From recap to roadmap: A guide to prepare for the new year with Atlassian Teamwork Collection

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The end of the year is more than just a finish line—it’s your team’s chance to celebrate wins, tie up loose ends, and set the stage for a fresh start. With a little planning, you can skip the dreaded “circle back season” and come back from break feeling organized, aligned, and ready to roll.

This go-round, you can turn year-end chaos into calm with the Atlassian Teamwork Collection: your all-in-one toolkit for wrapping up the year and launching into the next with confidence.

The Atlassian Teamwork Collection provides an integrated suite of tools designed to bring calm to chaos and ensure everyone is working together on the right priorities, at the right time. By bringing together Confluence, Jira, Loom, and the AI-powered capabilities of Rovo, alongside platform apps like Atlassian Projects and Goals, Teamwork Collection helps your team close out the year with clarity and hit the ground running in the next.

Let’s explore how to leverage this collection to recap 2025 and build a solid foundation for 2026 in just five steps.

Why use Atlassian Teamwork Collection apps for your annual planning?

Before diving into the "how," let's look at the "why." Teamwork Collection is more than just a collection of tools—it's a unified ecosystem that delivers key advantages, such as:

• Context-rich planning: Annual planning doesn’t start from a blank page. Because the Atlassian Teamwork Graph links your goals, projects, knowledge, and third‑party work, you plan with the full context of what’s been done, what’s working, and where gaps remain – so you can set realistic priorities and move faster with confidence.

• Automated workflows: Streamline the most time-consuming parts of annual planning, such as carrying forward goals, coordinating cross-team check-ins, and surfacing blockers, by leveraging TWC’s templates, automations, and integrations, so your team spends less time on manual process and more on strategy.

• Visibility and alignment: Atlassian Goals and Projects ensure everyone is aligned on what matters most. The clear connection between high-level objectives and day-to-day work across Jira, Confluence, and Loom ensures that everyone is moving in the same direction as the year progresses and sees how their work ladders up to the annual objectives.

• Single source of truth: Centralize all annual planning artifacts – your recaps, roadmaps, plans, and decisions – in Confluence, with live links to Jira and Atlassian Projects and Goals. This connection ensures your team can easily access the latest information, reducing confusion and rework during planning season.

Step-by-step guide to prepare for the end of the year and set your team up for success in the new year

Step 1: Recap and report on the year with clarity

Looking back is the first step toward moving forward. A comprehensive year-end recap celebrates achievements, shares learnings, and provides valuable context for future planning. Teamwork Collection has the capabilities for doing just that.

• Create year-end recap pages in Confluence

  • Confluence is the perfect place for your yearly summary. Consider creating a "2025 Team Achievements" page that serves as a central hub to document all accomplishments. Instead of starting from scratch To make this even easier, ask Rovo to generate a recap based on your team's work in Confluence and Jira.

• Visualize progress with custom dashboards

  • Numbers tell a powerful story. Build custom dashboards in Jira to visualize key metrics like work items resolved, customer issues closed, or goals met. Once created, embed these live dashboards directly into your Confluence recap page. This creates a dynamic, single source of truth that showcases your team’s impact.

• Add a personal touch with Loom

  • Go beyond static text and charts. Bring your year-in-review to life by recording a Loom that walks your team through the key highlights and data insights from your recap page. Embedding these videos in your Confluence page adds a layer of personal connection and makes the information more digestible and engaging.

Step 2: Organize projects for a smooth return

A clean slate for the new year starts with well-organized projects. Atlassian Projects serves as a centralized hub, providing a unified view of all your team's initiatives across Jira, Confluence, and other applications.

• Set up projects using Atlassian Projects

  • Think of Atlassian Projects as the home for your team's most important initiatives. It provides a platform-level solution to manage work from start to finish. 

  • Instead of starting from scratch, ask Rovo to suggest new Atlassian Projects based on recent Confluence pages, Jira boards, or Loom meeting recaps. Rovo can even recommend project templates tailored to your team’s needs, and flag gaps like unclear ownership or missing timelines, so your project starts on solid footing.

  • For example, you can create a “2026 Marketing Campaign” project. Rovo can suggest links to the relevant Jira board for execution and the Confluence page for the project plan. With clear owners and timelines in place, the team can start collaborating immediately instead of piecing everything together.

• Document project plans in Confluence

  • Once your project is set up, it's time to document the plan. Use Confluence to outline your strategy, and Rovo to accelerate the process. Ask Rovo to generate a project plan outline based on your Atlassian Project or Jira board. It can surface key milestones, timelines, and responsibilities from previous projects to give you a head start. The result is a comprehensive "Q1 2026 Project Plan" page, ready for your team when they return.

Step 3: Align on goals for the new year

A successful year is one where everyone starts aligned on working towards the same objectives. Atlassian Goals is your central place to set, track, and manage your team’s objectives, ensuring they are directly connected to the work being done.

Set and track goals with Atlassian Goals

With Atlassian Goals, you can define clear objectives for the upcoming year and link them to the projects that will bring them to life. This creates a clear line of sight from high-level strategy to day-to-day execution.

Rovo can help you get started faster. Ask it to suggest new goals based on your upcoming projects or past performance, then automatically connect those goals to the right Atlassian Projects, Jira epics, and Confluence pages for full alignment. It can also surface gaps – like goals that aren’t tied to any actionable work – so you can address them before the new year begins.

For example, your "2026 Growth Goals" in Atlassian Goals can be linked to the “2026 Marketing Campaign” project and its relevant Jira epics, ensuring every task contributes to a shared, measurable objective.

Step 4: Plan tactical work in Jira

With goals and projects defined, it’s time to break down the work into actionable tasks. Jira is the engine that drives execution.

Establish and communicate priorities.

When returning from the holidays, your team needs a clear list of priorities. You can create Jira work items directly from Confluence pages, whiteboards, or even from comments in a Loom video. This makes it easy to turn insights and conversations into actionable work.

From there, Rovo can take the reins and suggest work items based on your planning documents or video recaps. So if you come back from OOO to an inbox full of requests from Slack, Gmail, or Microsoft Teams, Rovo can help you turn those messages into structured work items in Jira. 

Break down your roadmap into manageable milestones.

You can also use Rovo’s work item improvement feature to break down larger projects into multiple manageable subtasks, providing ultimate clarity for your team.

Rovo also offers a valuable work item readiness feature, which automatically reviews newly created tasks to highlight missing information or unclear ownership and then provides tailored suggestions to resolve any gaps before the work begins. This means that your team will have everything they need to start the year strong after being away for the holidays.

Reduce manual updates with Jira Automations.

After a long break, proactive communication is critical. Jira automations keep everyone informed without adding extra admin work to your plate by automatically assigning new tasks, notifying owners when work is delegated, and triggering updates as issues progress. This proactive approach helps maintain momentum and accountability, so nothing gets overlooked.

For instance, you can set up a “First Week Back” sprint in Jira, packed with prioritized, well-documented issues that are linked to your Atlassian Goals and Projects—making sure your team starts the new year with absolute clarity and direction.

Step 5: Keep everyone in the loop, automatically

Effective communication should continue as usual after the New Year celebrations. By using automations, you can keep everyone informed without adding to your workload for the remainder of 2026.

Set up automated reminders and notifications

You can create automated reminders and notifications in Jira and Confluence to keep your team on track. For example, schedule reminders to keep track of key dates and milestones, or send a “Welcome Back” message with links to the year-end recap and new year plans. This simple step helps everyone quickly get up to speed, so nobody misses an important update.

Use Rovo to share updates for you as the year progresses

Lean into Rovo to monitor and summarize updates as your goals, plans, and projects evolve throughout the year. Because your goals, plans, and projects are all connected through the Teamwork Graph, Rovo can automatically synthesize progress and share updates. The stronger and more connected your goals, projects, and plans are upfront, the less time you’ll spend on manual status reporting later in the year.

Start your new year with confidence

By leveraging the connected power of the Atlassian Teamwork Collection, you can turn your year-end process from a chaotic rush into a strategic advantage. We know that was a lot to take in, so we’ve created a quick checklist to help you move seamlessly from reflection to action:

• Celebrate and document achievements. Use Confluence to create a "2025 Team Achievements" page, embed Jira dashboards to visualize progress, or add Loom video highlights to celebrate team impact and tell the story behind the numbers.
• Set up and organize new projects. Centralize your initiatives with Atlassian Projects, and use Rovo to quickly document structured project plans in Confluence.
• Align on goals for 2026. Define clear objectives in Atlassian Goals, connect them to your projects and tasks, and ensure your team starts the year focused on the same outcomes.
• Plan tactical work in Jira. Break down goals into actionable Jira work items, set up a "First Week Back" sprint, and use Rovo to refine work items for clarity and readiness.
• Automate communication and updates. Schedule reminders, notifications, and status updates in Jira and Confluence, and let Rovo synthesize and share progress throughout the year.

Following these steps will allow your team to make the most of collaborating, planning and communicating with the Atlassian Teamwork Collection. Checking off this list will help your team wrap up 2025 with a shared sense of accomplishment and start 2026 with unparalleled alignment, clarity, and confidence.