How teams are living the future of work with Atlas

Hi folks!

I’m Dom Price, Work Futurist at Atlassian, yes I know that sounds like a made up job, but it impresses my mom and honestly that’s all that counts, right? The title of this article sounds pretty made-up and fluffy too tbh, what does it even mean to “live the future of work”? To put it simply, from all my research and time talking to cutting edge companies, academics and thought leaders, living the future of work means wasting less time. It’s that simple and Team Central is a critical part of enabling teams to spend less time talking about work and more time doing (or even resting).

It’s no secret across Atlassian that I hate status meetings. In my 20+ year career, I have NEVER EVER enjoyed a status meeting. Have you? If you have, please please tell me your secret!

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So for me, and anyone else who dreads status meetings or as I like to call it “work about work,” Atlas (fka Team Central) is a godsend. Why? I’d sum up my favorite benefits of Atlas as the following.

  • 👀Breaks down knowledge silos: Information overload is almost as acute as burnout these days. Atlas acts as this crucial top-level aggregation layer to piece together nuggets of information across the org in a smart, structured way that enables anyone across the org to discover projects, people, teams and services relevant to their work.

  • 🧠Fosters a culture of innovation: Updates in Atlas are brief, consistent and predictable (and way easier to read than a status spreadsheet). Using Atlas for updates will free up your re-occurring team meetings to use for brainstorming, exploring and iterating instead of wasting each other’s time presenting status updates.

  • ➰Enables fast feedback loops: Organizational agility is a hot topic I get asked about often and my answer is always the same, “a fool with a tool is still a fool.” Agility and innovation require feedback, early and often and Atlas is the best tool I’ve seen to date to enable that.

  • ⭐️Focuses on quality over quantity: Status reports (written or verbal) tend to suck because they are just a list of tasks completed. Because Atlas has the Loop framework built in, you not only get automated reminders to write your weekly updates, every user is encouraged to continuously improve their outward communication skills with in-product prompts that will teach you how to make the most out of your status updates.

In full transparency, I was part of the original team who created our first internal version of Team Central five years ago, so it’s no surprise that I am an avid fan. The tool, Atlas (fka Team Central), and more importantly the communication framework, the Loop, have helped Atlassian scale from 1,000 to 6,000+ employees without us ever having to sacrifice our core company values that fueled our growth from employees 1 to 1,000. What I’m most proud of, though, is that as our company has experienced step changes in complexity and growth, communicating across teams is actually getting easier, not harder. I can say, with confidence, that would not have been possible without Atlas and the Loop framework.

COVID-19 has changed the way we all work. For me, I miss traveling, sharing my stories and learning from customers like you. So in lieu of what I would’ve loved to be a big splashy presentation about Team Central to tell you how much you’re going to love it, I made this quick Loom video to share with you all from the most glamorous locale I could think of: my spare bedroom.

 

 

My favorite part of presenting around the world is talking to customers, so please don’t be shy! Tell us what you think and let’s keep the conversation going. I’m so excited to hear your status reporting horror stories and learn from you and your teams what you want the future of work to look like.

Dom

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Jimmy Seddon
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 25, 2021

Thanks for posting this @Dominic Price!  My manager is "not" a fan of status reporting and when I mentioned to him that the beat for Team Central was announced at Team '21, we have started a trial.  I'm looking forward to seeing it in action!

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Dominic Price
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 25, 2021

Can't wait to hear how you get on!

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