Multitasking is multifarious. Whether it’s remembering how many shapes to align your body into when taking a golf swing, coordinating the dozen or more simultaneous actions needed to drive a car (steering, gear shifting and so on, added to the need to adhere to traffic laws) or simply being able to listen during a meeting while drafting a document related to a completely unrelated job, multi-tasking is a complex business.

While women have been widely regarded as better multitaskers than men (certainly, stubborn male brains must lack the ability to open up to a multiplicity of task elements at one time), the balance may be levelling out if we embrace the new breed of artificial intelligence-enriched tools now available. In the now increasingly codified world of work where what use to be a “plain old job” is now broken down into roles, tasks, functions and deliverables which coalesce into a so-called workflow system, automation and software management is surely set to play a more important role.

Because we now live in a world where environmental, social, governance responsibilities sit alongside workplace considerations related to sustainability, inclusivity and wellbeing, enterprise leaders now need to navigate the broader landscape of their organization’s strategic big picture priorities while also paying close attention to the finer points of execution. This means businesses can’t just churn their operational engines in the pursuit of profit; they will also need to question whether team members are focusing on what really matters and working towards a collective company mission that will deliver the right outcomes for the businesses and its stakeholders.

Atlassian Strategy Collection

Head of product for Agile & DevOps practices at collaboration and productivity software platform company Atlassian Matt Schvimmer agrees with this proposition wholeheartedly. He says that business leaders now need a whole “golf bag” of tools (clubs), each designed for specific shots and challenges on the course (workplace). The golfing analogy here is made in relation to Atlassian’s new Strategy Collection, a specialized collection of software tools and services purpose-built for leaders of technology-driven enterprises.

It comprises three core Atlassian applications: Focus (software for leaders to map and track goals, work, teams and funds against strategic priorities), Talent (a workforce planning app to help leaders make sure the right people are working on the most important priorities) and Jira Align (an app for planning and tracking work across an enterprise with functions to visualize how work “ladders up” to to strategic priorities) all as one unified package of software.

Atlassian says that Focus transforms a company’s static plans into a living strategic artifact so that managers can get a real-time view into how the company is tracking against priorities, team targets and goals. The software offers a centralized hub area where (once laid down, agreed and set) the company’s goals will then exist and “live” throughout the other software tools offered in the Atlassian platform. This consistency is provided so that those metrics are visible across all an organization’s applications (with user access privileges applied, obviously) and teams.

Citing a Gartner study suggesting that software application developers spend just 16% of their time coding (and some 84% of any given day distilling translating product requirements or chasing admin etc.), Schvimmer is upbeat about Atlassian Rovo Dev Agents. This set of AI agents works to interpret and understand an entire continuous integration & continuous deployment software pipeline, from business requirements to technical implementation.

Atlassian Rovo Dev Agents chip away at that unwelcome 84% by shouldering the technical planning stage in Jira. They can perform code creation from an approved plan. They can handle pull requests (when a developer wants to “pull” from a code base to create an opportunity to commit new code) and then work inside the software code base to check factors including syntax, standards compliance, use of correct APIs and to assess whether code aligns with approved security policies and agreed best practices.

“We’re encoding business strategy into the IT function from the start with Atlassian Strategy Collection and Rovo Dev Agents,” said Schvimmer. “That’s good news for CIOs, CTOs and chief product officers [typically the decision makers that would make the call whether to use Atlassian or not] as they need to know what their software engineering teams are working on at any one time and, crucially, be able to see whether that work is aligned to the strategic goals and objectives of their organization as a whole. Our now further-unified software platform works to allow developers to model business strategy in the first instance and then, logically, to prioritize team functions and extend to budgeting out individual development tasks, tools and technologies.”

Workplace Work Workout

Work tracked in Atlassian’s Jira or Jira Align automatically rolls up to a Focus Area inside the application and the company says it will soon integrate information from other work management tools as well. A funds function connects financial data to a Focus area to get a unified view of budgets and investments.

“In an enterprise with thousands of employees, managing talent isn’t about shuffling org charts. It 's about understanding skills, availability and impact factors across a complex portfolio,” said Schvimmer. “Our new Talent app gives leaders an instant view of how resources are deployed to a Focus Area and helps them make sure the right people are in place to support both short and long-term goals. If a project is missing an important skill set, AI can help. Leaders can use the Talent Finder agent to search for employees who have skills that match the project’s demands.”

Jira Align is designed to enable enterprise-wide work planning. In modern software management terms, that means being able to identify what Atlassian calls “blockers” i.e. jobs, factors, threats and perhaps even people that represent a risk factor to the value goals that the organization wants to pursue. The company says that true potential is realized when leaders can define, communicate, implement and monitor their organizational strategies… and if that doesn’t sound like multitasking in motion then not much will.

Coming Into Focus

Looking more closely at Atlassian Focus, the product is aptly named. It’s core rationale centers around the problem that occurs when firms find that information and updates are everywhere, but really nowhere all at once. With so many organizations using a multiplicity of spreadsheets, slide decks, database repositories and disconnected business intelligence tools, the potential for work (and indeed money) not being mapped to specific priorities is rife. Atlassian appears to be combating the overly rigid enterprise strategy planning tools of the past with its assertion that a new and more fluid operational rhythm exists in the most progressive businesses, especially in post-pandemic times.

According to analyst house Gartner, by 2025, 70% of digital investments will fail to deliver the expected business outcomes, due to the absence of a strategic portfolio management approach. Atlassian aims to target this shortfall with its Focus offering, the software captures “strategic guidance” and integrates that guidance with downstream tools that help underpin modern workflow systems.

“Leaders can track goals, work, teams and funds, keeping everything aligned to strategic priorities, with what Atlassian calls focus areas,” said Schvimmer. “Additionally, each focus area comes with qualitative updates from teammates, giving additional context needed to really understand how teams are making progress or where they are blocked. Leaders get notified [via Microsoft Teams or Slack notifications] as soon as something changes that they need to pay attention to. Focus provides a flexible approach to help organizations adopt and govern the objectives and key results (OKR) framework, whether that’s within specific departments or organization-wide.”

Atlassian says that team leaders and managers at all levels can use this tool to see which OKRs ladder to a specific focus area, evaluate how they are progressing and drill down when committed results are at risk. Information is centralized on the Atlassian platform to enable users to see where goal progress is doing well, or is off track and updates happen in real-time across Atlassian products. It also means management can plan and track budgets to make sure priorities and projects are correctly funded, while also bringing in financial data from 3rd party tools

Enterprise Agile Planning

Touching on the other tool here again, Atlassian describes Jira Align as an enterprise agile planning platform that connects work with product and program portfolio management at scale. It supports “value-driven backlogs”, allowing organizations to prioritize work based on business value and impact.

A backlog in this sense of the term relates to a product backlog, which is a prioritized list of work for the development team that is derived from the product roadmap and its requirements. There is also portfolio management to track and manage multiple programs and projects, which effectively represents another opportunity to ensure alignment with strategic goals.

According to Atlassian partner Idalko, “Jira Align was previously known as AgileCraft and was acquired by Atlassian back in 2019. Managers can integrate one or more Jira instances (across cloud, server and datacenter) into Jira Align to begin to synchronize work. [The software] then offers visualization and top-down planning tools to track activity. This means that every team can be aligned to the larger strategy and investments can be connected directly with the customer value that they create, quantifying spending against performance. All of this drives clarity and accelerates outcomes for the business.”

What Inspired Atlassian?

With all these new tools, newly integrated tools and new enriched toolsets to consider, it begs the question… what should we think about Atlassian today?

Firstly, it’s important to remember that the company’s flagship product Jira has arguably become a much-loved piece of software (if not quite a de facto standard) as a project management and issue tracking tool. Atlassian has plenty of competitors in this space with usual suspects including Zoho, Monday.com, Asana and of course GitLab, but it the installed base of Jira itself might open the door to easier acceptance of Jira Align for some organizations.

Lastly, for now, it’s also important to remember that Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes is an Australian and Atlassian is an Australian software company. This matters in project management because when you’re working down under, you’re pretty much disconnected from the rest of the planet’s time zones with very little crossover, so in the digital world of international commerce, being able to track every aspect of work down to a minute detail matters a lot.

Is that why Cannon-Brookes decided to build software for project management? Who knows, but it can’t have hurt his passion to create the product. As they say in the lucky country, fair dinkum.