Play of the Month: What’s your favorite Atlassian Play? Join the discussion to get a badge!

[Lauren McGoodwin]

Hi there! 👋 I’m Lauren, the new Senior Content Marketing Manager for the Atlassian Team Playbook. My goal is to make the Team Playbook your trusted teamwork resource by sharing the most effective, evidence-based practices so you can work better, not harder. Expect to see new Plays, updates to your favorites, and a glow-up to the Playbook site very, very soon!

In the Atlassian Team Playbook, we have a huge array of workshops - which we call Plays - to run to build strong teams. Some of our Plays are designed for project planning, while others can be used for debriefing - plus many more aims!

We’re re-launching our Play of the Month community discussions, starting right here!

Have you used any of our Plays before? We’d love to hear about your experience, and if you have a favorite play that you’ve run! I’m a big fan of our User Manual Play because letting people know how you work best helps set and manage expectations right away. This leads to better working relationships, which benefits every team!

If you haven’t used our Plays before or if you’re looking for a new one, maybe you’d like to share how you’d like to improve your team. We can then try to make some Play suggestions for you!

Once you’ve added a comment below, you’ll receive a brand new Starting Play kudos badge!

Every month we’ll be starting a new Play of the Month discussion, and once you’ve commented on five discussion posts, you’ll receive the Play as a Team badge.

We’re so excited to hear from you! 🌟

[Sandra Franchetto]

Hi Lauren. Absolutely love this concept. I'm definitely going to play. I really need some fun in my life now that I have removed other people's drama. BTW Atlassian and its team rock.🤘 Speaking of fun and happiness. I describe Atlassian as the happiest place on earth. I've heard it said Disneyland is the happiest place on earth. 2 great maths formulas I've created are Atlassian + Disneyland + happiness and fun * 2 = Atlassianland and Life Learn Do + Disneyland..... I was once told Utopia doesn't exist. Technically that is correct cause it should Utopia * 2 = Utopias. As someone who is now often being called the Aussie Oprah because of my magical metaphysical powers that transfer to others I'll just start pointing and saying ' you get a Utopia, you get a Utopia, you get a Utopia'. 😅🤣😂🙃🤞👈👉👆🖕💫💥👏👏👏🫶

[Lauren McGoodwin]

@Sandra Franchetto Every team could use an Aussie Oprah!

[Idrees Ashraf]

Nice 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 

[emmanuelpeter866]

Congratulations Lauren 

[Amanda Barber]

Fun! My favorite play is definitely User Manuals. While we didn't use the Atlassian template, we did run the play and learned a ton about each other. I think it's probably time to give them a refresh!

My second favorite is Roles and Responsibilities. I work with multiple teams and it's really helped us all understand each other's responsibilities better. 

[Lauren McGoodwin]

@Amanda Barber I also use R&R a lot! Especially when starting new projects or working with other teams!

[Linda Bassett]

I haven't used any plays before but keen to do so. 

[Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_]

Haven't used any plays just yet, but I'm looking forward to the sprint/project retrospective we're planning at the end of the month once we reach the end of one migration project 👀

Also, curious to see all the new plays and updates that are coming up 🙂 

[Lauren McGoodwin]

@Tomislav Tobijas _Koios_ excited to hear how your retro goes!

[Johanna-Tappointment]

Sounds nice! 

[Dan Breyen]

Sparring can be a good play, especially if you're on a team that has many different perspectives.

[Lauren McGoodwin]

@Dan Breyen Agreed! Sparring in a formal way is great for working through differences.

[Haunani Nakabara]

Looking forward to the restart and learning more!

[John Funk]

Hi @Lauren McGoodwin  - thank you for drawing attention to the Playbook by incorporating a Play of the Month. 

My favorite is probably the Health Monitor. With many, if not most, teams now being distributed - maybe even across continents, team health checks are important to keep everyone engaged and increase communication and collaboration. 

[roumaissa hamidi]

Hi, I find this concept really interesting.

Tutuapp

[Lauren McGoodwin]

@John Funk definitely one of our most popular Plays for a good reason!

[Dave Mathijs]

I like the Team Shaping plays: Working Agreements is my favorite.

[Lauren McGoodwin]

@Dave Mathijs I haven't personally tried that one yet but adding to the top of my list now!

[Brant Schroeder]

I don't know if this is really my favorite but I really appreciate it and that is Escalating issues cleanly.  https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/clean-escalations  I think that escalating issues is something that everyone runs into some challenges at any given time.  This is a great way to navigate it with your team or leadership team.

[Lauren McGoodwin]

Absolutely and good point @Brant Schroeder! 

[vikram]

@Lauren McGoodwin 

Good information, thanks for sharing.

[Laurie Sciutti]

Ooohh.  User Manuals!  I didn't know about that one ~ time to revisit the Plays list.  I've gotten a lot of use out of the Retrospective Plays.  Introducing them to our users has been game-changing.  We found a lot more engagement with our product teams and we've definitely seen continuous improvement.  So glad we are revisiting the Plays of the Month discussions ~ thank you, @Lauren McGoodwin

[Lauren McGoodwin]

@Laurie Sciutti this is great to hear!

[Liz Tanner]

I have never run any of the Plays before--I'm solo right now, no team, no gig. But, if I had a team, I'd set up a Play package w/ three, in this order: "Goals, Signals, Metrics"; "CheckOps"; and "Change Management." There is so much operational waste in departments that don't do a health/relevance check of how they operate. Checking dept. ops goes beyond DevOps; depts should be checking for ops waste/revenue leaks too at least once a FY.

For solo: "Customer Interview"; "Contextual Inquiry"; and "Customer Journey Mapping." Freelance training devs have a bad habit of overdevving content--the deliverables fit project scope but are way more training product than client needed. Clients find out too after they've bought and are NOT using the unneeded stuff! The Customer Plays have excellent freelancer tools, methods, and tips to quickly define/determine client/customer personas, forming a client-eDev collaboration to create products more precisely to a client's needs, and getting end-of-project feedback w/o begging. 

These three customer-related Plays are the ones I am already planning on trying out!

[Lauren McGoodwin]

Hi @Liz Tanner
Thanks for sharing and really fun to see your POV on which Plays to use at which times, the specific teams, etc. 

[vikram]

Hi @Lauren McGoodwin 

Wonderful topic to start play from here itself. 

I would like to play by doing R&D for integrating Atlassian tools with different third party tools where we can help them to get their required KPI displayed as dashboards. 

Second one would be implementing new technologies with problem solving. 

Vikram P 

[carolyn french]

I love Ritual Reset! excited to watch this group and see more about the Plays 😀

[Lauren McGoodwin]

@carolyn french adding Ritual Reset to my list of Plays to try!

[carolyn french]

Let me know what you think!

@Lauren McGoodwin 

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

I'm enjoying the relaunch, however I'm about a month behind.

[Dick]

Hi Lauren,
I'm curious to improve my team as it's currently in shambles.

Stumbled across this, and care enough to try... :)

Dick

[Dan Breyen]

Teamwork is crucial to the success of any business.  Any chance you can learn more about your team and how to become a more productive one it can only benefit the organization.

[Salih Tuç]

I met the "Plays" today and I loved them. Very inspiring @Lauren McGoodwin , thanks! 🤘🤘

[Tehmina Aslam]

Hi Lauren, 👋 Excited about the updates and the glow-up to the Playbook site!

I’ve used the Retrospective Play before and found it super helpful for fostering team reflection and continuous improvement. I’m intrigued by the User Manual Play to0; setting clear expectations sounds like a game-changer for team dynamics.

One area I’d love help with is improving collaboration across cross-functional teams. Any Plays you’d recommend for breaking silos?

Looking forward to the discussions (and that kudos badge)! 😊