Practical activity 5: (Product Mgt Course) How would you implement effective continuous improvement practices?

Let’s take a look at an example of continuous improvement practices at the company Atlassian.

Atlassian, a software company that offers products to product managers and development teams, has successfully created and sustained a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. Atlassian achieves this in a few different ways.

Firstly, to drive innovation, employees are given 20% of their allocated work time to spend on personal projects. [1] This is modelled on Google’s innovation strategy, where personal projects often can be transformed into creative new features or products for the organisation. This strategy requires Atlassian to allow their employees the time to work on these personal projects, which is an expensive risk for the company since 20% of employees’ time is given away to experimentation. However, to ensure that this time is used productively, employees focus their personal projects on the team, how it operates, and what they do.

Secondly, Atlassian cultivated a culture of continuous improvement to support innovation. Specifically, Atlassian split their employees into small teams and encouraged them to own their career path by embracing and identifying challenges and strengths. What they found was that successful teams handled challenges differently to other teams, so to help those who struggled, Atlassian implemented a workshopping resource called the Team Playbook. They gathered the practices that successful teams used and created short, purposeful workshops and exercises that enabled teams to learn and adopt these practices. [2]

For example, Atlassion’s Health Monitor [3] helps teams to assess their strengths and weaknesses. Once some weaknesses have been identified, teams and employees can use other plays to strengthen these areas.

Instructions: How do you implement continuous improvement practices?

Taking dedicated work time to innovate and find continuous improvement opportunities can be an expensive cost for an organisation. Considering what you have just learned, complete the following:

1. Explain in a brief paragraph:
   • How might you go about implementing effective continuous improvement practices?
   • What might you do differently to Atlassian?