Establishing Governance with your Atlassian Products

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Welcome everyone,

My name is Mary Ramirez and during the day I work as an Atlassian Support Lead for Isos Technology. When I’m not doing my fancy cool job, I’m typically nose deep into the latest and greatest articles in the Atlassian Community. My favorite being those in the Diversity and Inclusion group.

Lately a topic I continue to see asked is around Governance. 

• “How do we establish Governance in our organization?”
• “Should we have policies and procedures in place?”
• “What type of decisions should be discussed with stakeholders?”

All of these questions are fully loaded. Like a fully loaded nacho supreme. And there’s so many layers to it but each ingredient is vital. So let's uncover it.

One piece of advice that I give to organizations using Atlassian products is to have a Guild in place. Some refer to it as a Jira Guild or a Change Advisory Board. Why is this important Mary? Well, we often do a good job at employing the greatest Atlassian Administrators in the market. But as the humans that we are, we don’t always have the correct answer for every situation. 

Our products and processes can be complex. From the way it’s implemented to the purchases we have to make. I think of it like raising a kid. Have you ever heard of the saying “it takes a village?” Well think of your Atlassian products as your kid(s), it takes a village to keep it a float. 

For this article, let’s start establishing the foundation of a guild. Before starting anything, I recommend you plan. Sit down with your team and answer the following questions:

1. What’s the purpose of the Guild in your organization?
2. What is the Guild’s vision?
3. Who is part of the Guild?
4. How will we set expectations for the members of the Guild?
5. How often and where will the Guild meet?
6. Where will the Guild’s decisions, processes and procedures live? 
7. What type of discussions will the Guild have?
8. Who will record the discussions during the Guild?
9. How will users communicate and propose changes to the Guild?
10. How will we measure the effectiveness of the Guild?

While these are very high level questions, they’re essential to nail down before contacting potential Guild members and introducing the Guild to your organization.

I hope you found this useful and if you have any questions, comments or tips, please feel free to comment below and share with the community. Thank you for stopping by :) 

[M Amine]

thank you @Mary Ramirez