Why Atlassian Needs to Rethink the Forced Rollout Strategy for Rovo AI

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Atlassian has always been at the forefront of innovation, bringing automation, collaboration, and AI into the heart of modern teamwork. The latest evolution, Rovo AI, is no doubt an exciting leap forward. According to Atlassian’s own documentation, Rovo is being automatically activated across eligible cloud instances, with no current option for organization administrators to disable or delay its rollout.

And that’s precisely where the concern lies - not with Rovo itself, but with how it’s being delivered.

🚨 The Real Issue: Forced Enablement Without Governance Controls

Most organizations today have clear internal strategies, policies, and governance procedures regarding the use of AI technologies. These processes exist for good reason: to evaluate data privacy, legal implications, ethical use, and alignment with company goals.

By removing the ability to opt-out or delay activation, Atlassian is essentially overriding those critical internal processes. There’s no setting to disable Rovo. No real administrative control.

This isn't just a feature release - it’s a paradigm shift in how work is done, and organizations deserve the chance to adopt it strategically and responsibly.

⚠️ Not the First Time: UI Navigation Changes

This isn't an isolated concern. We saw something similar with the forced rollout of the new Jira navigation UI - a significant UX change that many teams were unprepared for. Feedback poured in about lack of readiness, bugs, and disruption, yet the transition went ahead regardless of customer readiness.

It sends the message:
"We’ve decided. You’ll adapt. We won’t wait."

That’s not partnership. That’s dictation.

🙏 A Request to Atlassian

We genuinely appreciate the innovation Atlassian continues to bring. Rovo, in concept and potential, is a remarkable achievement. We are excited to explore it.

But please:

• Give organization administrators the ability to enable/disable Rovo features.

• Allow time for internal stakeholder review, committee approvals, and governance alignment.

• Respect the diversity of operational maturity across customer organizations.

Let customers champion Rovo at their pace - not Atlassian’s.

💡 Innovation Needs Trust, Not Imposition

The success of Rovo depends not only on its intelligence but on how much trust customers place in it - and in Atlassian. Forced rollouts risk breaking that trust, especially in an era when AI governance is under global scrutiny.

Let’s build the future of work together, but in partnership - with choice, clarity, and control.

Thank you, Atlassian. We hope you will listen to your global customers and enable more thoughtful rollout strategies.

[__ Jimi Wikman]

As much as I agree with you on these issues where Rovo surely is the biggest concern at the moment due to not having full data residency in GA, but these are issues that always comes with SaaS products. That does not make your points any less valid, though...

Did Atlassian move too fast with Rovo? 

Yes, but not just with Rovo as the Atlassian products are going through a massive shift in technology at an extremely rapid pace and if you are a product or platform owner for Atlassian in your organization you have almost no chance to keep up withy everything that is being pumped out on a weekly cadence.

My opinion is that if you are going to change the core functionality of a SaaS product and base it on a completely new technology in the platform, then you better prepare people a lot longer than 3 months.

When you roll it out it better be 100% legally compliant, have 100% data residency and a solid documentation so we as customers can sell the new tool (because it IS a new tool with a brand new core platform) to our users.

I understand the need to push out a new product with a new UI as you can't have fragmentation happening for many reasons and the longer you have different code bases, the more your development will be blocked.

That being said, however, forcing this change, alongside hundreds of other changes, in just a few months... Yeah, that is a problem.

There are a LOT of mumbling amongst Atlassian customers and I know several companies have reconsidered their move to cloud because there is no way to stay updated on the massive amount of changes happening and because Atlassian keep pushing out massive changes with almost no time to actually organize, evaluate and train users.

Rovo, the new UI and the name changes are just the tip of the iceberg here and unless something changes I fear customers can start leaving Atlassian for more stable products, or return to Data Center...

[Dr Valeri Colon _Connect Centric_]

Thank you for this, @Sami Shaik — you’ve captured what many admins and program owners have been feeling: it’s not about resisting innovation, it’s about needing time and control to roll it out responsibly. Rovo brings incredible potential, but like you said, it’s a paradigm shift—not just a feature @__ Jimi Wikman, thank you for sharing your thoughts. Your point about the volume and pace of change is spot on

As a Rovo instructor and partner who works closely with enterprise teams, I’m constantly asked for rollout timelines, governance templates, and use case clarity—not just “how it works,” but “how to manage it.”

The industry is evolving rapidly, and I know SaaS providers feel immense pressure to ship features fast and stay relevant—especially with AI. But that pressure often translates into constant change and fatigue for customers. One thing I do appreciate about Atlassian is their transparency and openness to feedback. That matters—because too many AI platforms have been “sneaky sneaky,” adding features without controls and hiding the real cost of their AI offerings.

AI has the potential to transform how we work, and when it’s introduced with transparency, respect for user agency, and a spirit of shared responsibility between providers and customers, real, sustainable AI adoption happens.