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Weld North Education Partners with Isos Technology to Merge Two Atlassian Instances within the Cloud
20%
next-gen projects
2
separate cloud instances
15+
years in service
Project Snapshot
- A restructuring of engineering teams required the merging of two separate instances of Atlassian Cloud.
- The project had an extremely tight timeline—detailed planning, good communication, rapid responses, and in-depth UAT were critical to success.
- The new, merged instance streamlines processes and increases efficiencies—no more logging in and out of multiple systems.
- The organization can now plan PIs, has better insight into workin-progress, and can more easily pull detailed reports.
- The organization now benefits from economies of scale with a single instance, fewer user seats, and a tighter handle on apps.
- A governance committee, formed to support the merge, continues to oversee how the tool is used and scaled
Our client
Weld North Education develops supplemental, digital learning and assessment tools for students from elementary through high school. The organization’s literacy and math tools have been in use by school districts across the country for more than fifteen years, and are instrumental in closing learning gaps and helping students prepare for higher education.
Challenge
Weld North Education initially had two distinct engineering teams working independently in separate Jira and Confluence Cloud instances. However, due to a restructuring of engineering resources, they developed a shared set of projects in which staff from both teams needed to work. The need for a single, overarching Jira Software and Confluence instance soon became apparent: with shared projects in both instances, engineers had to log in and out of multiple systems to get their work done which led to confusion and delays. It was nearly impossible to get a clear picture of the totality of work being done, to pull reports, and to plan for future work.
Further, each instance had its own administrator, and each team brought its own set of processes and practices. Weld North Education recognized the opportunity to exert stronger governance that would ensure consistency and quality throughout the organization, make for cleaner reporting, and better position them to scale. The organization also recognized it was not realizing economies of scale—there were increased hard costs associated with maintaining the two instances and two sets of apps, as well as with providing individual users with seats in each instance.
Weld North Education’s IT procurement team identified Isos Technology as their partner of choice to merge their two Atlassian instances into one. Then, the organization formed a 10-person governance committee to provide input on how they wanted the system to be set up. Grant McAllister, a Program Manager on the Business Transformation team, served as the primary project lead and day-to-day point person.
Solution
Weld North Education was on a tight timeline for the project, which consisted of a cloud-to-cloud merger of two instances of Jira Software, Confluence, Bitbucket, Opsgenie, and Access, and the consolidation and merger of several Atlassian and third-party Marketplace applications. Approximately 20% of the projects were next gen which are particularly complex to migrate.
The project incorporated a detailed discovery process; review and refinement of the plan; iterative testing; user acceptance testing and validation; the final cutover; and concurrent training to ensure all users were prepared to work in the new system.
To ensure the project went smoothly and was completed on time, Isos Technology mapped out a detailed process. Because every merge is different, and there are always unforeseen challenges that must be worked through, it was essential that both parties communicate regularly and clearly, be flexible, and be responsive. These goals were supported by Atlassian tools, a dedicated Slack channel, and daily stand-ups.
The process was streamlined because Weld North Education’s governance committee and dedicated project manager had a deep knowledge of how the Atlassian tools worked and were well-informed about how each of their instances were configured and used. This strengthened the vendor-client partnership, supported collaboration and problem solving, and led to more efficient decision making.
The project included a rigorous user acceptance testing process: the team created a UAT project in Jira, and project leads were assigned a list of tasks to complete by a given due date. When issues arose, bugs were created for the Isos Technology team to resolve. The project was successfully completed on time, with a minimum of issues. McAllister explains: “The number of issues our help desk responded to post-migration was significantly lower than with other software migrations and merges—within two or three days, every issue was completely resolved.”
Results
Streamlined processes: With a single, integrated Atlassian instance, processes run more efficiently, and the team operates cohesively. No more logging in and out of multiple systems, which McAllister describes as, “frictionless, with no barriers to getting work done.”
Increased efficiency: Weld North Education is now experiencing gains in efficiencies around planning quarterly program increments (PIs) and can now track quarterly commitments. Further, the single instance has significantly improved visibility into workin-progress and has made reporting easier. And with a single instance of Access, managing the onboarding and offboarding of users is also more straightforward.
Enhanced governance: Weld North Education now has a foundational platform designed to support consistent processes and practices throughout their organization. The governance committee that was established to participate in the merge continues to have oversight of how the system is used, how it evolves, and how it is scaled, including the introduction of new thirdparty Marketplace apps.
Economies of scale: Weld North Education is now able to fully realize the economies of scale that come from right-sizing their instances. They no longer have to pay for multiple instances or for individual users to have seats in each instance. Further, they have minimized the costs associated with third-party Marketplace apps by consolidating them and eliminating ones that were not widely used.
It’s important to work with a trusted partner like Isos Technology who can guide you through the process, identify potential pitfalls, get the work done quickly, and minimize downtime. I especially appreciated their custom scripts and other tools for problem solving.
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