Weekly Wonder: Spotlighting Non-Technical Use Cases - HR, Marketing, Legal, and Finance

[#1]

Hi CUG Leaders!

This week, we’re spotlighting an opportunity to broaden the way your community talks about Atlassian tools: non-technical use cases across HR, Marketing, Legal, and Finance.

Many CUG conversations naturally center on software teams, IT service management, engineering workflows, and admin best practices. Those topics are important, but Atlassian tools are also helping business teams coordinate campaigns, manage employee programs, track legal intake, plan budgets, document processes, and improve cross-functional visibility.

As CUG leaders, you can help members see beyond traditional technical examples and discover practical ways Atlassian tools support the whole organization. When you bring HR, Marketing, Legal, and Finance stories into your programming, you make your CUG more inclusive, relevant, and useful to a wider range of teams.

Below are five practical tips to help you spotlight non-technical Atlassian use cases with your CUG.

---

1. Start by reframing Atlassian tools as work management platforms

Some non-technical teams may assume Jira, Confluence, Trello, or Jira Service Management are only for engineering or IT. Begin by shifting the language from “developer tools” to “tools for organizing work, knowledge, requests, and collaboration.” This makes it easier for HR, Marketing, Legal, and Finance attendees to see themselves in the conversation.

Use examples that connect to familiar business needs: onboarding checklists, campaign calendars, contract review queues, budget approval workflows, policy documentation, and recurring operating rhythms. When members recognize their own day-to-day work in the examples, they are more likely to ask questions, share ideas, and explore whether similar approaches could help their teams.

2. Invite business-team storytellers, not just technical admins

To make these use cases feel real, bring in presenters from HR, Marketing, Legal, and Finance who can explain the problem they were trying to solve in their own words. A people operations lead describing an onboarding process, a marketing manager walking through campaign intake, or a finance partner explaining close-task tracking can be just as valuable as an admin describing configuration details.

You can still include an Atlassian admin or power user to answer implementation questions, but keep the center of gravity on the business outcome. Ask speakers to cover what changed for their team, what adoption looked like, what was hard, and what they would recommend to peers. This helps attendees understand both the human workflow and the tool setup behind it.

3. Organize examples by department pain points

A helpful CUG session can be structured around common pain points rather than products. For HR, that might mean employee onboarding, policy updates, internal requests, or performance-cycle coordination. For Marketing, it could include campaign planning, creative intake, content calendars, and launch readiness. Legal may focus on contract review, matter intake, approvals, and knowledge management. Finance may care about procurement requests, budget tracking, audit preparation, and month-end close activities.

This approach helps attendees quickly find the scenarios that matter to them. It also shows how different teams can use similar Atlassian patterns - forms, queues, boards, pages, automation, dashboards, and approvals - without needing identical workflows. The takeaway is not that every department should copy one template, but that each team can adapt the same collaboration principles to its own work.

4. Show simple, relatable demos that avoid over-engineering

Non-technical use cases are most compelling when the demo feels achievable. Consider showing a lightweight Jira Service Management request form for legal intake, a Trello board for a marketing campaign calendar, a Confluence space for HR onboarding resources, or a Jira project for finance close tasks. Keep the walkthrough focused on the user experience: how work comes in, how it is prioritized, where updates live, and how stakeholders stay informed.

Avoid spending too much time on advanced configuration unless the audience asks for it. The goal is to help business teams imagine a better way to manage their work, not to overwhelm them with administration details. A simple demo that solves a recognizable problem will often inspire more action than a complex build that looks impressive but feels out of reach.

5. Create follow-up resources members can reuse

After the session, capture the examples in a format members can bring back to their teams. A Confluence recap page might include sample intake questions, workflow stages, role definitions, reporting ideas, and links to relevant templates. You can also include a short “conversation starter” section with questions like: What requests do we receive repeatedly? Where do approvals get stuck? What information do stakeholders ask for most often?

Reusable resources turn inspiration into momentum. They help members move from “that was interesting” to “we could try this with our team.” Over time, your CUG can build a library of non-technical patterns that demonstrates the breadth of Atlassian use across the organization and gives new teams a practical starting point.

---

Spotlighting non-technical use cases helps your CUG reach beyond familiar audiences and show how Atlassian tools can support work across HR, Marketing, Legal, Finance, and other business teams.

By reframing the conversation, inviting business-team storytellers, organizing examples around department pain points, keeping demos simple, and sharing reusable resources, you can help members discover practical ways to improve collaboration across the whole organization. The result is a more inclusive CUG that reflects the many ways teams get work done with Atlassian.

---

Public Resources You Can Share with Your Group

• Atlassian University – Free Training & Tutorials 

  • Short, product-focused courses that can serve as inspiration for your series topics or pre-work for attendees.

• Work Life by Atlassian – Teamwork & Collaboration Articles 

  • Practical articles on team rituals, facilitation, and collaboration that can inform how you structure your recurring sessions.

• Atlassian Team Playbook 

  • Ready-to-use plays for running retrospectives, health monitors, and other team activities that make excellent recurring series formats.

[Patrice Champet]

I would add: “Find the right place to start.”

In our company, we had the opportunity to begin by delivering a first Enterprise Service experience to our internal translation team.
We invested some additional effort to support them, compared to IT teams, but the return was significant.

Positioned at the heart of all business communications and closely connected to the internal communications team, they play a central role across the organization. Ensuring their satisfaction proved to be one of the most effective enablers for broader adoption.

Do not underestimate the power of simple dashbords !