program. The Product Managers (PMs) and Group Product Managers (GPMs) will be the main points of contact with our stakeholders. The PM will act as the voice of the customer, ensuring that we have accurately defined business user stories/requirements, acceptance criteria, and success metrics to operate smoothly and deliver quality customer experience.

In practice, we will optimize our cadences with our business partners, and will adopt agile delivery methodologies more holistically across the organization.

How does this change the way we deliver work within IT?

This new model will not drastically change the way we collaborate within IT, other than we will have more consistency in the teams you collaborate with and clarity in roles and responsibilities. One of the benefits of a product-centric operating model is it the team will be continuously aligned with a single vision and product with a define scope, rather than assembling and disassembling for given projects. This will help drive speed and agility.

Over time, we will also put in place processes to enable cross-functional collaboration between the teams that share common stakeholder groups and processes such as through PI planning. 

What kind of support is the IT organization providing?

As part of this transformation, we are hosting several types of training:

  • Product-centric operating model training to provide an overview of the model, discuss product team roles and responsibilities, and address any questions team members have about the new model.

  • Product team training around inter-team operations, delivery model, agile methodology, tools and templates, and cross-functional collaboration.

  • Ongoing high- and low-touch support offerings to guide individuals and teams.

What are the phases of Atlassian’s POM transition?

We see our operating model shift as an evolutionary journey. It is not a one-size-fits-all, we will be taking much more of a hybrid approach. Therefore, there are a few transition periods:

  • Many of our teams are closely functioning in the model and will not see many changes

  • The teams that need to transition will begin to shift over the next quarter, once training has initiated

  • Some teams with business partners who are not yet ready to shift to agile delivery methodologies will take extra time to transition and become accustomed to this model

How will you know if this change is successful?

We will measure success against a series of metrics such as:

  • Business satisfaction

  • Product quality

  • Adoption of agile and product-based practices

  • Team velocity

  • Estimation accuracy