The State of Teams
Work has changed. The way teams work together has to change too.
25000000000
work hours lost to ineffective collaboration each year within the Fortune 500
(that’s 25 billion)
Teams are busier than ever, but accomplishing less.
Our data shows knowledge workers spend so much time planning and talking about work that it prevents them from actually doing work that matters.
1/2
93% of executives say teams could deliver similar outcomes in half the time if they collaborated more effectively.
only
24%
Executives estimate that only 24% of their teams are doing mission-critical work.
[purple slant]
Why aren’t teams doing mission-critical work?
Teams are:
Spread across disjointed goals
64%
of knowledge workers agree that their team is constantly being pulled in too many directions
70%
of knowledge workers agree that it would be easier to make progress if they had fewer, more specific goals
Drowning in notifications and meetings
65%
of knowledge workers say it’s more important to quickly respond to messages than it is to make progress on top priorities
50%
In organizations with poor meeting cultures, people spend 50% more time in unnecessary meetings than making progress on high-priority work
Struggling to share information
55%
of knowledge workers find it hard to track down information despite knowing a lot of people at their job
50%
of knowledge workers have worked on a project and only later found out that another team was working on the same thing
56%
of knowledge workers say that teams at their company plan and track work in different ways, which makes it hard to collaborate
Unsure how to harness AI in their day-to-day
50%
of knowledge workers and executives don’t use AI on a weekly basis
63% and 79%
63% of knowledge workers and 79% of executives agree that AI is important, but don’t get how to use it in their day-to-day work
[slant]
Successful teams innovate how they work
Our results show that high-performing teams build the right foundations for teamwork by making time to improve their processes, practices, and tools.
Top teams stop to answer and act on these three questions:
03
Is knowledge easy to find and understand?
02
Do we have time to make real progress?
01
Are we working on the right things?
01
Are we working on the right things?
Innovative teams prioritize the highest-impact work over short-term performative goals. They make it a point to ask themselves, “When we look back in a year, or at the end of the quarter, will we have done work that advanced mission-critical goals?”
When teams put processes in place to identify their top-priority work, they are:
4.6x
more likely to be effective
4.6x
more likely to be productive
4.7x
more likely to be adaptable
How to work on the right things:
Set clear goals
High-performing teams focus their time and effort on the right things because they know their goals. Goals that target a specific outcome empower teams to solve problems and deliver value with autonomy.
Teams with clear goals are:
18%
more likely to be effective
20%
more likely to be productive
Make goals visible to everyone
Anyone within the organization should be able to see who’s delivering work contributing to that goal and what progress has been made. This helps organizations eliminate silos and avoid duplicative work.
Atlassian makes it easy to make your goals
Goals are embedded throughout the Atlassian platform to offer a shared place for every team to set, connect, and track goals.
Build rituals that clarify priorities, every day
Big goals are achieved through small steps. Effective teams build rituals to consistently identify (and celebrate!) mini milestones. They prioritize what they can do today to help incrementally reach their goals.
02
Do we have time to make real progress?
Top teams take control of their workday by giving each working hour a mission. They use meetings strategically (instead of compulsively) and make time to concentrate and collaborate on their highest priority work.
Teams who make the most of their time are:
1.6x
less likely to engage in productivity theater
1.6x
more likely to plan and track work in consistent ways across teams
How to make time to progress your goals:
Make calendars reflect priorities
Effective teams design their workdays around their highest priority work. They intentionally block off time each day to concentrate without distraction, be available to work with collaborators, and reply to messages and comments.
We tested this at Atlassian!
68%
of participants who redesigned their calendar made more progress on top priorities than they would have in a typical week. Learn more ›
Run better meetings
Top teams use meeting time to make meaningful progress by brainstorming an idea or solving a complex problem. Meetings are energizing because they end with an outcome – not another meeting invite.
Replace meetings with async video
Recording a video is an easy way to present work and share updates without meeting or losing the human element. Viewers can process information at their own pace on their own time.
Loom is a game changer for Atlassian:
Over two weeks, 43% of Atlassians had a meeting replaced by a Loom, which freed up 5,000 hours of focus time – or 2.5 years of working time. Learn more ›
03
Is knowledge easy to find and understand?
Teams that build, share, and harness knowledge to its full potential make progress faster. When knowledge is buried in people’s computers or in their heads, teams can only move forward by scheduling (another) meeting.
Effective teams move and create their work online, and share a single “source of truth” across the organization so others can easily gather information and avoid duplicative work.
When teams make information self-serve, they are:
4.9x
more likely to be effective
4.4x
more likely to be productive
4.4x
more likely to be adaptable
How to make knowledge easy to find and understand:
Obsess over the quality of documentation
High-quality documentation is concise and clearly articulated, and answers readers’ questions. This helps teams quickly build a shared understanding and invest their time into designing and delivering great ideas.
Use AI tools to work faster and smarter
Write better content more quickly by using AI tools like Atlassian Intelligence. Atlassian Intelligence can generate new content, simplify your language, and eliminate typos.
Harness AI to make knowledge flow
When work is online, AI can seamlessly surface the exact knowledge teams are searching for through summary results, automate administrative work, and enable knowledge mining.
Teams using Atlassian Intelligence:
30,000
Over 30,000 customers are using Atlassian Intelligence to boost productivity, augment teamwork, and unlock organizational data.
50%
Teams that use the Atlassian platform spend 50% less time searching for information.
Teams and leaders who use AI are better at collaborating
AI is disrupting how businesses compete and how work gets done.
Our data show that teams that use AI on a regular basis are:
1.8x
more likely to have goal clarity
2.2x
more likely to make knowledge easy to find
1.6x
more likely to be effective
1.9x
more likely to be adaptable to change
Leaders who use AI have:
19%
more time to create work with their teams
12%
more time to focus each day on their priorities
Successful teams innovate how they work so they’re ready for what comes next.
DROPBOX
Dropbox turned to Atlassian for an enterprise-grade collaboration tool that would enable employees to continue working the way they want to. Employees are now enjoying easier collaboration and time savings.
“The big win that we’ve seen through the implementation of Confluence Cloud is definitely collaboration […] it’s a very open way of working.”
Damien Davis
Lead Atlassian Administrator at Dropbox
ROBLOX
Migrating to Atlassian cloud tools saved Roblox over $150,000 per year and dramatically boosted collaboration, productivity, and discoverability.
“The biggest impact that’s been very gratifying is the change in the perception of the tools. They see that it makes life easier. They can spend time on adding value, not busywork. They can find the right information at the right time.”
Joe Cotant
Senior Technical Program Manager, Roblox
Domino’s Pizza Enterprises Ltd
Since transitioning to Jira Service Management, Domino’s uses one service desk for all 12 markets and 3,800 stores worldwide. Features like Atlassian Intelligence and Virtual Agent have helped boost productivity.
“Ultimately, leveraging Atlassian Intelligence will help assist teams across the org, helping them continue to ensure quality and consistency at scale at more than 3,800 locations across the globe.”
Matthias Hansen
Group Chief Technology Officer, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises Ltd
About the research
We surveyed 5,000 knowledge workers and 100 Fortune 500 executives to learn how their teams were collaborating today. Product data was compiled from 1 million Atlassian platform users and 24 million Jira tickets.
5,000
knowledge workers
Work across the U.S., Australia, India, Germany, and France
Sample is split equally across three markets: work management, ITSM, DevOps
34 years
mean age
60%
are from small and medium businesses
40%
are from enterprise organizations
100
Fortune 500 executives
51 years
mean age
87%
male
13%
female
From a variety of industries. Top industries are:
- Banking/finance (15%)
- Manufacturing (15%)
- Healthcare, medicine, pharmaceuticals (10%)