Atlassian Teams 25: What Did it Mean for the Scaled Agile Community?

I recently attended Atlassian's Team '25 conference in Anaheim (April 8-10), a high-energy event full of major product announcements, AI innovation, and thousands of passionate attendees from across industries. While Atlassian is best known for developer tools like Jira and Confluence, it’s clear the company is evolving into a full-fledged enterprise platform. For the SAFe community, this evolution opens exciting opportunities—and presents interesting challenges.

Beyond Developer Tools: Bidding to Become the Enterprise Platform

CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes unveiled numerous announcements during the Founders keynote - new product packaging (Teamwork Collection, Strategy Collection), revised pricing strategies, the crowd-pleasing Rovo AI assistant for all users, and Atlassian Government Cloud.

My takeaway? Atlassian is pursuing growth by expanding beyond software delivery to become the platform for managing all knowledge work across enterprises. Their strategy centers on common data (via the Teamwork Graph), unified AI interfaces (Rovo), and a collaborative philosophy (their "System of Work").

This enterprise expansion creates tremendous opportunities for SAFe professionals. As Atlassian climbs the enterprise stack, SAFe offers essential guidance for effectively leveraging their platform across organizations—helping to avoid fossilizing existing practices or merely optimizing local functional silos. SAFe, as the operating system for business agility—with guidance for alignment, agility, and learning at scale—has never been more important.

Atlassian's Big Bet: AI as Your Teammate

In my humble opinion, Rovo stole the show - Atlassian's AI assistant that integrates across Jira, Confluence, Loom, and more. Positioned as a "trusted teammate," Rovo leverages the Teamwork Graph to power intelligent search, automation, and collaborative AI agents.

Their vision of AI as a “trusted teammate” rather than just a tool is compelling. Sessions featuring Rovo were among the most packed, demonstrating genuine excitement for AI-powered productivity.

The risk with such powerful tools is the temptation to take a "tools first" approach to transformation, potentially creating AI-fortified silos and misalignment. This is where SAFe shines, providing guidance for aligning people, processes, and tools at scale.

System of Work: A Philosophy Aligned with SAFe

Atlassian expanded their "System of Work" to a four-pillar model that includes:

• Align work to goals
• Plan and track work together
• Unleash collective knowledge
• Realize the full power of AI teammates

It doesn't take much to see SAFe as an exemplar of this philosophy. With core values like alignment and transparency, and principles such as "organize around the flow of value," SAFe provides a framework for realizing Atlassian's vision.

A Learning Moment: AI + Personalized Learning

The closing keynote with Sal Khan (Khan Academy) and Ben Gomes (Google) offered a glimpse into learning's future in the AI era. AI enables scaled personalized learning - evaluating learners, designing paths, delivering content, assessing progress, and adapting continuously. Khan's latest project, Khanmigo, exemplifies this approach. The implications for training and certification are both exciting and profound.

Final Thoughts

Atlassian Team '25 provided insight into enterprise work's evolving landscape - more connected, AI-driven, and dependent on shared understanding. For those invested in business agility at scale, the message was clear: AI can become our trusted teammate and frameworks like SAFe ensure alignment and systems thinking remains paramount.