Strategy Collection: turn AI speed into outcomes | Team '26 Europe | Atlassian

0:08 Please welcome Atassian head of product strategy collection and head of strategy and ops Ashar 30. Hey everyone, welcome to team 26. Think about the last time your organization had a major change in priority. How long did it take for your work and investment to actually catch up? Shift happens, right? Priorities pivot, markets turn, new opportunities emerge. Setting a new direction is one decision, but getting your organization moving in that direction requires many more decisions. Right? Imagine customer retention suddenly becomes your top priority. You announce it. You update your strategy. Everyone's busy, but your team's budgets and initiative still following the old priority.

1:14 Everyone's working. Everyone's delivering. Yet your organization is now drifting from execution and strategy. We call this the strategic drift. It's the age-old problem. You know it well. In the world of AI though, this gets worse. Drift just happens faster. When teams are moving faster with AI, us leaders need to know sooner if they're moving in the right direction.

1:48 So here at Atlassian, we're definitely thinking about drift differently because it isn't just about connecting your strategy to execution. What is it about? It's about having a single connected operating model that unifies three things. First, your strategic intent, which is the priorities that you set. Second, your investments, which is where are your people, budget, and AI costs going. And third, your outcomes, the key results your business is delivering.

2:19 This is exactly what strategy collection, including our focus, talent and align apps, is built for. In the founder keynote, you heard that a connected context is your organization's superpower, right? Strategy collection is your leaders unfair advantage. With strategy collection, you can connect your strategic intent with your investments and outcomes in a single connected operating model. So you can finally answer today's billiond dollar question. Are your AI investments actually are they actually driving better business outcomes? And if you can't answer that question, strategy collection can surely help you. In the next several minutes, you'll see what strategic steering in action actually looks like. You'll watch a leader like yourselves see the drift, act with confidence, and drive results. All right, ready to jump in. Meet Jen, SVP of technology at Deacon Stone Financial. She kicks off her Monday morning in Claude with her chief of staff agent. Look, her agent can brief her anytime. Of course, you know this, but a couple of weeks ahead of her quarterly delivery review, she asks her agent, "How is her portfolio actually trending? Let's take a look.

3:43 Help me prep for my executive delivery review. How is my portfolio trending?" Now, like a real human chafer staff, her agent already knows her priorities and objectives, and it can track the moving parts, right? But here's the magic. Together with the Atlassian MCP and strategy collection, her agent stitches a full picture together across her first party and thirdparty tools. Strategy collection enriches the teamwork graph with its context we spoke about. And boom, there's the result. Beacon's priority unfortunately off track. Two reasons why it says one, spike in AI spend. Second, critical capacity constraint. Not exactly the Monday morning update she was hoping for I'm sure but you know such as life salv she clicks into strategy collection to see her for you experience in the focus app focus is your command center as a leader this is strategic intelligence across all of your top priorities and there you go the same rash she saw in cloud beacon's capacity up in the AI spend and here's capacity down. She decides to tackle spend first. Who wouldn't tackle spend first? One click into the funds experience.

5:06 This is funds for you in strategy collection. Budget baseline actuals forecast and variance all in one view. Rovo can show her the why behind her variance. Take a look. Teamwork graph and strategy collection context. Go to work. And there it is. That was super fast. By the way, AI spent running 2.5x cost over her plan. Now, she figured this out in days, right? Not 3 months later as a leader in her quarterly review. That's the power of the teamwork graph with strategy collection context.

5:45 It connects the dots instantly for you. All right. Now, Robo surfaced the why. She wants to drill in more to act with confidence as a leader. Let's see. She's directed into the AI consumption experience in talent. Talent is now the one-stop shop for human and AI capital management. You saw this in the founder keynote. Here she can drill into the beacon assist priority we spoke about off track. Ro flacks the spike. She verifies, right? The cost is climbing.

6:20 You see it? But interestingly, the usage is flat. Huh? What's wrong with the cost? She drills in to learn more. She can see the cost here by your model provider as well as the model behind it. And there it is, exactly what she was looking for. For the month of September, there's a spike in cost because of a new frontier model that did not exist in the month of August. Now, this is a real trade-off action for engineering, right?

6:50 Jen needs to account for this as a leader. Does she need to account for more budget for the new frontier model the team's using, or is she going to ask her team to get work done like Tarun said in the founder keynote through cheaper models? What once her couple of weeks of spreadsheet mathematics and I'm sure, by the way, like Sherlock Holmes style cross team investigation, she can now figure out in minutes. That's the power of strategy collection. Now let's see zooming out a little bit.

7:20 Talent brings AI consumption both in terms of tokens and dollars into the same view as your people their priorities as well as the goals on the priorities. For the very first time you can see AI consumptions by priority. You heard it right. Where is your AI spend going by the priorities and goals of what the team is working on. You can see your AI budget spent. Leaders need governance, right? You can see AI cost to labor cost ratio. You can see your AI cost per position, meaning people. And you can see average AI adoption per per person. Now ask yourselves in the organizations you are in, are you seeing your AI consumption right next to the people and their priorities or are you seeing it in an invoice? That's what strategy collection unlocks for you. Not just tracking AI consumption in terms of tokens and dollars, but understanding the business value or the business context outcome that I spoke about earlier.

8:27 All right, back on Jen's for you page. Where else would she go? There it is. Problem number one addressed. Problem number two, beacon assist has a capacity gap. Instead of Jen firing off a frantic screenshot in Slack like I would earlier as a leader myself, she doesn't need to do that anymore, right? Her chief of staff agent can package the context and send a note to her team through AI. Enter Ben. He looks super happy. VP of engineering on Jen's team. Normally, this would surely be his time to panic.

9:06 Got a note from the big boss. What would he do? He'd be digging in to see where is my capacity model, figure out, oh no, it's outdated. What are the skills of the people on my team that I can put on this problem with strategy collection? Maybe that's why he's happy. He doesn't need to panic. He's got the answer waiting for him. Let's check it out. So, one click into focus and Ben can see his capacity across his stack crank priorities for the year. Yes, that's right. Capacity in focus.

9:40 Right away the problem is clear to him right he can see beacon assist priority off track 15 engineer shot but wait for it robo because of the teamwork graph context with strategy collection can already tell you what is the recommendation and the fix against it clicks into robo recommendation find me 15 engineers with machine learning skills very very fast working on a lower priority project and there it is the list of people. The interesting thing here I want to flag is how did it figure out the skills of people? Teamwork graph including strategy collection inferred the workforce skills of these folks across the first party and third party tools just looking at the work that they are doing. That's right. Introducing AI inferred workforce skills. Strategy collection then knows the stack rank priorities of the projects for the year.

10:38 It then marries it with that context. So you can see the list of people with their skills and the priority which is what Ben sees here. All right. He sees on the list right? But wait is year marked for a special project by Ben. So he doesn't want to seem so. So he asked Robo give me a a different recommendation. Again the context of the graph goes to work with strategy collection context and there is a new name. All right so list of 15 people new 15 people. What does he do next? He needs to verify this list. Right. So he can switch his view in focus to see capacity by people against the strategic priorities for the year. He verifies the list. This looks good. So he accepts Robo's suggestion to reallocate the 15 people. Now this is a draft plan and Robo visualizes the ramp of these 15 people. What does Ben do next? Talk to his team. Always a good idea. And then he commits the plan. So what you saw is Ben fixing his plan in minutes. Now multiply that across every team, every planning cycle and every priority in your organization.

11:52 That my friends is governing at enterprise scale. All right. Now, let's fast forward a couple of weeks. It's one thing as leaders we know to take action, but a totally different ballgame to drive the results, right? Action, result, not the same thing. So, what do you think? Did Jen stop the drift? What do you think? Let's check it out. She goes to focus. Where else will she go again? She can see the latest update across her priorities. And that's exactly what she was hoping to see. Card number one, beacon assist, capacity resolved. Matthew's s talking super fast, so it must be solving the problem.

12:32 15 engineers ramped and loaded. Card number two, AI spend problem also resolved. Jen has budgeted for new frontier model and spends back within guardrails. This is what it means to do strategic steering and see the drift. Act with confidence and drive the results. This is strategy collection. And today we're putting the power of strategy collection and strategic steering in your hands.

13:03 Generally available all a strategy collection through Atlassian MCP funds and focus and in open beta. A new for you experience and focus planning. You heard it right. all of planning in focus along with in talent AI consumption and AI spend and AI inferred workforce skills. And if you're a Jiraine customer, all this is ready for you today. All right, now for the most exciting part. It's not the last 10 minutes, but it's what's to come. Let's hear from a customer who's truly steering at enterprise scale. It's my honor to welcome my partner in crime, head of product marketing for strategy collection, Monica, and the wonderful, amazing Helen Laauo, general manager of engineering platform at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Thank you everyone and enjoy the rest of team Europe.

14:00 >> Oh my gosh. Thank you for joining us. >> Yes, thanks Monica. My pleasure. But it's a long trip to get here just to let you know. >> Yeah. What? How many? 33. Yes, 33 hours for for for me to get here. >> Gratitude. But we have a great story. So, it was it was worth the flight. So, thank you. so, to set the stage for all of you, Commonwealth Bank is one of Australia's largest institutions.

14:26 and as Asha said, you're truly running at at massive scale. So before we dive into the journey, tell everybody a little bit about yourself, your team and the vision for CBA in terms of your transformation journey. >> Sure. Helen Laauo here. I lead the engineering platform team in Comwalth Bank of Australia. also known as CBA. We love acronyms. So CBA been at the bank for over a hundred years now in Australia. So all pretty much all of Australian will heard of us and bank with us one way or the other. our company strategy is the MPS plus 30. So what that means is we want our customer to be very happy with our product and services and we have a very very you know ambitious goal to be a world sort of leader in the AI banking sector. So we're currently ranked number four right now and we are working very very hard to climb up to the ladder into the number one. So AI is part of our DNA. We've been using adopt and embed AI everywhere in our business from customer experience to your fraud and scam to fi crime to cyber and now in my sort of own backyard is productivity is what is dear close to my heart and strategy collection is one of the example we're looking into it ROI on you know token spent is a real thing for us because we we are one of the early adopter in AI not kidding now our engineers is asking what's my AI token budget monthly and they try to increase that as as part of joining a team.

16:09 >> We're familiar. Yes. Yes. Yes. >> no, we were just talking backstage. I mean you guys have been innovating with AI starting back even 10 years ago. So you if you want to learn more about transformation with that it CBA is this is an incredible kind of guinea pig in terms of how you've been testing a lot of that. So, as we think about how Atlassian has been partnering with you on that AI journey, we've been working with you for nearly two decades, right? Yeah. I mean, we came in way back in the day. Tell us a little bit about that journey with Atlassian from the tooling to a co-build partnership. I think this is a lot of the the how.

16:53 and then a little bit more on how AI is truly helping to drive that transformation for your customer experience as well. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sure. so Monica already mentioned that we've been using Alassian almost two decades now. So Australian biggest bank, Australian biggest tech company. Of course we have a strong partnership locally. We started with the lassian on many of the customer leaders will be familiar with onrem and also multiple instance quite organically from a different team different department they adopt like jura influence with very early days then we go through the maturity of enterprise and also single to a data center instance and that was a maturity learning and also four years ago we migrated to cloud and back then it was the biggest cloud migration and we were the first bank that hosts our Alassian Juro confluence on cloud.

17:53 >> >> not to you know shy on that is there were a lot of I would say limitation or area that we came across when we did our cloud migration. we're not compared to your biggest global bank not that big but we still have about 35,000 users so it's not small. So at that scale four years ago when we did the migration we actually faced a lot of challenges either from a data mapping capacity performance load and all that and that code built was going to fundamental we started a lot of the feature actually I think from memory is 22 features was code built with CBA so it caters for our instance working in Alassen cloud. So thank you for that.

18:40 No, that co-uild is really a lot of the key to success from our conversations. Yes. Yes. >> so let's now jump into strategy, right? one of the areas as we as we've been partnering over the years, you got to as kind of as Asha spoke to the need to be able for your leadership to better connect the strategy to that execution layer. And before Atlassian came in, you had tried and attempted that several times. Sounds like unsuccessfully, but we all have we all have our learnings and grow from those.

19:18 and so tell us a little bit about that that challenge and what you took away from that. Yeah, I I want to share that as lessons learned rather than failure or mistakes because when we tell our boss about I fail or I stuff up. It's a very different story to I learned something from this experience or this approach. >> and and I would say at going back to maybe myself and my predecessor, they all make the right decision at that point in time given the context or the environment they're in. but throughout the years we actually learned you know different approach try different tool and not to I would say the best fit for our organization and we basically every time every approach we learn something new and we built upon that and make it better the next time we try. So we actually gone through the whole sort of agile transformation and we've a company at our size over 50,000 employees. We're still in the fundamental early days of transformation arguing about what's a milestone, what's a plan, what's a OKR, what's a business outcome, what's a what's the output?

20:31 You're not alone. We all do. Yeah. So that that takes time to embed the process and built that muscle and DNA on the agile and we learn from every single time and we pay I call it tuition fee >> from that lessons learned and we make it better. So I want to share spoil it on the on our sort of implementation with the strategy collection as well. Sorry. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so tell us a little bit more. You took those lessons, which I love that those learnings.

21:04 and then as you as you were as you took those to build your connected operating model, tell us a little bit more of the impact that that started to have on the organization and as you applied that. Yeah. >> Yes. let's start with the impact. So, front team model came out earlier the year. I would say if you haven't shifted your priority then you are probably live under the rock. I would say that has shift globally a lot of our workload and because we actually went and implement the whole sort of top down approach. We have visibility in terms of top priority that helped us shift pivot very quickly.

21:45 >> Yeah. >> But nevertheless we also learn our lessons with strategy collection implementation as well. So our first attempt was back in September last year. >> We did a 12 weeks pilot or P with two departments. at week eight I have to cut short and phone my boss saying I've learned a lesson. I need to cut this short and I need to reflect and make it better next time. So what it means is is not ready. either organization or Alassian or CBA wasn't ready to roll this out groupwide. So we stopped and I asked my risk slap. So I got that and then but the thing is you learn and you pay the lesson.

22:30 >> Yeah. >> And I would say Alassian CBA got together form a small army we have one mission to deliver this successfully. both we can go back to our boss saying we delivered this and I'm not going to spoil but I would brag on this we did it in six weeks so we attempt this in March six weeks that's impressive that's impressive yeah and I would give a lot of credit to the co-artnership there right that co-build motion of sitting down at the table and saying this is what we need to go achieve and then this is what we need the technology to be able to do to achieve that. yeah, so lessons on both sides. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

23:17 >> I I see some Alassian on the floor here. you know who you are. Yes. Simon. Helen was very demanding back in March and and we successfully delivered that after 6 weeks and we have a celebration and we both cheered like with that in six weeks we migrated over 9,000 goals and train all our top 20% of the organization. This is up to your sea level how to use the tool. So it's not easy and your whole hand brown bag sessions and all done within six weeks with zero outage, zero incident and that is without a doubt without a small army is not possible.

23:57 >> Yeah. Armies on both sides and an incredible advisory team as well too and customer success motion. So yes. Yes. Okay. So now we've got with Atlassian and strategy collection in motion now. tell us a little bit about how it's helping you deliver on the outcomes and the impact it's having across your organization as it relates to ROI towards that AI native vision that you have at CBA. >> Yep. if you read our sort of annual report, I'm not sure you would. last financial report, we already reported to the market we have bank about $200 million of AI benefits. So this financial year we're aiming for $400 million. So that's our goal and that's share from top down to from our CEO down to every single person across the organization. Doesn't m matter you're a frontline staff or you're an engineer in my team. So that's sort of a shared vision and how it roll down roll up is the transparency. So if you have that in front of you and you're saying I need to build an awesome product and services for my customer at the same time I need to deliver these value and you need to think of how you do your job best basically.

25:13 >> Yeah. And what is that measure of success for your team and I love the customer centricity over there. Yes. Yes. >> All right. So we've got a room full of transformational leaders here. some of them might be embarking early on this journey. how how should one get started? and what are some tips for success that you should look at along the way? >> I would say the first thing is to try. >> Yeah. >> And fail or mistake is fine. You just go to your boss say I've learned a lesson not I made a mistake. but if you want to walk away to say tangible tips for you to successfully deliver you know the implementation for your organization I will give three tip one is to co-uild that could be internally you co-built with other team that is not reporting to you or you co-built that with your supply like Alassian as a partnership to deliver the what you need for your organization. The second tip is to invest into your people. So at the end of the day if I don't have that small army that six week is not possible. It it is because we both invested into our talent into into our people with equip them with the right skill equipment tools process and that will help us a main ingredient to success. And last not the least is customer focus like you need to know what are you doing and who's your end user or customer of your product. So for strategy collection is my top 20% of the organization. So if I stuff it up, it's very obvious to the CEO that our team stuff it up. So you would do everything that you could to make sure that you don't stuff it up.

27:02 >> There you go. Thank you, Helen. This was great. Yes. You guys all take away some good stuff here from Helen? Yep. >> Yes. Awesome. >> Well, thank you. Appreciate it, Monica. >> Awesome. So, as you've heard from Helen, what CBA is doing is truly the blueprint for an AI native organization. Really powering that connected operating model that Asha spoke to that's uniting your strategic intent to those outcomes. And honestly, CBA is not alone. If you've been here at team, you've heard that Expedia has connected their strategic priorities to investments and delivery all in a governed operating model, cutting over a hundred priorities down to 10. And we have McLaren Automotive, who was here as well, talking about how they connected five functions down to one data set, saving over 4,000 hours in combined admin prep overall lowering lowering their overall vehicle costs. As we think about that, and we heard Asha talk about this, we all know shift happens. It's inevitable, but it doesn't have to derail your strategy. So, think about what Asha just showed us. In just a few clicks, runaway AI spend caught in days.

28:24 Critical capacity gaps solved in minutes. That's the power of a connected operating model. less friction, greater efficiency, and the ability to turn every shift into your ultimate competitive advantage. And with that, enjoy the rest of team and thank you. Cheers all.