Miscellaneous Monday - Crisis Management

[Andy Gladstone]

This past week, the Atlassian universe experienced a wave of emotions. The highest highs were felt as Team '22 kicked off in person in Las Vegas and virtually in cities around the globe, namely:

• New York City, USA
• London, UK
• Berlin, Germany
• Nairobi, Kenya
• Bangalore, India
• Sydney, Australia

And these were only the 'official' parties. We heard of many other Atlassian User Groups and fans that were watching with smaller groups of friends and family in innumerable gatherings on perceivably every continent (possibly even Antarctica). 

These events were a celebration not only of Jira, Confluence, Trello, BitBucket, Halp, OpsGenie and the myriad of Atlassian solutions in the market, but a celebration of the reliance of the users, admins and consumers of these products that made it through twenty-four months of challenges and came out stronger, better and together. It was and is a celebration of the UNITY of COMMUNITY.

Which made the test of the outage that affected so many instances and users just another reminder that we must always expect the unexpected.

As an attendee in person at Team '22 it struck me how Atlassian stayed the course throughout the event and did not allow this crisis to affect the experience of the attendees, partners and sponsors of Team. While teams were surely working 24/7 in the background to resolve this outage, in the foreground there was no sign of panic or stress - which allowed all of the events - in person and virtual - to meet and exceed expectations.

We have all had moments in life, personal and professional, that have required us to remain calm in the face of crisis, to rise above the moment and focus on the big picture. Share a moment you have had to manage a crisis and how you or your team succeeded despite the pressure and stress of the moment.

Let's celebrate the unexpected together.

[Elizabeth Barr]

Well said, @Andy Gladstone !

[Darryl Lee]

I'm super proud of every single team in Atlassian!

[Srinatha T]

@Darryl Lee , Totally agree with you.

[Sri Kumar]

+1 

[Vishwas]

+1

[Karthick S]

+1

[Fabio Racobaldo _Herzum_]

+1

[Srinatha T]

+1

[Jennifer Medley]

Enjoyed meeting and talking with you at the conference!

[Brant Schroeder]

Looking forward to next years conference.  This years was great.

[Srinatha T]

I attended the event virtually. I really miss being there personally. A great event. 

[Vishwas]

This is great !!

[Marjorie]

Crisis Management Victory.  Keeping communications strong during an issue is key!  

[Karthick S]

@Andy Gladstone totally agree with you! We did face a lot of challenges but something that keeps things going is teamwork and trusting each other!

[Karthick S]

[Ed Gaile _Atlanta_ GA_]

I was there at Team 22 in person with you @Andy Gladstone and totally agree how well Atlassian kept the focus on the experience for attendees. 

As much as we try to mitigate crisis', they can pop up. I have found that staying calm and open communication helps to keep the team in control while we fight through to the resolution. 

[Jack Brickey]

Great post @Andy Gladstone . I actually took the outage as an opportunity for me step back and assess what my IT team and in fact the entire company needs to consider when looking at deploying any software solution on-prem or SaaS. As a member of the executive team for my company I am involved in our BCP (Business continuity plan). Anytime there is a threat of incident or actual incident our BCP team comes together to monitor, assess, and act on business threats. Fortunately my Atlassian cloud instance was not impacted but I truly feel for those that were. We have a great deal riding on our day-to-day operations leverage Atlassian products. So this outage take me into action. I have establish a set of tasks that I believe will help us assess the best software solutions for reliability, High Availability, SLAs, etc.. Moreover we need to ensure we have a well documented assessment and procedure for each software solution to guide us through any outage situation.

In the end I think this will provide some good out of the proverbial bad that happens every day.

[Çiğdem Büyükaşik]

"Celebrating unity and community" is great even to hear and read, something we all need.

[Sri Kumar]

I really liked the way this incident was handled, A lot of teams went above and beyond to mitigate the issue. 

[Karthick S]

Even though we have not been directly impacted by the incident, we could provide helping hands to other teams with some processes. It is great to see how we unitedly handled this incident!

[Fabio Racobaldo _Herzum_]

"Celebration of failure" is a key point in order to avoid the same scenario in the future!

[John Funk]

@Andy Gladstone  - And what a joy to be able to meet you and so many of the other Community Leaders in person. I can't wait to get to meet the rest one day and share a meal and fellowship. 

[Craig Nodwell]

I've never done one of these.  I've been invited many times over the years.  Now you all got me pumped for next year, you can count me in.

[Craig Nodwell]

Also looking into local events.

[Sakina]

Looking forward to more such kind of events

[Valerie Knapp]

It's so important to acknowledge mistakes and accept responsibility, especially in a professional context. I think it shows so much goodwill and helps build trust and accountability.

[Karim ABO HASHISH]

One of the merits of Cloud Services is that the provider assumes the responsibility for risk impact and incident resolution. Big Thanks for the great team