Is Atlassian the answer to burnout?

Burnout is a serious problem, where individuals are emotionally, physically and mentally exhausted due to a prolonged and excessive period of stress. The symptoms may vary but you may feel emotionally drained, overwhelmed, and unable to meet your responsibilities.

Research reveals that this phenomenon is prevalent in the tech industry, with more than half (57%) of those working in the sector reporting to feeling burnt out in their jobs.

When it comes to your working life, burnout can reduce your productivity. Eventually, you may begin to lose interest and motivation in your job altogether. But the negative effects of burnout can spread into every aspect of your work, home and social life.

Because of its many consequences, it’s important to deal with burnout right away and there are many different ways to reduce its effects.

Recently, we spoke with a range of professionals working in Silicon Valley about how and why they use the Atlassian suite of products and services. Many identified several pros and cons of Atlassian migration, using Jira and Atlassian’s other tools to help you manage your workload – with several mentioning how Atlassian has helped them avoid burnout.

In this post, we’re going to look at these comments in more detail and focus on the specific pros (and cons) of using Atlassian to help you reduce your stress levels in the workplace.

#1 You can prioritise and automate your workload

Have you taken on too much in your job? A recent Gallup report revealed an unmanageable workload is a top five factor leaders should focus on to reduce burnout.

This is where Atlassian and, more specifically, Jira can help you prioritise your workload and delegate your tasks across your team and your wider organisation. As Jira has grown, so has the range of tools, plugins and level of automation available to further streamline your projects.

As a result, you can take a more holistic approach to your work. Here’s how Jira can address some of the effects of burnout:

·         Stop multitasking: research reveals that multitasking decreases your effectiveness, productivity and even reduce your IQ. Jira provides a rick toolkit, where you can get an overview of each project, its deadlines and connect to other platforms (including BitBucket and GitHub) to get full traceability.

·         Focus on outcomes: Jira allows you to prioritise your work based on your long-term business goals, which can help you see the wood from the trees, as instead of focusing on a never-ending to-do list, you can break your work down into manageable chunks. You can also map the value stream for any service, product or process using, for example, your service desk to track a request through to delivery.

·         Iterate, often, using Agile and DevOps: Jira embraces the ITIL framework, encouraging Agile and DevOps approaches so your team can adapt to specific situations, focus on the customer demands, and learn from failure. By rolling out frequent, small product iterations every couple of weeks, you eradicate the stress of deploying a major release every few months. Also, the Agile and DevOps methods are people-centric, allowing you to reflect on and discuss what works well, so your team can improve and build an open and collaborative culture, which is healthier for everyone.

·         Embrace adaptability: instead of insisting every project follows the same list of strict processes, Jira allows you to adopt adaptable behaviours and practices, based on collaboration and transparency. For example, the Atlassian Team Playbook is a great resource, providing step-by-step instructions for tracking your team’s health. Using the playbook’s Health Monitor feature, you get a health baseline for your team, helping you track progress and build trust within your team. What’s more, there are plenty of customisation options available too, helping you tailor this solution to your business requirements.

A senior systems engineer said: “I love Atlassian. The tools are great […] I really like the ability to customise and the flexible options [to further streamline the project management process].”

#2 There’s plenty of support and opportunity to communicate across your organization

A lack of communication and support from management, and unreasonable time pressures are two other major causes of burnout, according to the same Gallup study.

By integrating Jira with time-tracking software, you can see how much time you are spending on specific Jira projects and tasks. This helps you understand where your time is going and effectively communicate to your manager why you may need more time on a specific job.

In short, Jira helps you build a complete picture of where your team’s time is being spent – making everything less stressful for everyone as there are no hidden surprises.

Using Atlassian’s extensive community and range of support is also ‘a great idea’ according to many of the professionals we spoke to, helping you to communicate and find a solution to whatever problem you’re facing, as one of the respondent’s states: “With the Atlassian tools and especially Jira they are so customisable. So, it is always good to have people you can reach out too. You can find a lot of information there, but having a wider team helps to bounce ideas off others too.”

#3 Get specialist help when you need it

But don’t assume that Jira is the answer to all the dangers of burnout – it is a complex condition, and, in a similar vein, the complexities of Jira could add to the effects of burnout.

According to one senior Jira administrator: “We recently implemented a new Jira Cloud instance. There is so much work to be done. I am getting burnt out. I’ve reached a stage where I am so busy just keeping the lights on, I don’t have time to just do the actual additional work. This is really draining me out. I have been asking for help.” 

This statement also touches on so many of the important points when it comes to implementing Jira, or any other Atlassian solution, at your organisation. Namely, that it’s important to get help when you need it.

This is where ClearHub can relieve the burden for so many IT professionals, by helping you find the right people to implement the processes and technologies you need to meet the demands of migration. We help businesses fill this skills gap, hiring certified contractors with a range of specialist Atlassian knowledge, including expert Jira and Confluence contractors.

In conclusion

Jira and Atlassian’s tools are vital to many leading tech firms. As one respondent said: “We have 500 people in the organisation. 100% use Jira. It is mission critical.”

If you’d like to find out more about Atlassian migration and how you could use Atlassian at your organisation to help you tackle burnout and streamline your operations, why not drop us a line?