Weekly Wonder: Success Stories – Showcasing User Experiences to Inspire Your Community

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Hi CUG members! 👋

Every strong Company User Group (CUG) has a heartbeat: real stories from real people. When members hear how colleagues are solving problems, improving processes, and making life easier with Atlassian tools, they can see what’s possible for their own teams.

Success stories turn “nice idea” into “we could try that next sprint,” helping you build a vibrant, action‑oriented community instead of a passive audience.

Below are five practical tips to help you consistently showcase user experiences that inform, inspire, and spark adoption across your CUG.

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1. Lead with the problem → approach → outcome story arc

Start every success story with a clear, simple narrative:

1. Problem: What wasn’t working? What pain were they feeling?

2. Approach: What did the team actually do (process, people, and Atlassian tools)?

3. Outcome: What changed—ideally with measurable impact?

For example:

“Our intake requests were scattered across email and chat, so we moved everything into a Jira Service Management project, standardized request types, and added simple automations. Now we resolve requests 40% faster and have a clear audit trail.”

This structure keeps the focus on outcomes, not just features, and makes it easier for other teams to see how they might adapt the same pattern.

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2. Rotate who you spotlight to reflect your whole organization

Inspire more people by showing a wide range of teams and maturity levels:

• Rotate focus by function: IT, HR, Finance, Operations, Marketing, PMO, Engineering, etc.

• Mix big and small wins: From “we redesigned our entire workflow” to “we added one automation that saves us 3 hours a week.”

• Include different stages of the journey: New adopters, teams mid‑migration, and advanced teams experimenting with AI, analytics, or cross-product use cases.

You can collect candidates through:

• A standing “Nominate a Story” form or Jira project

• A quick question at the end of CUG meetings: “Who had a small or big win with Atlassian tools this month?”

• A Slack/Teams thread where members can drop ideas

The more variety you show, the more likely it is that every member will eventually recognize themselves in a story.

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3. Keep your success-story format lightweight and repeatable

To make storytelling sustainable, standardize it.

Create a simple “CUG Success Snapshot” template, for example:

• Team: Name, function, and region

• Challenge: 2–3 sentences describing the before state

• Solution: 3–5 bullets covering changes, including Atlassian products and key configurations

• Impact: A few metrics or qualitative outcomes

• Advice: One tip they’d give another team starting out

Use this template across formats:

• Live: 5–7 minute lightning talks in your user group meetings

• Written: Short Confluence pages or internal blog posts

• Async video: Quick Loom or screen share walkthroughs embedded in Confluence

Because the template is predictable, it’s easier for spotlighted teams to prepare and for your audience to follow along.

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4. Make stories copy‑able: share artifacts, not just anecdotes

The most inspiring stories are the ones people can steal (in a good way).

Encourage storytellers to share:

• Screenshots or diagrams of Jira workflows, boards, dashboards, or service portals

• Automation rules (even just snippets or pseudo‑logic)

• Confluence templates for runbooks, project pages, or retrospectives

• Checklists for how they rolled out the change (communications, training, approvals)

Host these artifacts in a consistent place (e.g., a Confluence “CUG Success Library”) and link to them from your meeting notes or recap posts.

When you lower the barrier from “That’s cool” to “Here’s exactly how to try it,” you dramatically increase the chances that stories turn into real change.

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5. Turn every story into a two-way conversation

Stories land best when members can ask, “But how did you actually do that?”

Build interaction into your format:

• Live Q&A: Reserve time after each share specifically for “how‑to” questions.

• Follow‑up threads: Create a dedicated Slack/Teams thread for each story where people can ask for details, share their own variations, or post screenshots of what they built.

• Office hours or mentoring: Connect interested teams with the storytellers for a short follow‑up session to help them replicate the approach.

• Feedback loop: At the end of your meeting or recap, ask, “What kind of story would you like to hear next?” to inform future topics.

This keeps your CUG from becoming a broadcast channel and instead reinforces it as a collaborative learning space.

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Closing Thoughts

Success stories are one of the most powerful tools you have as a CUG leader or member. They help your organization learn from itself, showcase the impact of Atlassian tools in context, and motivate teams to try new ways of working.

By keeping your stories simple, diverse, repeatable, and interactive, you’ll build a community where experimentation is celebrated and inspiration turns into action.

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Resources

Use these as source material for the stories you bring into your Company User Group:

1. Atlassian Customer Stories Library
   Browse real‑world examples of how organizations across industries use Atlassian to solve problems and drive outcomes.

2. Essential Guide to User Story Maps 
   Learn how to frame user journeys and narratives - skills you can reuse when crafting internal success stories for your CUG.

3. User stories: a beginner’s guide
   While focused on product development, this guide explains how to capture user needs and context in a structured way—helpful for shaping clear, outcome‑focused success narratives.