Leading a Company-Wide Transition Across 1,500 People
How five global teams hit the same deadline without a shared playbook
Leading a company-wide transition
1,500+
employees
5
global teams
On time
every team, no exceptions
The situation
Atlassian needed to retire a major product, a change that touched support, R&D, and every team in between.
There was no existing playbook for a transition at this scale, and no single team owned the outcome.
Readiness had to happen across roughly 1,500 employees, on a timeline that didn't bend.
What I did
I started by mapping who was actually affected and how, not just the teams with an obvious stake, but the ones a few steps removed who'd feel the change without expecting it.
One connected system, not three workstreams
From there, I built the training curriculum, the change management resources, and the communications strategy as one connected system rather than three separate workstreams.
Alignment without authority
The harder part wasn't the content. It was getting five global teams, none of whom reported to me, genuinely bought in and moving on the same timeline.
That meant building real partnerships early, showing up consistently, and making sure every team felt like a partner in the rollout instead of a recipient of it.
The result
Every affected team was ready on time, with no group left scrambling at the deadline.
The partnerships built during this rollout became the model for how later cross-functional initiatives got run at Atlassian.