This is a guest post written by Sam Rector, product marketing manager at Appfire, makers of the award-winning Bob Swift and Wittified brand Atlassian apps.

Work smarter, better, and faster with weekly tips and how-tos.

Subscribe now

Bug tracking is hard. Once more for your boss in the back. Bug tracking is hard!

The support agent to developer handoff is a crucial yet an easily mishandled exchange. That’s bad news if you’re striving for low time-to-resolution targets and happy customers. Luckily, Atlassian and its app vendors provide an array of tools that can help you automate your bug resolution workflows to improve speed, consistency, and communication. …

Editor’s note: This story is a farewell post from Bryan J. Rollins — Sr. R&D leader, and soon-to-be-former-Atlassian. Thanks for 7 great years, BJR. We’ll miss you!

I used to think corporate diversity programs were bullshit. Now, I’m a converted evangelist.

This doesn’t mean I’m any sort of expert in matters of diversity and inclusion. I’m just a white guy who went on a rocky journey from resistance to skepticism to something that resembles understanding. There are lots of people out there who are on a similar journey, and come from backgrounds like mine. …

A few months ago Archana Rao came on as the new CIO of Atlassian!

Archana’s team is responsible for building all the systems and processes used by our business functions and our customers. Archana believes that IT is in an amazing position to be a strategic partner to every function at Atlassian, including functional business units, HR, finance, and marketing.

Anna Johansson is a writer, researcher, and business consultant who is passionate about helping everyone do their best work. Her work has been featured in Entrepreneur and on Business.com.

More and more, work culture gravitates toward openness, collaboration, and transparency. You can see it in the increased number of open-office layouts (despite some recent pushback) and new types of collaborative software designed to bring workers closer together for real-time collaboration. In both cases, we see the buzzword “open workspace,” as in an environment specifically designed to foster more communication and collaboration.

Obviously, there’s something to this idea; 87 percent of…

These tales of Asperger’s Syndrome in the workplace come from guest contributor Tim Goldstein, a neurodiversity advocate and self-described “Aspie”.

There’s nothing like getting lost while hiking through the Rocky Mountains in the dead of winter to illustrate the difference between my brain, and most other people’s brains. And I suspect that if most people understood how my brain works, people like me would get hired a lot more (and fired a lot less). Anyway…

I was hiking solo to a peak of about 14,000 feet. About the time I was taking in the gorgeous view from the top, I…

This post comes to us from Aubrey Blanche, our Head of Diversity & Inclusion. Thanks, Aubrey!

It’s 3:05pm. You’ve just walked away from yet another frustrating conversation with a colleague. You can’t decide whether to bang your head against the desk, stress-eat your way through the office snack table, or simply pack up and call it a day. What you’ve just experienced is a clash of communication styles.

While we benefit from working with people with diverse skills and personality types, that doesn’t mean everything is easy. …

This post is brought to you by our crack reporting team of Natalie Mendes and Sarah Goff-Dupont.

If you’re like approximately 1.4MM other people on the planet, you’re getting excited for Maker Faire 2017 — now in it’s 12th year, with events in over 40 countries. Perhaps you’re even tucking into a hearty breakfast as we speak, on your way to take in the wonder that is Maker Faire Bay Area (happening this weekend!).

We bounced down to Maker Faire’s Friday afternoon preview — described (accurately, we think) as “part science fair, part county fair”– and are delighted to bring…

This post was authored by Bernard Ferguson, a Senior Program Manager in our R&D department, and was also published on the Atlassian Blog.

A skilled meeting facilitator can get a group to discuss, debate, and, above all, decide a lot of stuff in not-a-lot of time. Trouble is, most teams don’t have dedicated program managers or agile coaches to step in and fill that role. So as the modern workplace becomes ever-more collaborative, it’s increasingly important for all team members to know how to facilitate meetings.

But lack of experience with facilitation and fear of being judged harshly can deter…