It might be my age, but every year goes by faster and faster. But, with a little self-reflection (and some sleuthing in Outlook), you always see that everyday work produces some really big things…
The big event for Trundl in 2021 was JiraCon’21. Let me tell you… from a December 2020 internal call where Sajit Nair said…“Why don’t we run a virtual conference?” to the point where you’re speaking to 400+ people introducing 15 sponsors and 80 speaking sessions… that’s a heck of a journey.
I likened it to planning a wedding with your fiancé… there’s not a since the day that passes (over the course of many months) where don’t talk about details, what people will eat, see, smell, touch, and hear. For JiraCon ’21, we set a mission to open up the Atlassian Community to smart problem solvers, and I think we did a great job. It was our first one of its kind, and we’re going to do JiraCon year on year now, but boy… it was a LOT of work. It was worth it, and we think it was worth it for all of the sponsors and attendees. Nearly 500 attendees were a part of it. In 2022, we’re looking forward to improving the technology, to add even more folks from Atlassian, the development community, and thought-leaders. We’re already working on it!
Trundl matured in really great ways in 2021. We launched myAtlassian Blueprint as a new service. We’ve known for a long time that teams we speak to don’t always have what they need to “get the football over the goal line”. Big decisions, such as the consolidation of a tool-stack behind Atlassian, takes a lot of organizational buy-in, it takes data, it takes a full understanding of risks and opportunities, and lastly, it takes reduced ambiguity… What will it cost? How long will it take? What will my team’s role be in it? Will it be disruptive? These are questions that executives and stakeholders need at the point of decision. If it’s not clear… actions can easily be kicked down the road for another day. Our team came up with a Discovery service that reduces decision fatigue and gives prospective Atlassian customers all of their options and planning laid out in front of them. All it takes is some interview time with Trundl. We’re really proud of how successful it’s been.
In 2020, we also saw the continued growth of our Infrastructure Hosting team. We have 3 dedicated shifts of AWS + Atlassian Engineers (24×7 coverage) who constantly maintain & support select Atlassian Data Center instances. This is highly technical and collaborative work with high stakes at hand. Our team continues to advance their knowledge with AWS (certifications) and be proactive with customers whenever a performance or security issue arises, or threatens to rise. Love this team, and I’m hoping there are more Atlassian customers who take advantage.
Our Cloud Migration team was very busy in 2020. I’ve spoken to analysts at times throughout the year, and they constantly ask about Cloud adoption and whether it’s working. I’d say it’s working. The product investments are apparent to customers (look what comes with Cloud Premium), the cost of Cloud, though higher than in previous years, is still a factor below other software (Freshservice is nearly double. Servicenow…forget about it!). The companies we speak to have had the runway to go from Server to Cloud, and they have made their choices freely as to when. We’ve been really happy to be a part of these moves. Our team is well-oiled, it has robust runbooks, and they’ve handled so many different migrations, very little fazes them. Very proud of Nitish Kamal and his team!
We used 2021 to further invest in Agile coaching & Agile enablement expertise, and we became a certified Atlassian Training Partner (thanks Sajit Nair!).
2021 was also a difficult year, as it has been for many, due to the continual presence of COVID-19. As an Atlassian Partner, we’re proud to deploy a product that thrives during these times, but our team and several family members have been hit hard, including the deaths of very close family members. We think about them as we close this year, and we wish that whatever we face in the coming months with COVID, we will not have our team members (or yours) go through that again. Let’s mask up, get our vaccines, and keep safe everyone.
2022 is here! We’ve been pushed against our boundaries, but the great thing about people is that they push and expand, themselves, when given the freedom to do so. The more I work with our team… the more I feel that we are our only boundaries to what we want to do. Think big… make a plan… and let’s go!
