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Cloud Adoption Guide

The resources you need to build and execute a successful adoption and change management plan

Atlassian’s guide to adoption and change management

In this guide, we’ll walk through best practices and tips for how to successfully roll out Atlassian cloud across your organization, at scale, so you can drive lasting change for how teams work and collaborate. The guide covers how to set your vision, assemble your core team, define success metrics, secure executive sponsorship, foster a community of power users, design a communications strategy, and build effective training and support.

Table of contents

Introduction

Why change management matters for your organization

Our customers rely on Atlassian to power mission-critical business processes across their organizations. And as they continue to embrace digital transformation and adopt agile ways of working, many find themselves taking their existing toolsets to Atlassian cloud to elevate IT’s impact by reducing overhead and reallocating infrastructure costs, accelerate user productivity, and enjoy peace of mind with built-in security and compliance.

To realize the return on investment of cloud, it’s not enough to buy the subscription - you need your teams actively using Atlassian cloud to power their daily work. The success of your cloud initiative hinges on getting your teams to adopt and embrace new tools.

That’s why you need to set your organization up for long-term success with an effective change management plan. From stakeholder buy-in to user training, a well-designed change management plan can make all the difference when it comes to adopting Atlassian products for the first time, migrating users from our self-managed products to cloud, or implementing any change initiative. So, let’s dive in.

Lasting change takes work

We get it – we’re all change fatigued to some extent. Whether it’s a new tool or process we need to follow, it feels like something is always changing. It’s important to take this into account when building a plan to roll out any new change to any team – not just for changes in technology or software. To minimize the friction caused by change, it helps to have all the components moving in the same direction. That means the people, the processes, and the tools all need to work in harmony in order to achieve change and ensure it lasts.

Change = People + Process + Tools

Lasting change - real, systemic, sustainable change - what we’ll refer to as “lasting adoption” - takes work. You may spend the majority of your time ensuring our products work from a technical perspective - but it’s equally important to make sure your teams actually use (and enjoy using!) the tools you deploy. Adoption is more than service enablement - it’s about setting your organization up for long-term success and helping your teams work more efficiently and get better business outcomes as a result.

Benefits of a successful adoption and change management program

There are many benefits of a successful adoption and change management program - here are our top three:

1. Save time and money

Building a plan for adoption and change management as part of your comprehensive migration plan, and being thoughtful in a rollout will help make the change sustainable. Without a solid plan, you may risk having to re-do the rollout later on if your teams do not adapt to the change.

2. Reduce shadow IT

By rolling out Atlassian products strategically, your teams will have a clear understanding of how and when to use a given Atlassian product for their departmental use cases. If their technology needs are met, they have access to appropriate training materials, and they have a feedback channel to suggest improvements, they will be less likely to purchase and spin up their own instances of Atlassian products or collaborate outside of IT-approved services. That means you can avoid the technical, billing, and security frustrations associated with shadow IT.

TIP: If you’re looking to gain visibility into shadow IT, check out automatic product discovery, available with an Atlassian Guard or Cloud Enterprise subscription. With automatic product discovery, organization admins can discover user-created Atlassian cloud instances that exist within their organization, see who the admins are of these products, and how many users have joined. Organization admins can also reach out to the instance owner to consolidate products and data into the organization’s official product instance.

3. Increase productivity

Having a change management plan in place with the right training resources and support means your users will be able to get up and running from day one without missing a beat. Instead of wasting time finding new login details or searching for documentation, users will be able to stay focused on their key business objectives.

Common barriers to successful adoption

If the benefits are so great, it can be tempting to think the change will happen organically. Some of the most common barriers to introducing new products successfully are:

  • Inertia and general resistance to change
  • Business objectives are not integrated with IT objectives
  • Inadequate sponsorship from key leaders
  • Confusion (When are we doing what?)
  • Failing to communicate the benefits to users (What’s in it for me?)
  •  Too many tools available and no clear guidelines on when to use which tools

To realize the benefits above and avoid these common pitfalls, you need a change management plan. Your change management plan will ensure that your teams know what is changing, how, why, and when and have the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to be successful. The remainder of this guide will walk you through our recommended steps when it comes to preparing for change and setting your teams up for long-term success.

TIP: To help you organize your digital transformation and apply the change management strategies we’ll go over in this guide, we recommend using our change management plan template. This template is designed to walk you through the process of planning and executing your migration to cloud, while ensuring that all relevant stakeholders are informed and involved. By utilizing this template and following the best practices, you can help ensure a smooth transition to cloud and maximize the benefits of your Atlassian investment.

How to build a rollout plan

It’s one thing to decide to enable your entire organization with Atlassian products; it’s another to build and execute a thoughtful, solid plan for success. After years of observing and advising customers as they adopt Atlassian products, we’ve noticed clear patterns about what works well and simplified those patterns into a set of concrete steps.

Step 1: Set your vision

Working with your team to define a vision for your Atlassian portfolio is the first step to driving effective adoption. Your organization likely purchased our software to streamline workflows, but you may discover additional use cases and benefits as you engage with your teams and their programs during and after your migration.

As you set your vision, you’ll want to identify the key messages and themes to be used in your communications to users. These should include the major benefits (for the organization, teams, and individuals), usage guidelines, and important calls to action.

Some guiding questions that might help you as you think through your vision are:

  • What are we trying to achieve with Atlassian cloud?
  • Why are we doing this?
  • What are the benefits of adopting Atlassian cloud?
  • Who will be impacted and how?

Another helpful exercise during the vision-setting process is outlining your organization’s IT application and software inventory if you haven’t already. You can do this by creating a Product Playbook that outlines how Atlassian products should and should not be used along with your other software and systems. This should serve as the basis for creating usage guidelines and policies for users/teams/programs as well as clarify the goals of the overall deployment.

NOTE: Some of our customers rely on internal Product Playbooks to document how tools at their organization should be used. While a Product Playbook can vary in length and depth, it often covers company-wide or team-specific processes for onboarding onto products and how users should engage with products. For example, each team within a organization uses Jira projects in different ways: coordinating the development of a product, tracking a project, managing a help desk, etc. An organization may consider highlighting these differences in their Product Playbook by outlining project naming guidelines for each Jira project use case.

Regardless of what you choose to communicate, remember to keep your Product Playbook up-to-date and cite it regularly to ensure your users stay informed.

  • Supporting a new use case? → Update your Product Playbook
  • Onboarding a new team? → Reference your Product Playbook

TIP: Depending on your team’s structure and organization’s roles and responsibilities, you may choose to assemble your adoption team first. Then, as a team you can work to define your vision. If you’re worried some members of your adoption team won’t have the capacity to contribute to vision-setting, you can draft the vision prior to, or simultaneously with, assembling your team and use your draft as the baseline. Regardless, you’ll want to get input and buy-in from your adoption team before proceeding.

Step 2: Define success

With your team, decide what success looks like and identify your top success metrics. When rolling out a new Atlassian product or preparing for a migration, it's important to build in a measurement strategy to track success metrics and continuously improve. Ensuring you have answers to the questions below will be beneficial in maximizing return on investment and guaranteeing long-term success:

What will we measure?

  • What defines success for Atlassian products at your organization?
  • What measurable goals can you set and stick to?
  • What business value metrics can you deliver on an ongoing basis?
  • How does the organization want to gather user feedback?
  • Can metrics be aligned to use cases?

How will we support and improve?

  • How will users access support?
  • How will we share success stories?
  • How will we review and address challenges?
  • How will we identify new use cases across the organization?

A few common metrics our customers have used that might help kick off your discussion are:

  • CSAT: Can you measure how happy your teams are with the change?
  • Active usage: How many people are using the tools? How often? By department? By region?
  • ROI: Have you seen any cost savings or time savings as a result of rolling out?

Step 3: Assemble your adoption team

You’re not an island – every successful rollout starts with a team. You’ll want to build out the right team ahead of time so you can work together to define and tackle all the different moving pieces. A few key roles to consider for your adoption team:

Executive Sponsor(s)

Enrolling an active and visible Executive Sponsor is one of the most important pieces that can make or break an adoption plan. Endorsement from your Executive Sponsor can help push the change forward, convince naysayers, and promote visibility across the wider organization. In some cases, depending on your organization or the type of change, you may enlist multiple Executive Sponsors from across the business.

Developing sponsorship

If you’ve ever worked on a project where progress is stalling, decisions are made and then reversed, or necessary resources have not been delivered as promised, you might have been missing adequate executive sponsorship. In our experience, adequate executive sponsorship is instrumental to driving project success.

Selecting your sponsor

Executive Sponsor criteria:

  • Bandwidth and desire to be an active and visible sponsor
  • Ability to influence other business leaders and obtain their support
  • Authority to approve and assign resources
  • Some degree of direct control over impacted groups and relevant systems

If you’re having trouble engaging an Executive Sponsor, some additional considerations may help identify the right individual:

  • Who decided to implement Atlassian or migrate to Atlassian cloud at your organization? Who signed the check?
  • Who on your team can make a final decision when issues are escalated?
  • Who can remove roadblocks for launching Atlassian cloud to the intended users/teams/programs?

Responsibilities

Coalition building

  • Model the changes they will be asking others to make
  • Establish clear expectations of management
  • Listen to feedback from all levels and manage the normal resistance to change

Communications (beyond email)

  • Help develop a vision for Atlassian (see Step 1)
  • Facilitate and participate in delivering the message about Atlassian implementation using the desired communication channels best suited for your organization

Decision making

  • Oversee and approve the scope, use cases, and project objective definitions
  • Support project decisions and help achieve team alignment when the direction is unclear
  • Ensure required resources are dedicated to the deployment project/rollout

Project Owner

This may be a Project Manager, Change Manager, an IT admin, or a digital transformation/ways of working initiative leader (if you have one). Regardless of which team the individual is from, the key part is that the Project Owner must be the Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) – their success is tied to the success of the change initiative.

Technical Subject Matter Experts (Technical SMEs)

Technical SMEs may be part of IT, or they may be power users within business units. They are important for understanding how the products work in your environment, how to configure them, and how to train users from a technical perspective.

Business Subject Matter Experts (Business SMEs)

Your adoption team should include people from various departments that will be impacted by the change. Your Business SMEs will be able to provide input on internal sentiment, resistance to change, challenges that can be solved with the change, and how to best approach communication and training from a business process perspective.

Step 4: Scope the rollout

If you’re migrating from Atlassian Server or Data Center, you’ve likely already set a migration strategy which will dictate how you roll out to your teams. For example, if you’ve opted for a phased migration strategy, you will use a phased rollout to respective teams one at a time to match the migration. On the other hand, if you are doing a lift and shift migration, you might opt to do a big bang rollout to all users simultaneously.

TIP: If you’re migrating 1,000+ users, reach out to us for a consultation on your migration approach. Your migration strategy is a key input needed before you start planning for adoption.

Big bang rollout

A big bang rollout means you make it BIG – you will roll out across your entire organization at the same time. This could be part of a broader digital transformation, or ways of working initiative, or perhaps a leadership change with an organization-wide mandate. Generally, big bang rollouts require more preparation, and coordination, and fewer opportunities to learn and adjust along the way, which is why we see more organizations roll out gradually.

Phased rollout

A phased rollout means you will roll out department by department. You may decide to roll out to a few departments at the same time, but you won’t be simultaneously rolling out to every team, like in the big bang approach. This is the most common approach we see our customers opt for. Many customers have rolled out to some departments with success, usually starting with just one or two pilot teams, then using learnings from the initial rollout to inform the next phase of adoption.

Prioritizing departments

If you decide to do a gradual rollout, you’ll need to prioritize which department(s) you’ll implement the change with first. One pattern we have seen is to roll out to departments that frequently collaborate with each other to ensure all users are using a shared set of tools at the same time and teams can work together to normalize the new processes. This will also help you prioritize use cases later on (detailed in Step 5). You might also want to consider teams or departments that have a reputation for being open to change, so you face less resistance at the start.

Regardless of which approach you choose, be sure to take into account the change formula:

Change = People + Process + Tools
  • Who is impacted? (People)
  • How will they be impacted? What will change? (Process)
  • What tools will be used? (Tools)

Once you’ve defined the who, how, and what, it’s time to decide the when. There’s no standard timeline that we see – some rollouts can take weeks and others months. Timelines will be different depending on the scope of your rollout, project team resources, and other competing priorities in your organization. It’s also important to consider other planned changes, so you can determine whether it’s the right time to roll out or if waiting provides a better opportunity for the rollout to be a core focus.

Step 5: Identify key use cases

Change is not just about the product – it’s also about the process and the people. If you want to get people using a new tool and/or following a new process, one of the best ways to motivate people to do this is by solving a challenge they currently face. To do this, you need to identify current challenges and determine how you can use Atlassian products to help solve these challenges - we call these use cases. How will your teams use the product and apply the process in their day-to-day jobs? How will you articulate the value they can expect as part of this change?

Once you’ve scoped your rollout and prioritized which departments will implement first, you can then select use cases by department. Your Business SMEs will be the best people to help with this exercise, as they know their teams best. If you’re migrating from Atlassian Server/Data Center, you may already know the main use cases within your organization. We still recommend this step because: 1) existing use cases may look different in cloud (for example, you may no longer need a specific third party app for certain functionality that’s built-in natively in cloud ) and 2) rolling out cloud is an opportunity to rethink how your organization uses Atlassian products and introduce new use cases as your departments consider the “art of the possible”. 

Here’s an example of how you could identify which use cases you’d like to land in each department (or across the entire organization):

Department

Current Challenges

Use Cases

Marketing

Current Challenges

  • Manage cross-functional collaboration during campaign creation and execution
  • Plan product launches and execute promotional campaigns
  • Track campaign performance and metrics

Use Cases

  • Create team-specific service desks (ie email, design, web) to standardize work intake and service delivery (Jira Service Management)
  • Automate marketing workflows (Jira)
  • Track goals and OKRs and assign owners (Jira)

HR

Current Challenges

  • Provide answers to common questions
  • Onboard new employees consistently
  • Ensure quality job postings across departments

Use Cases

  • Create a knowledge base that centralizes HR policies and resources to enable self-service (Confluence)
  • Automate onboarding workflow to ensure a timely and consistent experience (Jira)
  • Write better job listings by leveraging a standard template (Confluence)

Legal

Current Challenges

  • Manage the sharing of internal vs. external documentation in a secure and compliant way
  • Deliver consistent service to internal customers for contract reviews, etc.
  • Track progress of legal cases

Use Cases

  • Share legal documentation with external parties (external collaboration) (Confluence)
  • Create a service desk for internal legal requests (Jira Service Management)
  • Track cases and updates (Confluence)

Operations

Current Challenges

  • Design and scale internal processes
  • Manage visitors, deliveries

Use Cases

  • Resolve customer issues (Jira Service Management)
  • Manage procurement requests (Jira Service Management)
  • Build a visitor management system (Jira Service Management)

After identifying potential use cases, you may find you come up with so many that it feels overwhelming - that’s normal. The next step is to prioritize those use cases. Again, your Business SMEs can help with this. Where that’s not possible, consider holding focus groups or conducting a survey to understand which use cases the individual departments would be interested in trying.

Consider piloting some of these use cases before a broader rollout. You may find a smaller team within the Marketing department that is willing to try out the products, provide feedback, and tweak the use cases before rolling out to the entire department. You may also be able to develop internal case studies you can use in your rollout communications about how pilot teams achieved great outcomes with their use cases.

Step 6: Build your training and support plan

Now that you have use cases identified and know which products you want your teams to leverage for each use case, it’s time to determine how you will train your teams to use the tools. In addition to user training, don’t forget to consider how you will train your IT department to be able to support the tools.

Keep in mind that everyone learns and absorbs information in different ways - some like to read, others to watch, and others to listen to new information. When developing FAQs, aim to include not only text but also screenshots, gifs and/or videos explaining the differences users can expect to encounter.

Most users spend the majority of their time in-product creating and editing Jira issues and/or Confluence pages, so we recommend focusing your attention on helping users navigate changes to these most frequent tasks. You can direct users to our product overviews to quickly highlight differences between self-managed and cloud for: Jira Software, Confluence, and Jira Service Management.

After the initial training, your teams will likely have questions and need ongoing support. Consider creating a Teams or Slack channel where people can get help and ask questions. Your Champions community will come in handy here as they can help monitor the channel in addition to your IT Support team.

TIP: Setting up a training program can be time consuming and you may be questioning what to cover. To get started, check out this guide we’ve prepared. It includes important changes to cover before launch and addresses topics where we frequently see questions from users. 

Step 7: Build your communications plan

You’ve got a plan in place that has been vetted by your adoption team. Now, how will you get the word out to teams and build up positive sentiment towards the change?

How often will you communicate?

Repetition is key - teams will need to hear the message multiple times, from multiple levels before making a change. It's not realistic to expect a single communication or announcement to reach your entire organization, so you should plan for multiple communications through different channels. Allowing your teams the time they need to get comfortable with the new change will ensure they are open and ready when the rollout takes place.

Who will the sender(s) be?

When deciding who the comms are sent from, consider the fact that people are more likely to read and act upon a message if it comes from someone they trust. Enlisting your Executive Sponsor (Step 3) and Champions (Step 8) to amplify the message will have a huge impact. The goal of the communications effort is not only to deliver the facts of the transition but to engage new users, help them understand the need for the change, and the role that they are expected to play.

Which channel(s) will you use?

Because you’ll be sending multiple communications, you’ll want to consider which channel to use when (or perhaps you’ll use some channels simultaneously) as you try to reach the entire user base. Various channels to take advantage of include:

When and what are you communicating?

Here is our recommended comms plan for users. You’ll likely have additional comms sent to subgroups, for example, when you are recruiting Champions or preparing your help desk team for an influx in support tickets around launch. We have templates for each of the emails outlined below that you can customize for your organization.

Migration

Phase

Assess

Plan

Prep

Test

Timing

6-12 months prior to migration

n/a - no user comms required

n/a - no user comms required

1-2 months before launch

Email subject

We're planning to migrate to Atlassian cloud

Atlassian cloud migration launch date

Email purpose

Give users early notice of the migration project

Announce the launch date following successful test migration

Migration

Timing

Email subject

Email purpose

Phase: Assess

Timing

6-12 months prior to migration

Email subject

We're planning to migrate to Atlassian cloud

Email purpose

Give users early notice of the migration project

Phase: Plan

Timing

n/a - no user comms required

Email subject

n/a - no user comms required

Email purpose

n/a - no user comms required

Phase: Prep

Timing

n/a - no user comms required

Email subject

n/a - no user comms required

Email purpose

n/a - no user comms required

Phase: Test

Timing

1-2 months before launch

Email subject

Atlassian cloud migration launch date

Email purpose

Announce the launch date following successful test migration

Adoption

Timing

Email subject

Email purpose

Phase: Pre-launch/Migrate

Timing

2 weeks before launch

Email subject

We're rolling out Atlassian cloud!

Email purpose

Remind users of pending Atlassian cloud launch

Call to action - bookmark new URL(s), download mobile app(s)

Phase: Launch/Migrate

Timing

Launch day

Email subject

Start using Atlassian cloud today

Email purpose

Announce Atlassian cloud migration is complete

Call to action - log in to new site, bookmark URL(s), download mobile app(s)

Phase: Launch

Timing

2 weeks post launch

Email subject

Tips & tricks for Atlassian cloud

Email purpose

Remind users to log in to new site

Share user training materials

Phase: Launch

Timing

1 month post launch

Email subject

How are you liking Atlassian cloud?

Email purpose

Check in - request initial feedback

Adoption

Phase

Pre-launch/Migrate

Launch/Migrate

Launch

Launch

Timing

2 weeks before launch

Launch day

2 weeks post launch

1 month post launch

Email subject

We're rolling out Atlassian cloud!

Start using Atlassian cloud today

Tips & tricks for Atlassian cloud

How are you liking Atlassian cloud?

Email purpose

Remind users of pending Atlassian cloud launch

Call to action - bookmark new URL(s), download mobile app(s)

Announce Atlassian cloud migration is complete

Call to action - log in to new site, bookmark URL(s), download mobile app(s)

Remind users to log in to new site

Share user training materials

Check in - request initial feedback

Regardless of which channels you use to communicate and whether or not you use our templates as a baseline, take the time to craft your messages to be as specific as possible. Include how these new products will be beneficial to each team and which use cases that you identified in Step 5 these tools can help address. If possible, this should be customized to reflect the needs of each team. For example, Marketing teams will likely be interested to learn how Jira Software can help with campaign tracking whereas Legal teams will likely be interested to learn how Jira Software can help with the contract review process. And, lastly, be sure to highlight training opportunities and other available resources.

Step 8: Identify Champions and build your network

This is such an important step, we’ve written the entire next section about it. The short version is that Champions are the cheerleaders of this change. Champions are enthusiastic teammates who are embedded within the teams where the change is happening, so they are well-positioned to build trust and spread positive sentiment. By identifying Champions across the organization, you can amplify your message and gain momentum. For more details on what a Champions community is, why it’s important, and how to go about building one, please read Chapter 3.

Step 9: Ship it!

You’ve completed Steps 1 through 8 and you’re ready to go – congratulations! With your plan in hand, you’re ready to execute and roll out across your organization.

Step 10: Monitor & engage

Great work so far! You’re not done yet, though - ongoing engagement is a key part of driving lasting change and adoption. As an adoption team, be sure to monitor feedback channels from Step 6 and check in on a regular basis on the following:

  • Were we successful? What are our success metrics telling us? Do we need to course-correct?
  • How are our teams feeling about the change?
  • Are teams asking for additional features, add-ons, or products? Are there other training resources that would be helpful?
  • Are there successes in one department that can be highlighted and shared to keep up the momentum?
  • How can we take this to the next level? Is there a new use case we want to land org-wide, or are we ready for teams to start using another Atlassian product to help solve an ongoing challenge?

TIP: To learn how your teams are feeling about the change, consider surveying your teams. You can access built in survey plugins in Atlassian Marketplace: Surveys for Jira, Surveys for JSM, and Surveys for Confluence. Or, use Google Forms, Survey Monkey, and other survey platforms. Here are a few questions you may consider including in your survey(s):

1. Which tools are you using on a day-to-day basis?
2. On a scale of 1-10, how comfortable are you with using [ product ]?
3. What are your primary use cases for using the [ product ]?
4. What is working well for your team today?
5. Are you responsible for training your team on how to use [ product ]?
6. Are you interested in getting more training & resources? If so, for which products/features?

How to build, train, and nurture an internal Champions community

What is a Champions community?

A Champions community is one of the biggest secrets to a successful rollout. Your team of Champions will be a group of people from across your company that you will be able to engage, train, and deploy within their own organizations. Your Champions community will be comprised of individuals Champions, who are power users of Atlassian products who can assist training of other users during the rollout.

Why build one?

By assembling a team of Champions, you will be able to be a force multiplier across the organization. As Champions are embedded in each department where the change is happening, they will often be the first ones using the new tools and processes. Your Champions will be able to spread the word about the new tools, highlight department use cases, and help train teams. And, because they are embedded within the teams where the change is happening, they will have the necessary credibility to build trust with teams as they are a friendly voice (versus outside force).

Who can be a Champion?

Anyone! From new hires to executives, anyone can be a Champion if they are passionate about helping drive change within their departments. Champions do not have to be power users of Atlassian products already, as long as they are open to learn and passionate about improving the way their teams work. However, you may find that your power users are a great place to start to recruit Champions.

TIP: If Atlassian products are used by different teams, departments, and/or use cases across different geographies, make sure to identify and engage Champions that reflect this diversity so that the majority of your users are more closely connected to the Champions.

Benefits of being a Champion

There are many reasons to become a Champion. Here are some of the most compelling ones you can use when trying to enlist new Champions:

  • Expand their skillset: Champions can develop new technical skills and deepen product knowledge while also sharpening interpersonal and communication skills.
  • Career development: Champions will have the chance to drive change at an organizational level, which is great visibility for emerging leaders.
  • Exposure to new technology: Champions can get hands-on with the latest technology, even if they’re not normally in a technical role.

Role of a Champion

  • Champions test out the changes and give feedback on training materials and resources to help better prepare the broader user base.
  • Champions model the change(s) you’re trying to make, whether it be using a new Atlassian product or applying an existing one to a new use case or process, which helps others see how the future can look.
  • Champions teach others by training their departments on how to use Atlassian products and how to apply them to their day-to-day work and processes. They can hold drop-in training sessions to answer questions from users, which can alleviate the burden on support teams.
  • Champions surface feedback on how the change is going, how people are feeling about the change, ways to improve in the future, and can share best practices and internal wins.
  • Champions remain ongoing conduits for change. When you’re ready to roll out a new product or process as part of any change management effort, your Champions will be ready and prepared to help usher that change through their individual organizations.

How to identify Champions

Great, you’re interested in building a Champions community! But how do you go about identifying the right people for the job? While you may already have some potential Champions in mind, it’s a good idea to run through this exercise to ensure you’re not missing anyone. This is especially important if you’re looking to recruit Champions from specific departments where you may not have many personal connections. This is where Audit logs can help.

Audit logs track activities that occur within a product and can help you identify your Champions, beginning with your power users. Use Audit logs to search for users who frequently perform key in-product actions such as logging in to their account, creating a Jira issue, or editing a Confluence page:

Settings > System > Audit Log

Audit logs

TIP: Check out our support documentation to learn more about audit activities in Jira applications and in Confluence Cloud.

Organizations with multiple Atlassian products can conduct similar searches using organization-wide Audit logs which display data across all cloud products in a single view. From your organization at admin.atlassian.com, go to Security > Monitoring > Audit log to search key in-product actions such as:

Logged in to account

Logged into an account setting within dropdown

Created a Jira issue

Created a Jira issue setting within dropdown

Edited Confluence page

Edited Confluence page setting within dropdown

NOTE: To access organization-wide Audit logs, you need an active subscription to Atlassian Guard Standard, which is included with all Enterprise plans or can be bought separately. Tracking user-created activity with organization-wide Audit logs is exclusively available with Enterprise plans.

How to train Champions

Your Champions may not all be Atlassian power users right off the bat. Regardless of their range of experience with Atlassian products, we recommend training Champions consistently so everyone can be on the same page. If you do have a large number of power users that enroll as Champions, you could consider leveraging their knowledge to train Champions that are new to the platform. You can also test out the user training you have planned as part of your Champions training.

Train the Trainer is a popular model for helping Champions learn not only how to use Atlassian products, but also how to teach others how to use them. If they are trained with the expectation that they will be responsible for training their teams and departments, they will be listening not only for their own learning but also how to best teach others.

You can also encourage Champions to pursue Atlassian certifications which can develop their skills and accelerate their careers.

TIP: An Atlassian certification is a career boosting credential trusted by team leaders to validate expertise in Atlassian’s in-demand tools. With Atlassian certifications, Champions are better positioned to optimize your tools and practices to ensure teams do their best work.

Visit Atlassian University to learn more about our Atlassian certification offerings and help your Champions get started on a learning path that is right for them and your organization.

How to nurture a Champions community

Engage your Champions community on a continual basis – not just for the initial rollout. They will be your ongoing sounding board, the source of the ground truth from within the organization, and your conduit for driving additional change.

Here are a few ideas of how to keep your Champions community going:

  • Create a Champions Slack/MS Teams channel that you can use to communicate new features and program updates and that they can use to provide feedback to the adoption team.
  • Host monthly office hours where Champions can network, exchange best practices, and learn about how other departments are using Atlassian products.
  • Launch a Company User Group for Champions to host/join events that improve product adoption and deepen collaboration.
  • Reward your Champions and recognize their hard work. Whether you give public recognition, have a way for Champions to get noticed, or just send an appreciative note to their management, this will help encourage Champions to remain engaged.

Our top adoption and change management best practices

Over the years, we’ve seen customers of all sizes adopt Atlassian products at scale – here are our top best practices for ensuring lasting, meaningful change in your organization.

1. Change = People + Process + Tools

People are at the center - many change initiatives fail because they only focus on process or tools, and ignore the people element. It’s important to consider how this change will impact teams, and how the impact might vary by role, seniority, or department. Be sure to articulate the “what’s in it for me” for each team member. Every employee should be invested and understand how this change will help make their day-to-day better.

2. Adoption is an ongoing process - not a moment in time

Once you hit send on your emails announcing the change, your work is just beginning. It will take time for people to acknowledge, accept, and adapt to the change. Take this into account when building your communications plan – you may need to do multiple rounds of communications for the change to settle in. And, the technology you deploy will change over time, too – be sure to keep users up to date with the latest.

TIP: If you already have an IT or ways of working newsletter, intranet presence, or Slack/MS Teams channel, consider including monthly tips and tricks, new feature highlights, and training opportunities.

3. Meet users where they are

Show users how they can incorporate the new products in their current workflows, and clearly articulate what it will be replacing (process and/or technology). When you are crafting target use cases and your communications plan, be sure to take this into account. By connecting the new tools and/or processes to existing workflows, the change will seem less daunting to teams. Most importantly, be empathetic throughout the process.

TIP: By showcasing how new Atlassian tools like Jira Software integrate with your teams' existing tools and systems like Slack, the change will seem less drastic and help teams better understand how the new tools fit within and enhance their day-to-day workflows. Learn more about integrations here.

4. Tone is set at the top

As you’re planning your rollout, enrolling senior executives and leaders to endorse the change can help with broader organizational acceptance of the change. In addition to your formal Executive Sponsor(s), consider having an additional set of senior leaders further endorse the change. It could be as simple as forwarding the announcement to their departments to show that they are on board and supportive. We also recommend hosting a training session specifically for senior leaders so they can learn how their teams will be impacted.

5. Build your Champions community early

By building your Champions community early, you can leverage their enthusiasm and expertise to start seeding adoption in their organizations, which can help accelerate the rollout. One way to do this is to launch an early pilot or preview to Champions and have them onboard their teams first, so you can get a feel for what works and what you will need to adjust for the broader rollout.

6. Make it fun

If it’s appropriate, try to make it fun – get teams excited about the change and new tools. A few ideas to gamify adoption:

  • Competition between departments on usage
  • Call for the most creative use case
  • Feature use case/success in a monthly newsletter

7. Show is better than tell

When you’re onboarding new users, it’s always better to show rather than tell. When you’re building your training plan, consider how you can go beyond mass communications and start demonstrating the value of the new tools. Consider the following:

  • Host lunch and learn training sessions for users to get hands-on with the products.
  • Consider department-specific training sessions to train users on their specific use cases (bonus points if your Champions run them!).
  • Record these sessions so they can be revisited in the future and re-used for new employees as they join your organization.

8. Your feedback loop is essential

Don’t forget this one – be sure to define your feedback loop during your rollout plan, including your feedback collection process (Champions, Slack/MS Teams channel, survey, service desk ticket, etc.). A good feedback loop will keep you close to your users and help you course-correct where needed as well as offer you insights into how the tools are being used and what business results have been achieved as a result.

We’re here to help

We are committed to your success with Atlassian and want to help you unleash the potential of every team across your organization. Now that you’ve built your change management plan, you may find you need additional assistance or want to consult an Atlassian expert. Check out some of our additional resources to help you during the rollout process and beyond:

Additional support

Atlassian Community

To find answers, support, and inspiration from other Atlassian users using products at scale, join relevant community groups such as the Enterprise group, Jira Cloud admins group, or Confluence Cloud admin.

Customer Success Manager

Customer Success Managers focus on your team’s success in Atlassian Cloud. They help you with user onboarding and adoption and can keep you informed on the latest product updates. To find out if you have access to a Customer Success Manager, please reach out to your Atlassian representative.

Advisory Services

Atlassian Advisory Services provides you with a wide range of options to access strategic, technical, and domain experts that will not only provide prescriptive guidance on your adoption and change management plan but also your technology strategy, solution design, and sustainment plan.

Enterprise Partners

Our Enterprise Partners work with some of Atlassian's largest customers to conduct hands-on system integrations, deployments, and upgrades. Partners are located all over the world and will work with your team to customize Atlassian products to your specific needs and provide solutions for complex enterprise needs.

Adoption & change management resources

Setting your users up for success in Atlassian Cloud products

Unlock the full potential of your team with the comprehensive Setting your users up for success in Atlassian Cloud products guide, covering how to access your Atlassian Cloud site and key distinctions between Atlassian Cloud and self-serve products.

Change management plan template

Streamline any organizational change with the easy-to-use change management plan template, designed to be used alongside this guide.

Email templates for introducing Atlassian Cloud products

Kick start your communications plan and keep your teams informed throughout your cloud rollout with the help of these email templates.

Quick start product guides

Help teams get up and running fast on Confluence Cloud, Jira Software Cloud, and Jira Service Management Cloud with these quick start product guides.

Onboarding and training resource hub

Build an effective training program with curated resources from the onboarding and training resource hub.

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Email templates for introducing Atlassian Cloud products

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Extra tools and resources

Strengthen your adoption and change management strategy with our curated templates and onboarding resources, designed to help facilitate a smooth and effective rollout.

Email templates

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Quick start guides

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Onboarding resources

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