Case: Atlassian
As IT inquiries were handled in multiple systems and channels, a need arose for better overview and control of IT service management at Georg Jensen.
SERVICES
- Jira Software (JSW)
- Jira Service Management (JSM)
Introduction
Georg Jensen is a Danish company with a long tradition of developing unique products of quality craftsmanship and timeless aesthetic design, ranging from watches, jewelry and home products.
When Georg Jensen established the collaboration with aety, Georg Jensen was interested in centralizing the management of user inquiries to their IT organization so they could better collaborate across departments, serve users better, and improve reporting.
At this time, Georg Jensen was using Jira Software (JSW) in the Cloud for their development projects and had a single Jira Service Management (JSM) project. Georg Jensen was not familiar with all of Jira’s functionalities at this time and therefore did not fully utilize the applications.
Development areas
Georg Jensen identified a number of areas with potential for improvement in their handling of IT and customer inquiries:
- IT user requests were handled via both email and the vendor's ITSM system, resulting in a lack of overview and making systematic case management difficult
- Dependence on the vendor's ITSM setup limited the ability to further develop and mature own ITSM processes
- Lack of insight into which countries the inquiries came from challenged reporting, resource allocation and budgeting
- Customer service lacked a unified knowledge platform with up-to-date and easily accessible information
- Knowledge was scattered across documents and versions, making it time-consuming to find correct information
- Limited connection between operations and development made it difficult to track tasks and status across
Implementation
Aety initially assisted Georg Jensen in implementing a Service Desk portal for end users, which acts as a single point of contact for all Georg Jensen users. This is regardless of whether the request is to be handled by Georg Jensen’s infrastructure supplier or whether it is Internal IT that handles the matter.
To support authentication and reporting capabilities, Aety helped set up JSM so that when a ticket is created, information about the user is retrieved from Azure AD (via automations) so that the ticket contains information about which department and country the user is from. If the case requires approval, Line Manager is also retrieved so that it can approve the request, e.g. when purchasing hardware/software.
Aety also helped configure a number of Jira Software projects so that Georg Jensen had closer and better collaboration between operations and development staff. Specifically, the setup works so that cases created in the operations JSM project that turn out to be change requests or bugs in existing code result in a case being automatically created for the development department in JSW, which is linked to the operations case.
The smart thing is that the developer who has to solve the issue can communicate directly with the end user or operations employee by prefixing the comment. The synchronization of comments is created via Jira’s automation engine.
Aety assisted in implementing an integration to Georg Jensen’s supplier’s ITSM system, completely without the use of custom code. The integration is built entirely on Jira’s automation engine. The integration synchronizes cases between Jira and the supplier’s ITSM system, which means that Georg Jensen only needs to navigate Jira to get a complete overview of all ongoing cases, regardless of whether they are solved internally by Georg Jensen or the supplier.
Similarly, an integration between one of the JSW projects and a software development provider has also been created so that the project manager can hand over development tasks if there is no internal capacity to solve them.
Aety has also helped streamline Georg Jensen’s ITSM processes so that they are more standardized. This has given Georg Jensen the following benefits:
- Onboarding new resources is easier when processes are consistent and approach industry standards. This is the case as new employees will often know the processes from other companies
- It's easier to maintain workflows in Jira
- Collaboration between different departments is improved when processes are standardized
How to proceed
When the project started, Georg Jensen was in a transition phase, where the Danish IT department was to be expanded to become more of a global corporate function. There were therefore a number of work processes that were not fixed. This challenge was solved by aety facilitating several on-site workshops and ongoing prototyping, so Georg Jensen had the opportunity to review and think through the processes along the way.
When the system went live, there was less need for education/training on the new processes. They were already incorporated during the implementation of the new processes in Jira.
The implementation project has been carried out in a close collaboration rather than a traditional customer/supplier relationship.
This was followed by several workshops where the participants in the working group were allowed to configure the systems on their own with the help of the consultants. This gave the customer the opportunity to train super users who got to know the systems inside out, while also allowing them to decide how to configure the systems themselves.
During the process, aety, in collaboration with the working group, continuously identified issues that could be quickly resolved jointly, as all participants in the working group had a decision-making mandate. This had the advantage of shortening the configuration process, as the working group of decision-makers were in agreement with the ongoing changes and had no objections later in the process.
After the configuration of the 3 systems and the subsequent implementation, aety held several training sessions for a wider group of employees to teach them how to work in the systems. Since the implementation of JSM, Jira Software and Confluence, aety has had follow-up support tasks related to the initial configuration of the systems, as well as new requests that the customer has subsequently received.
The results
- Insight into which departments and countries are reporting cases, supporting better prioritization of development budgets
- Shared overview and better reporting options
- Emails are no longer used to service users, as JSM's service portal is used to service users instead
- Establish standardized processes that are consistently applied across the organization
- Stronger connection between user requests and development work so developers' time is spent where it creates the most value
- Improved portfolio management capabilities in the IT PMO function supported by common processes and service portal
- Smoother workflow through integrations between Jira Software, Jira Service Management and vendors' IT systems