For more than ten years I worked as a consultant in the Atlassian ecosystem. My days were full of projects, helping companies customize Jira or Confluence, finding the right Marketplace apps, and making everything fit together.
I loved this work, but it had one characteristic: I was always in the background. Each solution was built for one company, sometimes very creative, but never visible to the wider community.
Why move from consulting to product?
Over time I saw the same challenges appear again and again:
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Teams using Confluence tables, but quickly hitting their limits.
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Customers exporting data to Excel just to do a sum or a filter.
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Managers wanting to see insights, but struggling with endless rows of data.
At some point, it was clear: these problems needed a simpler and more repeatable solution. That is how the idea of Simple Table started.
What I’ve learned so far
Building a product is not the same as delivering a project. Some of my lessons:
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Simplicity is hard. It is easier to add options than to keep the product clear and focused.
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Feedback is gold. Every support ticket, every post in the community, helps us improve.
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Community matters. By being active here, I learn faster than I ever could working alone with one customer.
Why it’s worth it
Even if product building has its challenges, I enjoy it deeply. When I see a team use Simple Table to organize their work better—and when I see it happen without me being in the room—I know it was the right choice.
It is still early days, and we have a lot to build, but the step from consulting to product has been the most valuable decision of my professional life.
To those of you in the ecosystem: have you also made a similar journey, from projects to products?
I’d love to hear your lessons too.
Enjoy!
— Mia Tamm
