The Atlassian method: The power of developer joy

Atlassian on the power of developer joy

For over two decades, Atlassian has been synonymous with developer tooling, shaping the conversation around developer experience. A year ago, they introduced a new term to the lexicon: developer joy. In the second installment of our series on foundational team principles, we speak with Matt Schvimmer, Senior Vice President of Product for Agile and DevOps at Atlassian, to learn about the origins of this philosophy, its compounding effects, and the emerging concept of “team joy.”

What is developer joy?

On the surface, developer joy—the concept of removing friction so developers can focus on what they love doing—might seem like a rebrand of developer experience. But go a level deeper, and it’s clear that it’s a much more considered philosophy. While developer experience largely focuses on the ergonomics, processes, and products that define a developer’s end-to-end workflow, developer joy centers around the craft of development and the standards and values that define it. In fact, the Atlassian team sees developer joy as the new developer experience, and they’re making it a company priority.

In 2022, Atlassian was facing productivity hurdles. “We routinely missed almost everything on the public roadmap,” says Matt. “It was just, ‘We’ll change Q2 to say Q3.’” Beyond a productivity hit, developer employee satisfaction scores were less than 50%.

This echoed a broader industry trend of systemic dissatisfaction, largely caused by poor tooling and systems. “It’s like 10% of your week is spent just looking for information to help you do your job,” Matt says. By his estimate, many developers also spend 20–30% of their time interfacing with design, working with other cross-functional teams, and participating in planning—all activities that take time away from core development work. “There are all these friction points that create cognitive load that take the joy out of work,” he adds. Atlassian needed a way to infuse joy back into work.

To learn how Atlassian operationalized joy with a “champions” program, measured its business value, and paved the way for team joy, read the full article.

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