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Put the System of Work into Practice

Discover what Atlassian's Teamwork Lab has learned about how successful technology-driven organizations make teamwork work.

System of Work

Enable all teams to drive impact, together

Our Lab-tested, team-approved Practices are the core behaviors that, together, establish a System of Work.

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Align work to goals

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Plan and track work, together

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Unleash collective knowledge

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Realize the full power of AI teammates

Align work to goals

Teams with clear goals are 20% more productive.

When goals are visible and reflect business priorities, they become a powerful tool to align teams and drive meaningful progress. A great goal makes teamwork easier for everyone.

Practices
  • Set clear and ambitious goals
  • Make goals visible
  • Use goals to align work to priorities
> Expand Practice details

Set clear and ambitious goals

Set only 3-5 goals per team annually

This forces you to deprioritize less important work and focus on what matters most. Each goal should state what you want to achieve and how you’ll measure if you’ve succeeded, and be ambitious enough to stretch everyone just beyond their comfort zones.

Set shared goals

When teams share a common goal, they’re more likely to collaborate effectively – and build the best solution.

Review goals quarterly (and evolve them if needed)

To be useful, goals need to reflect the most important work happening. If you find during a quarterly review that a goal no longer aligns to your top strategic priorities, update it.

Try the Play: Objectives and key results (OKRs)

Make goals visible

Document goals in a centralized platform

When everyone can see each other’s goals – and which projects and teams are driving them – silos and redundant work decrease.

Talk about where goals will get you

Paint an exciting vision for the future and outline how the goals you’ve set will help everyone get there. Connecting work to the bigger picture makes teams more motivated and engaged.

Share regular progress updates

Document monthly progress for goals and weekly progress for projects. Updates should be sent to key stakeholders, who can help teams get the support they need to keep moving forward.

Try the Play: Modeling strategic focus areas

Use goals to align work to priorities

Align all projects to goals

Nest projects under relevant goals to show what is needed to achieve that goal.

Rank goals in order of priority

Set up a monthly ritual to check that teams are still focused on the most important work. Re-prioritize goals only if absolutely necessary.

Plan and track work, together

Clear processes make teams 4.6x more likely to be productive.

When teams are clear on how the work will get done and why they’re doing it, they move faster and make better decisions. Team goals translate into meaningful work when processes are put in place that identify everyone’s top priorities.

Practices
  • Create an understanding of the plan and purpose
  • Get clear on what needs to be done
  • Learn and adapt plans for impact
> Expand Practice details

Create an understanding of the plan and purpose

Write a clear brief at the start of every project

A useful brief outlines the problem you’re solving, your primary audience, the impact you want to drive, and everyone’s responsibilities. Keep things as simple as possible and ensure everyone has access to the brief.

Map stakeholders and collaborators

At the start of a project, identify who will be involved and how they can be most impactful. Set up the right communication channels and cadence to keep all parties informed and up-to-date.

Set working agreements

Create a clear understanding of how everyone will work and communicate during the project. Shared rituals and expectations help teams move faster and collaborate more effectively.

Try the Play: Working agreements

Get clear on what needs to be done

Break down work into clear tasks with clear owners

Assign an owner to each task – someone who will drive the work forward until that task is complete. Define what “done” looks like so that everyone knows when the job is finished.

Map task-level dependencies

Mark tasks that are connected. For example, “Send company-wide announcement” can't start until “Get approval from internal communications” is done. This makes it clear what work needs to happen when.

Keep project progress visible

Document progress on tasks and update their status in real time, and share weekly updates that include potential risks and key accomplishments with stakeholders.

Learn and adapt plans for impact

Build reflection points into every project

Plan for key reflection points throughout your project cycle, like pre-mortems, midpoint check-ins, and post-mortems. Reflection rituals help teams mitigate risks, avoid repeat issues, and improve and automate their processes.

Create processes to unblock work fast

Set up channels where teams can quickly get leadership support when needed. Offer guidance on when to escalate issues to leadership.

Set timebound milestones

Outline clear deadlines for project phases and review progress as a team every two weeks. Regular alignment on short-term plans helps teams stay focused on delivery and keep team members learning as they go.

Try the Play: 4Ls Retrospective

Unleash collective knowledge

Self-serve knowledge helps teams work faster and smarter.

When teams can easily learn from each other, they waste less time searching for context and are better able to solve the right problems, together.

Practices
  • Share information async
  • Prioritize quality over quantity
  • Use AI to surface knowledge
> Expand Practice details

Share information async

Share monthly updates on top priorities

Communicate how current priorities connect to company goals and why they matter. Create an ongoing dialogue with teams to help them understand context, raise concerns, and continuously align their work to the company’s strategic direction.

Replace more meetings with high-quality content

Too many meetings are used to share information or talk about doing work, which eats up time and leaves no accessible record. Encourage teams to replace these types of meetings with high-quality written materials and videos.

Lead every meeting with a page

When meetings do happen, start with a page that lays out context, meeting goals, and key discussion points—then document any decisions made during the meeting. Your page then becomes part of your company’s shared knowledge system.

Try the Play: Page-led meetings

Prioritize content quality over quantity

Be clear and concise

Focus on what your audience needs to know and why it matters – and don’t overcomplicate things.. Clear, to-the-point messages cut through the noise and drive action.

Involve multiple contributors before sharing pages broadly

Have several contributors review and add to pages before sharing them beyond the team. This promotes alignment while reducing content overload.

Adopt organized transparency—make early-stage work accessible to all, but flag status

Clearly indicate whether content is work-in-progress or officially approved. Use tags and distinct spaces to show if content is early thinking, ready for feedback, or official guidance. This lets everyone learn from and build on each other's work while knowing what they can rely on.

Use AI to surface knowledge

Put everything online so AI can access it

Create a go-to place for information about goals, projects, and teams. When knowledge is searchable and up-to-date, it becomes a powerful tool for alignment, smarter decision-making, and innovation.

Create rituals around updating documentation

Build simple habits and collaborate with AI agents to make sure documentation is current. When teams update knowledge regularly, AI can surface the right information at the right time – and people can trust what they find.

Search first, ask last

Override the instinct to ping colleagues when seeking information. Instead, work with AI to search existing documentation first.

Realize the full power of AI teammates

Successful teams embed AI as part of the team.

It’s not just about automating tasks. Teams who benefit most from AI encourage experimentation and build with agents to unlock new levels of innovation and efficiency.

Practices
  • Use AI to accelerate learning
  • Become a builder
  • Make AI part of the team
> Expand Practice details

Use AI to accelerate learning

Bring context into every workflow

Work with AI agents to quickly transform scattered data into useful insights at every step of your workflow – so you can make smarter, faster decisions.

Leverage AI to expedite research

Empower teams to quickly gain expert insights and knowledge. AI efficiently synthesizes and analyzes large datasets, lowering barriers to research and making learning faster and more accessible. This approach fosters a culture of curiosity, creativity, and innovation.

Use community learning to accelerate impact

Teams learn how to work with AI best from each other – not through formal training. Drive adoption that leads to impact by setting up demo days, Slack channels, and community groups where people can showcase real-world use cases, share insights, and help others uncover new ways to get value from AI.

Try the Play: AI innovation day

Become a builder

Build and test AI teammates

Empower teams to create and continuously improve AI agents that support their daily tasks. When AI is customized to a team’s and individual’s specific needs, it becomes an active participant in getting the work done.

Get comfortable with experimentation

Foster a culture that supports experimentation, empowering teams to discover innovative ways to integrate AI into their workflows.

Build trust through transparency

Uncertainty slows down experimentation. Transparent tools, clear policies, and open lines of communication empower teams to learn and experiment with AI safely and confidently.

Make AI a part of the team

Make AI agents go-to collaborators

Treat AI agents as creative and technical partners to brainstorm, iterate, and refine ideas. Use them as assistants to automate routine tasks, freeing up time for strategic work. Leverage agents as expert advisors to expand knowledge, enhance decision-making, and ensure your team can innovate and execute efficiently.

Partner with AI to speed up innovation cycles

Turn ideas into tangible outputs faster. AI helps teams quickly move from brainstorming to structured drafts, presentations, or prototypes – creating instant feedback loops that ensure alignment. By seeing AI-generated outputs in seconds or minutes, teams can refine their thinking early, reducing misunderstandings and wasted effort.

Define clear roles for AI teammates

The best teams align on what needs to get done and how the work will happen – teams that include humans and AI are no different. Decide as a team which tasks AI will handle and how it will collaborate with the rest of the team.

teamwork

The science of effective teamwork

Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab is a group of scientists dedicated to developing best practices for modern teams. Their findings guide the design of Atlassian’s Practices and apps, and help organizations implement the Atlassian System of Work.

Accelerate success with our Team Playbook

Atlassian’s Team Playbook is a collection of tactical exercises designed to help you implement our System of Work Practices. Plays are proven to help teams work more effectively and solve challenges faster.

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Meetings

Weekly Team Updates

Share how things are going—without scheduling another meeting.

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Meetings

Page-Led Meetings

Better meetings start with a page that outlines the purpose, expected outcomes, and key discussion points.

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Communication

User Manual

Help your teammates understand how best to work with you.

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