How an Atlassian Team Used Confluence to Move Their Work into Trello in 12 weeks

Heidi van Gennep

Hey Trello Users! One of our Customer Success Management teams recently used Confluence to move our team’s work and planning to Trello. Here are some reasons why we considered the move:

• Product Enablement is a big deal to the CSM team, and we wanted a real-world experience adopting a tool that would mimic a customer’s experience

• We wanted to enrich the way we think about an agile mindset and how that can impact planning

We’re outlining our team’s thought process over 12 weeks. If your team is interested in adopting Trello to collaborate together, you might enjoy our team’s learnings!

 

Key Steps

• Share the load: Each team member hosted at least one meeting and brought a new feature or organizational insight to demo to others

• Collaborate async: A project page in Confluence was created where each teammate could share initial thoughts, contribute to the board’s organization, and a conclusion for final thoughts

• Rinse and Repeat: Communication and iteration paved the road to success

• Results: The team is more bonded at the end of this project, and we have a deeper understanding of adoption processes to share with the customers we support

 

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Initial Thoughts (Weeks 1-4)

Change is Scary

The team wasn’t sure what to think at first - Confluence is where everyone keeps notes and their own blogs; how would this work in Trello? To start, we created a very basic Trello board, and set up a shared Confluence page where each person could log their thoughts, feelings, and final conclusions at the end of our project.

• Confluence is easy - the pros of using Confluence included:

  • Copying the team meeting page and making updates is a light administrative lift for each week’s facilitator

  • Version 1 of the team’s new Trello board made it difficult to view what was (or was not) covered each week
    
    

• We recognized that we had Status Quo Bias

  • Confluence is comfortable: because Atlassian does so much within Confluence, it is natural for us to default to Confluence for everything (even, Reader, this blog!)

  • We learned about Status Quo bias in CVI training, but making this change meant that we got to experience it for ourselves

  • Switching to Trello meant that our facilitator had to be more thoughtful: context switching and user fatigue was real

 

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Iterating as a TEAM is FUN (Weeks 5-8)

As the weeks went by, each facilitator made improvements to the board and shared and/or demoed the features they used to implement their changes. Here are the features we leveraged in Trello to make our board successful.

• Dates and Calendar View: Organized our topics by meeting date so it was easy to see agenda items if a meeting was missed; allowed us to visualize topics covered in each meeting and view objectives for the month

• Card Buttons and Board Buttons: A feedback button is created and automatically placed in the Feedback column, a move to next week button to push agenda items we didn’t cover, and allows for iteration of future versions of our team meeting board

  • Completed (rule set by Quarter, so those who missed the meeting can checklists by quarter and date)

• Automation: Solved for our hesitation and perception that maintaining a Trello board would be more work than Confluence and added automation for the facilitator card so we always knew who the next host is/when our turn is near

• Push Notifications: Despite this happening in Slack, working in a new way led us to iterate

• Lists and Color Schemes: Personal preference for board visuals gave way to a clean, streamlined board

• Power Ups: We turned on Giphy for a little razzle dazzle

 

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Final Thoughts (Weeks 9-12)

Team Projects are Powerful

We found that planning in Trello is easier for our team and will continue to use the team board, iterating as we learn about new Power Ups and Features; our confidence has increased and along with it, so has our understanding of Trello; and finally, we are able to have more meaningful adoption and enablement conversations to support our customers.

• Our team feels closer and more unified; here’s how we collaborated:

  • A Confluence project page where everyone could contribute initial reactions, thoughts, and conclusions, add comments and edits

  • True agile iteration: from V1 to the current state, the board will continue to evolve

  • Up-leveled our ability to have confident, strategic conversations about Trello

• A true representation of company values:

  • Play, as a Team: Collaboration and discussion were key and continued to improve as we iterated on the board

  • Build with Heart and Balance: Each adjustment to the board was iterative, from automation to colorways, buttons, adding dates, and automating cards - everyone worked together to approve the final product

  • Open Company, No Bullsh!t: As a team, we created a safe space that allowed honest conversations about how Trello and Confluence could serve us in different ways

  • Don’t F@!* the Customer: Anxiety over change was REAL; experiencing this feeling helped put ourselves in our customers' shoes

  • Be the Change You Seek: Enablement and product knowledge can be overwhelming and intimidating - we were all in this together and created a fun project that accomplished both

 

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We hope you enjoyed hearing about our team’s process! New to Atlassian products? Check out Confluence Templates and Trello Templates, and let us know what your favorite takeaway from our team’s move was in the comments! 👇🏼

Ronnie Volkmar

Hey y'all, 

 

So proud of my team and @Heidi van Gennep++++++  for sharing this with the world! 

 A few follow-up items:

1. We now have our team meeting board available as a template!
2. I thought I'd share the automation rules we use on the board, as rules are stored in libraries that sit outside of boards. So they won't be in the template. 

Automation Rules:

This rule moves the card to the appropriate quarter's completed column:

"when the due date is marked as complete in a card, move the card to the top of list "Q(X) Completed Topics"

 This rule keeps the completed column sorted: 

when a card is added to list "Q1 Completed Topics" by anyone, move the card to the top of list "Q1 Completed Topics"

 

I hope this brings your team as much joy as it's brought ours!

 

-Ronnie