I have submitted a contact request several times and heard nothing back

Question

Hello, I am an Atlassian Community member who receives Jira and Confluence Data Center editions as a grant due to being an NPO/NGO that works to make a better community in our locale. I have submitted at least five separate requests about Jira Align information to see if this product would be available for our organization under this same sponsorship, as early as two weeks ago, with no responses as of yet. I don't have any other contact information to get with the Align team, so I figured I would start a discussion to see if I could engage with the team that way.

Is Atlassian making this flagship product also available to their community/open source project members or is it a paid-only enterprise product? I am trying to drive enterprise-wide adoption of Agile principles and am sure that Align would allow for me to get buy-in from the top down, but Advanced Roadmaps - while super cool - is too 'technical' for me to engage my c suite stakeholders.

Is there a space for allowing this product to be used in a self-hosted environment gratis for the sake of further leveraging what already is impactful and valuable functionality to drive adoption throughout my organization? I think that having the case studies and unique user success stories is of more value than trying to squeeze cash out of a missional community nonprofit.

Phillip Hocking · Answer

Oh hi @Tom O_Connor thank you for your response! The reason I am looking into whether or not we can obtain Jira Align is due to the fact that I am just one Agile/Scrum/Kanban practitioner in a small yet crucial ITAM team equipped with Jira Service Management, Jira Software, and Confluence.

I have and use Advanced Roadmaps for my own planning purposes internal to my business unit, and am attempting to evangelize and drive adoption in a working group I was recently added as a contributor within, however, I was hoping that Align and the fact it is intended for the executive types and has shiny buttons and 'executive' type dashboarding/reporting instead of 'scary technical/software development team interface with lots of buttons/knobs/scary and unfamiliar terms that somehow make those nerds do the needful but God if I ever will spend more than ten minutes trying to figure it out even when they are willing to be a resource who answers all of my questions and facilitates my learning" was kind of what I am going for.

I know you can't just 'go Agile' and that most of the early-stage adoption is more cultural and process-oriented - essentially a collective willingness to begin experimentation in iterating a time-boxed sprint with stories from a clearly delineated theme -> initiative -> epic -> story hierarchy with a product owner/spec plays run before even attempting to time-box a sprint to pull stories into. While I am a relative newcomer to Agile and only recently have learned the rituals associated with successful forecasting and burn down velocity vis a vis generous volunteer who works in the scale of a major global enterprise who is an amazing tutor... I'm having pretty big difficulties even getting potential champions/guinea pigs to even get past how intimidating a Kanban or Scrum board looks and explaining the process from the perspective of a newcomer who already has achieved some sick gains in productivity and team collaboration.

I guess I am just your hopeless socially awkward nerd trope who is thoroughly valued in my organization for the outcomes I deliver, but essentially speaking Portuguese and spouting tentacles causing eyes to glaze over when I'm doing an elevator pitch in hopes of converting just one acolyte. I figured that getting the fancy 'Cadillac' tooling might be shiny enough that I could put together a different sort of pitch to someone authoritative enough to tell people 'let's try this out - they charge a shitload of money for it so it must be worth at least evaluating' instead of me trying to get people who are stuck in a waterfall straight-out-of-1980s style of centralized authority and unidirectional knowledge transfer and lines of reporting.

I know I can't just will it into existence, but if I allow myself to become discouraged and stop trying then it is 100% likely the status quo will continue even if it is 99% likely it will continue despite my best efforts. I figure I should just continue trying to swing for the fences and eating my own dog food to demonstrate outcomes that other workgroups or programs would like to emulate if I keep it up long enough.

Four years ago I decided that I wanted to facilitate a weekly bicycle ride in my city, and I made sure to start at the same time of 1730 every Friday afternoon from the same parking lot of a local park. The first year or two I would be lucky if 1-2 other people joined me and as often as not, I was doing the 'group ride' entirely solo. Two weeks ago there were fifteen people who made it on our little jaunt around town. I am convinced that 90% of life is just determination and tenacity with 10% being giftedness or skill.

Tom O_Connor · Answer

@Phillip Hocking I also reached out internally to our Enterprise Sales group that handles the sale of Jira Align to see if someone can respond to your multiple requests.

However, I'd like to point out that Jira Align is really designed to meet large organizations needs for Agile@Scale.  The entry point for this really is organizations with 1 or more programs (teams of teams with approximately 150 people per program) that needs to connect their strategy (portfolios) to execution (programs and teams).

You have a community license for Jira of 25, well under the threshold that we consider organizations that need a platform to address Agile@Scale through different methodologies such as SAFe, S@S, DAD, etc...  What does your enterprise wide Agile Adoption look like at your organization?

Are you doing any type of quarterly planning?  Are all the teams on a cadence that is synchronized?   As you can see, I'm starting to understand where your organization is at today to see if Jira Align is a fit for your needs.

With smaller organizations, we often steer them towards Advanced Roadmaps as that starts to give them some agility and visibility beyond a single team.  Check out this great article that may help with what your next steps should be.  https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/agile-at-scale/portfolio-and-align

Rodrigo Cortez_jg22qq · Answer

Hi @Phillip Hocking,

Thanks for reaching out and for the interest in Jira Align.

Assuming you've went thru the Get in Touch contact form, one of our EA friends should get back to you anytime during the next few business days.

Let us know how it goes!