Atlassian - A Different Kind Of Software Company

Atlassian
A different kind of software company

Wednesday, 13 May 2009

1. Brief History Lesson
Agenda 2. Tools & Processes
3. Innovation Ideas

Brief History Lesson

2002?


Big Ideas
• Scott & Mike - both 21 y.o. engineers
• $10k ‘startup capital’
• Tried multiple ideas
• $USD 0 in sales


Enterprise Software Atlassian Model


Enterprise Software

1. No $ for sales team? Must sell itself
2. Sell itself? Must be low price
3. Low $? Must sell 000s of copies
4. 000s of copies? Must sell globally
5. Customer must buy, we can’t sell!

Atlassian Model


50,000
customers


A little history...
FishEye
Bamboo Crucible JIRA
JIRA Conﬂuence Crowd Clover Studio

‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07 ‘08 ’09

Poland
San Francisco
Sydney
Amsterdam


A little history...
FishEye
Bamboo Crucible JIRA
JIRA Conﬂuence Crowd Clover Studio

‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07 ‘08 ’09

Poland
San Francisco
Sydney
Amsterdam

Engineers?
90
40 70
6
2!

2009?


Impact?


Impact?
• Over $USD 110m in lifetime sales
... $USD 45m sales in 2008/9
... in 116 countries
... including Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia, Somalia


Impact?
• Over $USD 110m in lifetime sales
... $USD 45m sales in 2008/9
... in 116 countries
... including Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia, Somalia
• Around 40,000 software teams use our tools
... that’s approximately 1m developers
... or 1 in 6 engineers globally use our tools to
help them build software every day.


Atlassian Values
'$(')&%
E?+1:+-57+B56-*?/=5.:7-*+/*6+-657:-1B:+?
!quot;#$%&
)*+,-./0*1,23-,/-4566789:;
<596=->9:8-8+1?:-1,=-4161,.+;
@/,A:-B5.C-:8+-.57:/0+?;
'612-17-1-:+10;
<+-:8+-.81,D+-2/5-7++C;


Products


ng
an
ii
sr
s
la ee 90 people
t
A in
g
n 12 software teams
E 10 products
4 countries
2 deployment models


Tools & Processes
(8 + 2) lessons from our superheroes, on building the tools
your superheroes use.


Warning: may contain ads!

1. Agile
• Each team is different in method,
size and impact.
• Agile principles are what’s
important.
• Use different tools -
GreenHopper to pen & card!


2. Traceability
• Fundamental to link code to
relevant artifacts - issues/wiki etc
• Few commits without traced
issue keys
• Mylyn’s task driven development
is really leading the way


3. Code Review
• Four eyes on every line of code
• Almost every commit is
reviewed by a peer
• Reviews ‘traced’ to issues
• Don’t put it off for ‘lack of tools’
• Soon - iterative code review!


4. Continuous
Integration
• Many, many, many builds
• Remote agents. Moving to EC2.
• IM for notiﬁcations (not email!)
• Focus on trends not red/green
• LabManager for platform testing
• Performance builds catch regressions

5. Optimise Tests
• Optimise for time to developer
feedback
• Re-order tests automatically
• Only run affected tests
• Functional test ‘split builds’ for
build throughput


6. Dogfooding
• Put software into ‘users’ hands as
regularly as possible
• Used to do with public releases,
now internal dogfooding
• Dogfooding != testing
• Can be hard to ﬁnd good
candidates


7. Wiki == Life
• We live in our wiki
• Req’ts, docs, blogs, discussions,
reports, presentations,
community
• Connects dev. to the business
• Connects the business!


8. Dev Speed
• “Dev Speed Posse”
• Never done - always a focus
• Measure and attack
• 3 “loops”
• Checkout Loop - 10 min rule
• Inner Loop - code w/o reload
• Build & Test Loop - commit to
deployment

Innovation
The lifeblood of a product company


“Because the purpose of business is to create a
customer, the business enterprise has two - and only
two - basic functions: marketing and innovation.

Marketing and innovation produce results;
all the rest are costs.”

Peter Drucker


Innovation Models
1. The lone genius
2. The boss is a genius
3. Copy competitors’ inventions
4. Cluster the geniuses in a lab
5. Make your people the geniuses

Scott Cook - CHI 2006


Innovation Models
Atlassian 2002
1. The lone genius



Innovation Models
Atlassian 2002
1. The lone genius
Atlassian 2012



Customers?


Customers?
Listen to your customers
Don’t do what they tell you.


Customers?

Why did they buy?
vs
What do they want?


Customers?

Why did they buy? Innovation
vs vs
What do they want? Incremental Improvement!


Innovation Killers
• Company & customer growth
• Date driven culture
• Speciﬁcations from ‘on high’
• Not enough ‘slack time’
• Old people


Innovation Killers
• Company & customer growth
• Date driven culture
• Speciﬁcations from ‘on high’
• Not enough ‘slack time’
• Old people
“You have 6 years of innovation left.” Moritz’ Law
(35 minus average age of the company - Mike Moritz, Sequoia)


9. Fedex Day
• Started in 2004
• 24 hour one-day coding exercise
• Start early AM, demos late
afternoon
• One goal - “Ship & deliver in 24
hours”


Mutations
• Added trophy around Fedex 4

• Blue dot voting

• Now quarterly for all
development

• Move to two days

• SF and Sydney on different weeks

• Tried in support & marketing -
fail

• Used to “spread” tech learning -
ie gadgets & OpenSocial

• One engineer is appointed “Fedex deputy”

• Week & two weeks before - Brown Bag Brainstorm

• ‘Shipment orders’ blogged internally (goal per person)

A • Thursday

• 2pm - kick off meeting

Fedex • Code until laaaate - pizza @ 8pm for stayers

•
“Day”
Organiser uses broadcast IM to communicate (ie
“Remember to take screenshots!”) and runs a chatroom
for participants (regular sharing of progress for excitement)

(2009) • Friday

• 3pm - demos (split in half - vote top 3)

• 4pm - ﬁnal 6 demos w/ beers
vote for winner & present trophy

• ‘Delivery dockets’ blogged internally (result per person)


Learnings
• One day isn’t long enough

• “Winning” needs to be de-emphasised

• Get the whole company to watch demos

• Didn’t work outside development

• Works best with smaller team

• Retrospectives are important - “What do we want
to try to ship, and what’s required to get there?”

• Shipping code takes much longer than you think!


10. 20% Time
• The Google ‘myth’ -
Lawless innovation?
• Aim: discover the realities
Made up our own rules
• The $1m gamble:
http://tinyurl.com/czy9f8


Why?
• Build innovative features
• Engineers’ jobs get less fun w/ growth
- further from product decisions
• Product Managers aren’t perfect
- ﬁll holes in the roadmap
• Discover those with product gene
• The power of a built idea to shape thinking

How did we go?


http://blogs.atlassian.com/developer/
2009/02/20_percent_year_in_review.html

20% Results
• ‘Filling gaps’ as much as
ﬁnding next big thing
• Hardest on tech leads!
• Tracking was a contentious
issue
• Ended with per person,
not project


Latest 20% “Rules”
• We trust you

• All projects must be tracked

• No less than one day at a time

• Time booked just like vacation

• 5 days = 3 developers must sign off

• 10 days = founder sign off

• All participation is performance reviewable


Q&A
www.atlassian.com
mike@atlassian.com

PS. We’re hiring!


Atlassian - A Different Kind Of Software Company

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Atlassian - A Different Kind Of Software Company

Similar to Atlassian - A Different Kind Of Software Company (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Atlassian - A Different Kind Of Software Company