Projektmanagement und Kollaboration mit Confluence und Jira bei Austrian Standards International

The IT transformation project ‘Core’ required Tina Myerscough to use a great deal of tact at the organisational level. As project manager, she realised early on that the software used up to that point was no longer able to meet the requirements of project management in terms of progress and costs. ‘The project was so extensive that Excel lists were not sufficient when it came to efficient collaboration. It wasn't always easy to keep everyone involved in the IT project up to date,’ explains Myerscough. A particular challenge was coordinating internal and external development partners and collaborating on the development of new technical structures and models. The new software should make it possible to quickly and easily work out project-specific definitions and solutions in a team and make them available to everyone, as well as to be able to pass on reports to management more efficiently. It was important that the central control, documentation and scalability remain adaptable and flexible. ‘We were looking for a solution that would enable us to make the progress of individual work packages transparent for all parties involved and ensure collaboration on content.’

Jira and Confluence were first used at Austrian Standards for resource planning in the IT department in 2012. When the extensive core project started in 2016, the organisation was able to draw on a wealth of experience in using Atlassian tools. The main reason for the choice was the wide range of services compared to other tools. The attractive user interface, the large selection of app extensions via the marketplace and the seamless integration of Jira and Confluence were convincing. In 2016, the area of resource planning was also expanded to include the Jira Service Desk ticketing system, taking it to a new level. Working with tickets brought an enormous increase in productivity when managing issues. After proving its worth, the Atlassian toolchain has also established itself in other departments, such as HR.

As a reliable Atlassian partner, catworkx always provided support to the Austrian company when it needed quick help with ad hoc problems or questions related to the large-scale project. ‘Regardless of the size and complexity of the problems, catworkx always provides us with very well thought-out solutions that are tailored to our requirements. The honest and open communication defines for us a partner we can trust,’ says Myerscough. To set up the project management professionally, the design and floor plan of the new IT architecture were delivered by the catworkx team Austria within the analysis phase in the “Core” project. In various workshops, the knowledge level of internal and external development partners on Jira and Confluence was aligned to a basic level.

‘The first thing catworkx showed us that met our requirements perfectly was the Team Calenders for Confluence. To be able to display the project roadmap automatically, the tool became the link between Confluence, for content control, and Jira as the ticket system. ‘The reporting in Confluence was used to map milestones that had to be delivered to management at the end of the month,’ says Myerscough. Project content could be shared in a structured way within the team without a great deal of administrative overhead and graphical effort. Meanwhile, the entire error, task and quality management is managed with Jira and Confluence. The use of Confluence enables transparent and collaborative work, independent of documents and folder structures. Task and resource planning was solved with Jira. Tasks are easier to create, prioritise, review and manage with Atlassian tools. ‘We wanted to keep the project administrative effort as low as possible. The aim was to make the progress of each work package automatically measurable by switching from Excel to Jira and Confluence, and the Atlassian software has enabled us to do that,’ says Myerscough. Jira Service Desk has replaced an email helpline and has also led to better cooperation through more open communication.

Efficient project management is constantly being expanded through agile Atlassian solutions. Jira and Confluence now support Austrian Standards in implementing large projects and documentation. According to Myerscough, Austrian Standards has arrived at the point where project management is being professionalised and extended to the entire organisation with catworkx as a service provider. The numbers speak for themselves: the number of users has risen from ten at the beginning to 70. By 2019, all 125 employees are to be integrated into this process. But Myerscough is also clear that the IT architecture will continue to grow: ‘We are agile and the project will never be finished.’ The next project has already started: catworkx is currently helping the company set up an intranet PoC.