This article is based on reporting from the Atlassian Open conference in Boston (November 2019), originally published by TechTarget’s SearchSoftwareQuality. It covers practitioner experiences with Atlassian tooling in BizDevOps transformations and feedback on integration gaps at the time of writing.
Atlassian Tools in BizDevOps Transformations
IT professionals attending Atlassian’s Open conference in Boston reported that Atlassian products—particularly Jira and Confluence—had played a meaningful role in their organizations’ BizDevOps transformations. BizDevOps extends traditional DevOps principles by explicitly aligning IT workflows with business goals and measuring delivery outcomes in terms of business impact rather than purely technical metrics.
Atlassian’s product roadmaps at the time reflected this direction, with a stated emphasis on broadening collaboration features for non-technical business stakeholders. However, practitioners also highlighted persistent integration gaps across Atlassian’s growing product portfolio as a barrier to achieving those goals at scale.
A Real-World BizDevOps Pivot: Merrill Corp.
Joseph De Jarnett, software delivery manager at Merrill Corp.—a corporate mergers and acquisitions SaaS provider that had pivoted away from its legacy document printing business to focus on its DatasiteOne platform—described how the company reorganized its product and IT teams around BizDevOps principles during a transition the previous year.
“Our development teams used Jira before our transition as a company last year, but we’ve refined our usage,” De Jarnett said. The team now uses Jira to prioritize software defects, manage incoming feature requests, and share roadmaps with business stakeholders. “We opened up feature development to give the business an opportunity for more feedback, instead of doing ‘closed door’ meetings of developers.”
Atlassian’s Confluence was used for documentation and goal planning, while Statuspage handled customer-facing communication about outages and downtime. The team was also evaluating Jira Align (formerly AgileCraft, acquired by Atlassian in April 2019) for higher-level business visibility into the software delivery process.
“We’re interested in how we can use it to provide more transparency to upper management. We’re interested in its tree model that shows feature development plans, progress and allows executives to dig into each team.”
Joseph De Jarnett, Software Delivery Manager, Merrill Corp.
Users Want Streamlining Across Atlassian Products
Despite positive experiences with individual tools, De Jarnett and other practitioners at the conference expressed frustration with the fragmented experience across Atlassian’s portfolio. At the time, Atlassian offered multiple Jira variants—Jira Core, Jira Software (with both classic and next-gen project types), and Jira Align—each with different feature sets and limited cross-compatibility.
A key pain point was the gap between Jira’s classic and next-gen project types. The Roadmaps feature had been rolled out for next-gen projects but was not yet available in classic projects. Teams running both project types found themselves managing information in silos, unable to link stories across the two paradigms cleanly.
“Right now, there are discrepancies, and we’re in silos with linking to stories in a traditional project from an epic in Jira next gen. We plan to shift to next gen, but it requires changes not all of our teams are ready to make right away.”
Joseph De Jarnett, Merrill Corp.
Atlassian announced at the Open conference that it planned to bring the Roadmaps feature to classic Jira, but did not specify whether managing the two project types would remain a separate administrative concern. Scott Blacker—co-founder of AgileCraft and, following the April 2019 acquisition, head of solutions engineering at Atlassian—acknowledged the problem but stopped short of providing a timeline.
“There has to be continuity of experience. There has to be a common source of truth, especially for value stream management.”
Scott Blacker, Head of Solutions Engineering, Atlassian
Other management friction points raised by attendees included the inability to perform federated search across multiple on-premises Jira Server and Data Center instances, and the lack of seamless account switching between cloud identities within a single browser session. An initial account switcher utility was available for cloud products at the time, but an Atlassian spokesperson declined to comment on plans for on-premises federated search.
Atlassian’s Cloud-First Strategy and Its Trade-offs
Atlassian executives at the conference made clear that cloud customers represent the company’s primary development focus. According to Atlassian president Jay Simons, approximately 100,000 customers used cloud versions of Atlassian products at the time, including roughly 90% of new customers. Centralized user management across on-premises and cloud deployments was not on the immediate roadmap; the two deployment modes required separate products—Crowd for on-premises and Atlassian Access for cloud.
“There’s a long list of things that we need to build, and we need to focus on those that will have the biggest benefit to the biggest number of customers long term,” Simons said.
This prioritization drew criticism from some industry analysts. Chris Condo, an analyst at Forrester Research, noted that competitors including CloudBees, GitLab, and major public cloud providers were marketing end-to-end DevOps toolchain integration with hybrid cloud support—an area where Atlassian’s offering remained fragmented.
“Enterprise customers are struggling with the concept of scaling Agile to multiple teams. Atlassian could bolt together its products much more tightly so people have to worry less about integrating the tools, too.”
Chris Condo, Analyst, Forrester Research
Condo also pointed out that value stream management—a capability increasingly expected in enterprise DevOps platforms—requires end-to-end metrics spanning from idea to production deployment, something Atlassian users could not fully achieve out of the box at that point. He noted the company also faced the challenge of integrating a string of acquisitions, including AgileCraft and the recently acquired no-code automation company Code Barrel, before adding further complexity through additional M&A activity.
“Most developers today spend little time coding, and more time answering questions and building toolchains. People are looking for simplicity.”
Chris Condo, Forrester Research
On-Premises Users and Regulated Environments Left Behind
Atlassian’s cloud-first posture created particular anxiety for customers in heavily regulated sectors. Tanya Christensen, a senior cyber systems engineer at Northrop Grumman working as a contractor for an unnamed U.S. government entity, described being unable to use cloud-dependent products like Opsgenie and Statuspage due to security requirements that even Opsgenie’s Edge Connector couldn’t satisfy.
“We’d love to have an on-premises version of Opsgenie and Statuspage. We’ve had to come up with our own ways to solve those problems on premises.”
Tanya Christensen, Senior Cyber Systems Engineer, Northrop Grumman
Simons acknowledged the concern but expressed confidence that organizational pressures would eventually push even resistant customers toward cloud adoption. “A lot of customers say ‘never,'” he said. “Then there’s an executive shift and they go all in on cloud.”
Key Takeaways for DevOps and Platform Engineering Teams
- BizDevOps alignment is achievable with Atlassian tooling, but it requires deliberate configuration work and process discipline—it does not happen automatically out of the box.
- Multiple Jira product variants introduce friction when teams need to operate across classic and next-gen project types simultaneously, particularly around features like Roadmaps and cross-project linking.
- Value stream management remains incomplete without tighter native integrations across the full Atlassian suite, and third-party integrations often require custom scripting or configuration.
- Cloud-first investment means on-premises feature parity lags, which is a significant concern for government contractors and regulated industries with strict data residency or network isolation requirements.
- Competitors are offering more integrated alternatives, and teams evaluating DevOps platforms should assess total integration effort, not just individual tool capabilities.
Note: This article reflects the state of Atlassian’s product portfolio and roadmap as reported at Atlassian Open in November 2019. Product names, features, and acquisition statuses have changed since then. Readers should consult current Atlassian documentation for up-to-date information.