A big shout out to all the amazing Jira admins who keeps things running smoothly behind the scenes, powering collaboration and productivity everyday!
Performing multiple LTS upgrades with zero downtime(ZDU-thanks to Atlassian) , to merging complex Jira instances while maintain data integrity and minimal disruption.
Here's another year of innovation, resilience, and behind the scene magic.
This past year has been a true growth journey as a Jira administrator and consultant. Iβve had the opportunity to lead multiple Jira Service Management Cloud implementations across different industries, each with unique challengesβfrom building intelligent automation rules for triage and change management, to designing scalable request forms and workflows that improve visibility and reduce bottlenecks.
One of my favorite wins was implementing a dynamic ticket routing logic for a healthcare client using custom fields, conditional automation, and AI-powered email parsing to ensure each requestβwhether study-specific or agnosticβwas automatically assigned to the right person, while maintaining a single shared agent group and a unified mailbox. This streamlined their operations and significantly reduced response times.
Another highlight was supporting a migration readiness project from Confluence Server to Cloud, where I helped evaluate third-party plugin dependencies and mapped viable alternatives using Scaffolding, Reporting, and Cloud-native solutions to rebuild complex tables, metadata, and documentation flows post-migration.
Beyond the technical achievements, the most rewarding part has been empowering teams to fully adopt the Atlassian platformβbridging IT, business, and finance departments under a shared toolset for planning, execution, and support.
Tagging a fellow admin who keeps pushing the boundaries with me: @Martin (you know why!).
One of my biggest wins this year was building a fully automated process in Jira Service Management that connects with Assets and manages user access to groups and organizations based on issue data. It helped reduce manual work for the support team and made onboarding/offboarding much faster and safer. Itβs been great to see how much time weβve saved with it!
Presently I single-handedly administer Jira/JSM for 15+ teams and 250+ users. A recent initiative to combine two diverse service desks into one has been my challenge for the past several months. Finally we're testing next week and implementing in two weeks. This will streamline and improve the end user experience.
Hi fellow admins! Congrats to every single one of you! π₯³π
I'm so very happy to be part of this amazing community! π
The win I've had this year was to replace the app the company was using to integrate JSM with Salesforce. Fortunately, we were able to carry out and complete this challenge with excellence!
This year has been a game-changer for me as a Jira Admin! Optimizing workflows and automations to better support ITSM and agile practices across departments.
One of my proudest wins was building a cross-functional dashboard system that brought real-time visibility to leadership - improving response time and team alignment significantly. π―
Iβve also been diving deep into Atlassian tools, mastering advanced JQL, refining permission schemes, and supporting internal training sessions to boost adoption. Itβs amazing to see how even small changes in configuration can lead to massive improvements in team efficiency.
Big shoutout to all the amazing admins out there - your dedication doesnβt go unnoticed! π
This year, one of my achievement has been leading the groundwork for our Jira and Confluence Data Center migration to Atlassian Cloud. With over 10,000 users, it's a massive undertaking - not just technically, but strategically. We have been auditing and cleaning up workflows, custom fields, permission schemes, and legacy configurations to make our instance cloud-ready and scalable.
A key win has been our ability to significantly reduce the number of third-party apps by replacing them with native Cloud features.
Beyond the cleanup, I have focused heavily on change enablement. I have been actively training users and teams on the power of Atlassian Cloud - from Jiraβs new UI and Timelines to Confluence features like Whiteboards, Smart Links, and the new Databases. These sessions have helped teams reimagine how they collaborate and plan their work in more visual and connected way.
While the actual migration is still underway, the transformation journey has already helped us unlock value through preparation, upskilling, and modernization - empowering our teams with modern capabilities.
Confession: I leaned on AI to help express it better, but the growth, mistakes, and behind-the-scenes wins are all part of my own admin journey. π
One of my highlights this year was helping my team transition to custom workflows that finally reflect how we actually work β not just how the default settings thought we did π .
It took some trial and error, but the result was better visibility, fewer blockers, and way happier users. Grateful for the tools β and for this amazing community!
From On-Prem to Cloud and Beyond: Elevating ITSM with CMDB Automation
Over the past few years, Iβve had the opportunity to lead and participate in dozens of migrations from on-premise instances of Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket to Atlassian Cloud. Each migration was a unique challenge β shaped by its own customizations, architectural complexity, and business priorities. These projects strengthened my understanding of how to adapt standard processes to meet highly specific needs without compromising performance or governance.
Most recently, I tackled one of the most technically rewarding challenges of my career: building a centralized, auto-discovering CMDB (Configuration Management Database with assets discovery) for a group of companies within a larger enterprise. This involved designing a solution capable of identifying and updating configuration items (CIs) across multiple environments. On top of that, I integrated a Marketplace app to automatically map and synchronize all CIs from AWS infrastructure.
This CMDB is now a key component in enabling proper Incident Management and Change Management for the client β improving traceability, reducing downtime, and enabling faster, more informed decision-making across IT operations.
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
This year I rolled out a set of Jira automation rules that autoβassign tickets, send status alerts, and automatically transition done issues to βClosed.β As a result, our teamβs cycle time dropped by 30% and manual handβoffs almost disappeared.
Thanks to Jiraβs flexibility, I was able to deliver this without any custom codeβjust clicks in the admin console! π
Big up to all fellow Jira Admins out there, the constant battle with unnecessary workflow changes and a billion field requests is real! :)
Joking aside, I feel fortunate to be working in a company which appreciates the complexities of managing this product and for the great community Atlassian has built for the administrators. While they are making changes I do not personally agree with in terms of priority. I have found their support has improved over the years from the stock response of "Show us your logs", to providing solutions with the limited visibility of our on-prem solutions we allow.
One of my main achievements this year as a Jira Administrator was designing and implementing a structured upstream workflow directly in Jira. The goal was to create transparency over the discovery process and prevent unvalidated or misaligned demands from reaching development teams.
Previously, squads were working on epic-level items that lacked validation and strategic alignment. This resulted in rework, wasted effort and low predictability. To solve this, we introduced specific issue types called Opportunity and Hypothesis, placed above the Epic level, and created a dedicated upstream board to manage discovery work.
The results were significant. We established clear WIP limits for discovery, gave UX and discovery teams greater focus, and successfully stopped 54 epics from entering development. This allowed us to eliminate waste and prioritize only strategic work.
This initiative was recognized as one of the top agile cases in Brazil at Agile Trends 2025. It showed that Jira can be more than just a delivery tracking tool. It can also serve as a strategic platform for managing portfolios and discovery processes.
I remain focused on evolving Jira as a true end-to-end management tool that supports strategic decision-making and business outcomes.
I provided internal end-user training on how to use Jira Plans (aka advanced roadmaps) to manage larger projects which span multiple Jira projects. I had one user who had been using Monday and doing manual data entry to track very high level initiatives which already existed in Jira (I know, gross right?)
For that specific user I had to assist by creating a couple of filters in order for their Plan to display epics, stories and sub-tasks the way they needed (it was an odd and complex requirement).
My big win this year is finally starting to get traction on wider usage of JPD as well as winning over some key people to help evangelise it's successes.
I feel a bit like an intruder here, given I'm not a full-time Jira Admin, but over the past year, Iβve rolled up my sleeves and configured a full Jira instance to demo and showcase how apps like Projectrak, Exporter, Budgety, and more to first-hand check how those solve real problems for PMOs and project teams, supporting Jira native functions. And that, right there, has been my biggest win!!
From setting up custom fields and workflows to managing user permissions and configuring dashboards, Iβve learned just how much power Jira has when it's set up right (something I haven't done properly at first try βthere are so many fixes!!) And I have no more than admiration and respect for real Jira Admins π
Happy Jira Admin Day to everyone who makes the impossible, possible!
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