Atlassian gathers its apps into collections to bolster productivity

Atlassian has decided that — like employees — apps work better together in teams than as standalone products. The company is creating “collections” of integrated apps designed to make business processes, collaboration, analysis and execution more efficient.

Specifically, it unveiled two collections at this week’s Team 25 show in Anaheim, CA — and more collections are coming, Atlassian executives said.

The first collection, called “Strategy,” allows leadership teams to get a bird’s-eye view of product portfolios, align strategy, track execution, and manage talent and assignments. The second — “Teamwork” — integrates a set of apps to improve employee productivity and communication. The company also plans to release a collection for software teams and a collection for services teams.

Atlassian’s generative AI-based search and discovery platform Rovo works across all the collections.

Tech-driven organizations are under pressure to deliver value even faster, Sanchan Saxena, head of product for work management at Atlassian, said in a video briefing. About the company’s plans, “Teams need to collaborate within a shared system of work to move quickly in the same direction,” he said.

That can be done by moving standalone products into a set of integrated apps, Saxena said.

The “Strategy” collection includes the Focus, Talent, and Jira Align apps; the company refers to this grouping as Align in the collection.

Generative AI (genAI) agents in the collection “help inform and assist knowledge workers and executives as they’re making decisions that impact their strategy and execution,” said Matt Schvimmer, head of product for agile and DevOps at Atlassian.

The Align grouping focuses on planning and execution, and the Focus collection defines that strategy, ties it to objectives and key results, and “understands how the work is being delivered over time and is it supporting those goals,” Schvimmer said.

The Talent app grouping assigns employees to the right work and makes sure they are performing as expected. Executives “make better, more informed strategic decisions that are based on real-time information as opposed to information that’s been aggregated and correlated across various systems,” Schvimmer said.

The Teamwork collection includes Jira, Confluence, Loom, plug-ins such as Slack and Rovo Teamwork Agents. The interconnectedness of all the apps helps teams share ideas, communicate and get work done, Saxena said.

Jira helps teams plan and track work. Confluence is a teamwork space for knowledge sharing and collaboration. Loom enables video communication for team members.

Confluence, which focuses on creating and sharing knowledge with team members, has two new features. The “brainstorm facilitator” agent can take new or proposed data from the whiteboard and modify existing plans — such as marketing — based on the new data. It can also work with team members to refine plans. Without genAI tools, that needed to be done manually, Saxena said.

And a new diagram creator tool can take brainstormed ideas and turn them into a process flow diagram. Confluence can also carry summaries of meetings via Loom.

The company also announced the Rovo Studio App, which is “a single place where customers can create agents, automations, assets, hubs, and other building tools that are accelerated through AI,” said Jamil Valliani, head of product for AI at Atlassian.

Source:: Computer World