Welcome to the Program Management Professionals group!

[#1]

Hello, Program Managers!

Welcome to our newest community group! ✨ We’re excited to have a dedicated space where program managers and folks who play a role in delivering strategy and keeping their organizations and teams on track can network, ask questions, and help each other work through the complex projects and program initiatives that come with the job.

We’ve got some big aspirations and plans for this group…

Our objectives are to provide a great place for you to:

• Learn more about how you can use Atlassian products and our Team Playbook as a program manager

• Discuss common challenges in program management and solutions for how to overcome them

• Share real-life examples from your work to gather feedback, spark discussion, and offer tips and advice

• Ask questions and share your successes and struggles with other program managers who can relate

• Establish feedback loops with the Atlassian product teams for program management use cases so we can continue to make our products better for you.

Meet the team!

Say hello to @Penny Lew, @Tiffany Scolnic, @alex, @Megan Barrie, and @Miles Tillinger 👋

We’re excited to be launching this group with an all-star lineup of Atlassian program managers who are here to kick off engaging conversations, share their tips and tricks, answer questions, and make sure we all get something valuable out of being here!

The way the members of this group engage with each other is entirely based on the type of members that join. Thank you for bringing an open mind, thoughtful questions, and any wisdom you have to share with others. 

A request for you…

To ensure we help you make the most out of the time you choose to spend here, we’d love to learn a bit more about what’s top of mind for you as a program management professional. What are some of your current process and workflow-related struggles? Is there anything that keeps you up at night? Do you have a wish list of things you’d love to see in a tool that would make your job easier? Let us know; we’re glad you’re here!

[Courtney Ortiz]

Hello - I'm excited about this group. My biggest hurdle right now is in resource management and planning as we have so many projects in our backlog and a small team, and I don't have great tools to let me see the impact of something slipping or a blocker on one project impacting another. We have also adopted Teams and SharePoint but are looking to lean more heavily on Confluence so trying to quickly come up to speed on the built-in functionality and look at add-ins that may be useful in managing a portfolio, translating discovery findings to a Jira backlog, onboarding vendors, etc. My focus right now is extremely broad and I'm learning more each day! 

[Kristen Roth]

We're glad you're here, @Courtney Ortiz ! Have you discovered Atlassian University? We have a free course on Confluence Fundamentals that will help you get you to speed! ➡️ https://university.atlassian.com/student/path/861302-confluence-fundamentals

The Workstream might also be of interest to you, too, as you mentioned you're still looking around in a broader sense to see which processes and workflows might work best for your team. You can check that out here! ➡️ https://www.atlassian.com/work-management

Do feel free to ask any specific questions within this group as they pop up, too! Our team is here to help! 

[Courtney Ortiz]

Hi Kristen - Thank you for the links. I hadn't seen Atlassian University and had looked at the workstreams which seem very interesting. Still checking those and the templates out and loving them! 

[Justin Townsend]

Thanks @Kristen Roth I'm a long-time Atlassian user / administrator, newly getting actively involved in the community. On the program side, I see the following general areas as a challenge:

• prioritisation for backlog and pooled resourcing
• impacts for projects reliant on the resource pool, where higher priority tasks overrun (pro-active notifications maybe?)
• potential for tighter integration, where shared resource participate in multiple projects with different delivery methods (e.g. if I'm only 50% scheduled to a scrum board, is it "obvious" where I can pick up a task from a Kanban project?)

Anyway, these are just "starters for 10". Look forward to participating here periodically.

Nice to e-meet everyone.

Justin

[Kristen Roth]

Thanks for joining us here, @Justin Townsend! I've shared your list of challenges with some of our Atlassian program managers to see if they have any thoughts about how to address them and if so, perhaps write an article or two for the group.

[Dave Liao]

I’m at an Atlassian Community Event in NYC right now and just learned about this group! I’m sad it took me nine months to find out about it, but glad to be here. 💪 

[Sam]

Hi @Kristen Roth , I'm really happy to have stumbled onto this group. I've been given a new role where I have to consolidate status updates from multiple ongoing projects. I am not a Jira / Atlassian guru, in fact I'm an intermediate user at best but I want to explore the possibility of using JIRA to capture status updates from multiple projects into a centralized dashboard / roadmap / plan. I honestly dont know if JIRA is the best tool for the job and if it is, I am unsure on how to get started on this journey. I would appreciate a nudge in the right direction.

[Alex Frost]

Hey @Sam 

To try and help with your comment! Theres so many way's to do this, it depends what Jira instance you have and what you want the end result to be. For example you could make/use;

• Simple jira list in a dashboard through the use of jira dashboards can show all statuses
• Plans (formerly AR) does the same but also puts it into a roadmap and/or list view
• Analytics can do this and can also produce various charts
• Jira boards (whether they live in a dedicated project or personal space) can show all stauses of a range of tickets
• Atlas can be filtered to show tickets across projects (these would be duplicative atlas tickets though as opposed to a direct pull of jira tickets)
  
  

Considerations

• Many of these approaches typically used to ely on having the projects being aggregated being Company managed - however that's not so much the case any more but it still helps from a config and scalability aspect
• Workflow statuses across these projects would benefit from being similar or at least compatible so statuses roughly mean the same thing (Analytics could get around this hurdle but worth trying to keep status names and status categories similar where possible)
• The hierarchy of tickets (if using plans) will need to be considered e.g. if you track projects at lets say the epic level in one project but at the initiative level in another then when aggregating you may come into problems when trying to report and scale
  
  

Hope that makes sense! Lmk if any follow-on questions :) 

[Viviana Silva]

Dear Atlassian Community,

I’ve recently joined a new company as a Digital Program Manager in Manufacturing, and I’m navigating an exciting yet complex landscape. While I’m a beginner in Jira and Confluence, I’m aiming to use these tools to bring structure and efficiency to my role. Here are some key challenges and goals I’m working to address:

1) Portfolio Consolidation: I’m managing a broad portfolio of programs and smaller initiatives being transferred to me in various formats (Jira backlogs, Excel files, SharePoint documents, and emails). I need guidance on consolidating these into a manageable structure within Atlassian.

2) Roadmap Development: I work closely with Manufacturing leaders to develop digital roadmaps for their business units and with site managers to monitor ongoing projects and plan upcoming initiatives. I would like to streamline this process and align all projects with clear timelines.

3) Resource & Priority Visibility: Currently, I lack an overview of resources allocated per project, as well as clear goals and priorities. I’m seeking advice on setting up Atlassian tools to give me visibility into resources and project statuses across the portfolio.

4) Workflow & RASCI Setup: To establish clarity in roles and responsibilities, I aim to set up workflows with defined RASCI matrices. I need recommendations on best practices for configuring this within Jira/Confluence.

5) Risk & Dependency Management: Managing risk and dependencies is crucial to my role. Any suggestions on leveraging Atlassian tools to identify and minimize these risks would be valuable.

6) Accelerating Delivery & Communication: I want to enhance cross-functional communication, especially with senior stakeholders, and improve delivery timelines. I’m looking for ways to use Atlassian to improve transparency and communication across our broad organization.

Any guidance on how to set up Atlassian tools to address these points and bring clarity to my role would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

[Tiffany Scolnic]

Hi @Viviana Silva - Atlassian program manager here and happy to share some suggestions as a starting off point. 

Portfolio Consolidation: 

• Use Confluence for centralization: Create a dedicated Confluence space for your portfolio that serves as a central repository for all program-related docs, updates, and resources. 

• Leverage Jira for tracking: Use Jira to track the progress of each program within the portfolio. You can create a Jira project for the portfolio and use boards to visualize the status of different programs. Advanced Roadmaps in Jira can help you manage and plan across multiple teams and projects. 

• Integrate with Jira Align: Jira Align can provide a comprehensive view of how all programs align with strategic objectives. It 

Roadmap Development + Resource & Priority Visibility : Are you familiar with Jira Product Discovery? This tool integrates seamlessly with Jira + other tools in the Atlassian suite to track roadmaps across teams. The Atlassian Community technical team uses this tool to work on features across multiple workstreams along with resource mapping, prioritization and capacity. 

Risk & Dependency Management: There are a few ways I've approached this: 

• Risks: I use a simple risk registry template within Confluence that outlines the risk, likelihood, impact, mitigation plan, and owner. This is manual so program manager diligence is required. 
• Decisions: I've used a manual write ups in Confluence or you can create a decision issue type within Jira to track everything on a board. You can likely do this with risks, too. 

Accelerating Delivery & Communication: A huge proponent of Atlas for this need!
Atlas allows for short write ups on programs, projects and goals in a digestible format and also allows a space to track risks, decisions and success. You can link to Jira tickets, JPD, Confluence spaces, etc as well. You can also use the Global State feature of Atlas to provide a high level dashboard for senior stakeholders to tie together multiple program progress within your portfolio. 

Jira Align may also be another tool to look into as it allows you to track OKRs and provide insights into initiative status. 

Workflow & RASCI Setup: There's some good documentation on our website wrt RACI and how to leverage Confluence templates + Atlassian plays + integrating with Jira. 

Tons of options to choose from and hopefully this gives you some kind of launching pad to see what works best for your business. 

[Joi Converse]

Hello fellow Program Managers :) I was happy to find this group! I'm passionate about developing and executing innovative ideas that drive exceptional results. I'm known for my collaborative and supportive leadership style, and I prioritize building positive work cultures that prioritize employee well-being and growth. Newer to being officially a PM via my title and so fun to continue to grow in this profession.

[Kristen Roth]

We're excited you're here, @Joi Converse! Welcome! 

[Annie He]

Hi all. I'm Annie He, and I'm a data analyst based in NYC. I'm interested in learning from program managers how to manage changes to a workflow or to a project effectively. 

[Kristen Roth]

Thanks for joining us here, @Annie He!

[Janice Wells]

Hello! 

[Stephanie Savard]

This is really helpful and I'm so glad to be here to learn from many of you.