Atlassian Advisory Services Enables Strategic Portfolio Management At Scale


Spotlight Atlassian Advisory Services Enables Strategic Portfolio Management At Scale COMMISSIONED BY Atlassian, September 2026 T B M K [CONTENT] [CONTENT] Atlassian commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by partnering with Advisory Services.¹ This abstract will focus on how organizations engaged Advisory Services to accelerate their strategic portfolio management initiatives by helping realize the full value of Atlassian Strategy Collection.² The interviewees we spoke with discussed strategic portfolio management initiatives they undertook with the help of Atlassian Advisory Services. The product owner for a large retailer is responsible for enterprise work management and collaboration platforms, overseeing the Atlassian stack across the organization. The role spans strategy, licensing, support, training, and adoption, ensuring that teams effectively use the platform to improve productivity, collaboration, and the alignment of work across business functions. The head of engineering for a financial services organization is responsible for delivering and governing enterprisewide engineering and collaboration platforms, supporting over 25,000 users. The role connects business strategy to execution by providing the tools, workflows, and practices that drive change delivery, standardization, and portfolio visibility across the organization. Organizations increasingly recognize the importance of connecting strategy with execution, but interviewees explained that technology alone was not sufficient to achieve enterprisewide transformation. Successfully scaling strategic portfolio management required their organizations to establish consistent planning practices, governance models, portfolio structures, and adoption approaches that reflected how their businesses operated. Interviewees described partnering with Advisory Services to accelerate this process, reduce operational risk, and establish a foundation for long-term portfolio management success. Investment Drivers For Advisory Services The interviewees’ organizations adopted Advisory Services to support their strategic portfolio initiatives. Interviewees identified the following key challenges that drove their investment: Limited strategic visibility and alignment. Interviewees reported limited visibility into strategic initiatives, which made it difficult to align work with organizational priorities and measure progress against business goals. Jira practices varied across business units, limiting cross-team visibility and the ability to manage investments at an enterprise level. The product owner at a retailer said, “The biggest driver was the need for better visibility and transparency into what teams were working on and whether efforts aligned with organizational goals.” Fragmented portfolio planning and inconsistent execution. Interviewees explained that their organizations struggled to plan and deliver consistently across large, distributed teams, in some cases spanning tens of thousands of engineers across business units. The lack of a consistent approach limited standardization and made it difficult to coordinate planning and execution at scale. Scaling strategic portfolio management. Interviewees said they lacked consistent portfolio management practices to support Strategy Collection as its adoption expanded across the organization. They needed standardized planning practices, governance, and an operating model to help prioritize investments, track outcomes, and sustain enterprisewide adoption. Interviewees reported that Advisory Services helped them realize greater value from their existing Atlassian investment by helping them understand and take advantage of platform capabilities they were not fully utilizing. The product owner at a retailer said: “People did not know about features like advanced roadmaps, which really enhance visibility. With guidance from Advisory Services, we were able to surface these capabilities, educate users, and design solutions that made that visibility actionable for the business.” Advisory Services Features The interviewees’ organizations chose to invest in Advisory Services for the following reasons: Portfolio and solution design and configuration. The interviewees used Advisory Services to assess how their organizations planned, tracked, and reported portfolio work across business units; Advisory Services then designed a unified portfolio structure that aligned to team-level execution and each organization’s operating model. This included configuration guidance and best practices that provided hierarchical views across initiatives, products, and teams so that leaders could report on portfolio performance and drill down into individual workstreams. Advisory Services not only enabled these capabilities within the platform but also defined how each organization’s portfolio structure should map to its operating model. The product owner at a retailer highlighted the importance of this alignment: “We now have views that clearly show how work contributes to top-level goals and objectives. From there, we can drill down into the details to track progress and see whether initiatives are moving forward.” Planning practices and decision-making optimization. The interviewees used Advisory Services to standardize planning approaches, redesign how planning data flowed to decision-makers, and design data structures and workflows that captured and surfaced real-time portfolio reviews. This improved visibility into work, reduced manual effort, and enabled faster, more informed decision-making and accurate portfolio reviews. Previously, executive portfolio reviews required the manual aggregation of information from across business units, consuming significant resources and often resulting in outdated insights. Advisory Services designed data structures and workflows that captured and surfaced real-time planning data, allowing portfolio reviews to be driven by current platform data rather than manually assembled presentations. The head of engineering at a financial services organization explained: “We were spending a significant amount of time just pulling together data for planning cycles, and by the time it was ready, it was already out of date. Now, leadership can go directly to the system and see what’s happening in real time.” Operating model design. Advisory Services helped interviewees’ organizations design a strategic portfolio management operating model aligned to their organizational structure and business objectives. This included defining roles and decision rights while aligning stakeholders around a consistent portfolio management approach across business units. “We were originally thinking this whole phase to get to that simplification was going to take us three to four years. We’re thinking about saving at least a year off that.” Head of engineering, financial services Key Results The results of the investment for the interviewees’ organizations include: A more integrated, real-time approach to portfolio management. The interviewees’ organizations began with fragmented tools and siloed execution that limited portfolio visibility and strategic alignment. By using Advisory Services to align Strategy Collection to their portfolio structures, planning practices, governance, and operating models, the interviewees were able to achieve: Better strategic alignment and faster decision-making. Interviewees reported a clearer connection between strategic goals, initiatives, and execution within Strategy Collection, giving leaders greater visibility into work across the organization. With more consistent portfolio data and standardized governance, decision-makers were better equipped to prioritize investments, align teams to organizational goals, and make faster, more informed decisions. Interviewees’ organizations established a single source of truth that enabled leadership to dynamically reprioritize work as priorities evolved. The head of engineering at a financial services organization said: “We are providing a much more streamlined way of delivering data and insights into projects at all levels, all the way down to teams and individuals. Our CEO refers to this as a simplification.” The product owner at a retailer added, “It provides valuable insights into team productivity as well as alignment to organizational goals.” Accelerated delivery and increased productivity. Interviewees reported that standardized planning processes reduced manual coordination across teams and improved collaboration during planning. This streamlined planning activities, reduced duplicate effort, and enabled teams to spend more time delivering strategic initiatives rather than on planning overhead. The product owner at a retailer said, “Teams provided positive feedback on how much easier it is now to collaborate and run planning activities, including quarterly planning and other rituals.” Optimized resources and reduced operational costs. Interviewees reported that establishing a strategic portfolio management operating model, supported by consistent planning processes and governance, reduced operational complexity across teams and minimized manual coordination across business units. This established a more scalable foundation for enterprise portfolio management as they grow. TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT ANALYSIS For more information, download the full study: The Total Economic Impact™ Of Atlassian Advisory Services, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Atlassian, January 2026. Study Findings While the value story above is based on two interviews, Forrester interviewed eight total representatives at organizations with experience using Advisory Services and combined the results into a three-year financial analysis for a composite organization. Risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include: Internal Atlassian app team efficiencies from streamlined enterprise technical strategy and planning. Working with the internal Atlassian app team, the composite reduces the average project timeline by 25%, and this allows for significant savings on the management and development of app functionality. Over three years, these savings amount to $388,000. Avoided technical debt and app optimization. Working with Atlassian Advisory Services allows the composite to develop improved solutions for users across the organization, which saves each an average of 2 hours per week on their tasks. This ongoing benefit saves the composite $1.5 million over three years. Enterprisewide efficiencies from improved adoption of Atlassian apps. Teaming with Advisory Services reduces the deployment time the composite needs for tailored solutions, and users receive apps an average of 12 weeks sooner. The faster time to deployment saves the composite $9.6 million over three years. 260% Return on investment (ROI) $11.5M Benefits PV $8.3M Net present value (NPV) Appendix A Endnotes ¹ Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists solution providers in communicating their value proposition to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of business and technology initiatives to both senior management and other key stakeholders. ² Strategy Collection is Atlassian’s AI-native strategic portfolio management solution that connects priorities, people, work, funding, and outcomes. It gives leaders and teams a dynamic way to see and respond to change, navigate complexity, and turn informed decisions into the right outcomes. Summarize with AI Get an instant summary of this study, shaped for how you'll use it. Pick a focus to begin. Summaries are AI-generated and do not represent an endorsement by Forrester. Check key figures against the full study. Get an instant summary of this study, shaped for how you'll use it. Pick a focus to begin. Summaries are AI-generated and do not represent an endorsement by Forrester. Check key figures against the full study. Starter Prompt Copied! Copy Summaries are AI-generated and do not represent an endorsement by Forrester. Check key figures against the full study. [CONTENT] Disclosures Readers should be aware of the following: This study is commissioned by Atlassian and delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a competitive analysis. Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly advises that readers use their own estimates within the framework provided in the study to determine the appropriateness of an investment in Advisory Services. For any interactive functionality, the intent is for the questions to solicit inputs specific to a prospect’s business. Forrester believes that this analysis is representative of what companies may achieve with Advisory Services based on the inputs provided and any assumptions made. Forrester does not endorse Atlassian or its offerings. Although great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy and completeness of this model, Atlassian and Forrester Research are unable to accept any legal responsibility for any actions taken on the basis of the information contained herein. The interactive tool is provided ‘AS IS,’ and Forrester and Atlassian make no warranties of any kind. Atlassian reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its findings and does not accept changes to the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of the study. Atlassian provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate in the interviews. Consulting Team: Mary Barton Published September 2026

Atlassian commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by partnering with Advisory Services.¹ This abstract will focus on how organizations engaged Advisory Services to accelerate their strategic portfolio management initiatives by helping realize the full value of Atlassian Strategy Collection.²

The interviewees we spoke with discussed strategic portfolio management initiatives they undertook with the help of Atlassian Advisory Services.

The product owner for a large retailer is responsible for enterprise work management and collaboration platforms, overseeing the Atlassian stack across the organization. The role spans strategy, licensing, support, training, and adoption, ensuring that teams effectively use the platform to improve productivity, collaboration, and the alignment of work across business functions.
The head of engineering for a financial services organization is responsible for delivering and governing enterprisewide engineering and collaboration platforms, supporting over 25,000 users. The role connects business strategy to execution by providing the tools, workflows, and practices that drive change delivery, standardization, and portfolio visibility across the organization.

Organizations increasingly recognize the importance of connecting strategy with execution, but interviewees explained that technology alone was not sufficient to achieve enterprisewide transformation. Successfully scaling strategic portfolio management required their organizations to establish consistent planning practices, governance models, portfolio structures, and adoption approaches that reflected how their businesses operated.

Interviewees described partnering with Advisory Services to accelerate this process, reduce operational risk, and establish a foundation for long-term portfolio management success.

Investment Drivers For Advisory Services

The interviewees’ organizations adopted Advisory Services to support their strategic portfolio initiatives. Interviewees identified the following key challenges that drove their investment:

Limited strategic visibility and alignment. Interviewees reported limited visibility into strategic initiatives, which made it difficult to align work with organizational priorities and measure progress against business goals. Jira practices varied across business units, limiting cross-team visibility and the ability to manage investments at an enterprise level. The product owner at a retailer said, “The biggest driver was the need for better visibility and transparency into what teams were working on and whether efforts aligned with organizational goals.”
Fragmented portfolio planning and inconsistent execution. Interviewees explained that their organizations struggled to plan and deliver consistently across large, distributed teams, in some cases spanning tens of thousands of engineers across business units. The lack of a consistent approach limited standardization and made it difficult to coordinate planning and execution at scale.
Scaling strategic portfolio management. Interviewees said they lacked consistent portfolio management practices to support Strategy Collection as its adoption expanded across the organization. They needed standardized planning practices, governance, and an operating model to help prioritize investments, track outcomes, and sustain enterprisewide adoption.
Interviewees reported that Advisory Services helped them realize greater value from their existing Atlassian investment by helping them understand and take advantage of platform capabilities they were not fully utilizing. The product owner at a retailer said: “People did not know about features like advanced roadmaps, which really enhance visibility. With guidance from Advisory Services, we were able to surface these capabilities, educate users, and design solutions that made that visibility actionable for the business.”

Advisory Services Features

The interviewees’ organizations chose to invest in Advisory Services for the following reasons:

Portfolio and solution design and configuration. The interviewees used Advisory Services to assess how their organizations planned, tracked, and reported portfolio work across business units; Advisory Services then designed a unified portfolio structure that aligned to team-level execution and each organization’s operating model. This included configuration guidance and best practices that provided hierarchical views across initiatives, products, and teams so that leaders could report on portfolio performance and drill down into individual workstreams. Advisory Services not only enabled these capabilities within the platform but also defined how each organization’s portfolio structure should map to its operating model.
The product owner at a retailer highlighted the importance of this alignment: “We now have views that clearly show how work contributes to top-level goals and objectives. From there, we can drill down into the details to track progress and see whether initiatives are moving forward.”
Planning practices and decision-making optimization. The interviewees used Advisory Services to standardize planning approaches, redesign how planning data flowed to decision-makers, and design data structures and workflows that captured and surfaced real-time portfolio reviews. This improved visibility into work, reduced manual effort, and enabled faster, more informed decision-making and accurate portfolio reviews. Previously, executive portfolio reviews required the manual aggregation of information from across business units, consuming significant resources and often resulting in outdated insights. Advisory Services designed data structures and workflows that captured and surfaced real-time planning data, allowing portfolio reviews to be driven by current platform data rather than manually assembled presentations.
The head of engineering at a financial services organization explained: “We were spending a significant amount of time just pulling together data for planning cycles, and by the time it was ready, it was already out of date. Now, leadership can go directly to the system and see what’s happening in real time.”
Operating model design. Advisory Services helped interviewees’ organizations design a strategic portfolio management operating model aligned to their organizational structure and business objectives. This included defining roles and decision rights while aligning stakeholders around a consistent portfolio management approach across business units.

“We were originally thinking this whole phase to get to that simplification was going to take us three to four years. We’re thinking about saving at least a year off that.”

Head of engineering, financial services

Key Results

The results of the investment for the interviewees’ organizations include:

A more integrated, real-time approach to portfolio management. The interviewees’ organizations began with fragmented tools and siloed execution that limited portfolio visibility and strategic alignment. By using Advisory Services to align Strategy Collection to their portfolio structures, planning practices, governance, and operating models, the interviewees were able to achieve:

Better strategic alignment and faster decision-making. Interviewees reported a clearer connection between strategic goals, initiatives, and execution within Strategy Collection, giving leaders greater visibility into work across the organization. With more consistent portfolio data and standardized governance, decision-makers were better equipped to prioritize investments, align teams to organizational goals, and make faster, more informed decisions. Interviewees’ organizations established a single source of truth that enabled leadership to dynamically reprioritize work as priorities evolved.
The head of engineering at a financial services organization said: “We are providing a much more streamlined way of delivering data and insights into projects at all levels, all the way down to teams and individuals. Our CEO refers to this as a simplification.”
The product owner at a retailer added, “It provides valuable insights into team productivity as well as alignment to organizational goals.”
Accelerated delivery and increased productivity. Interviewees reported that standardized planning processes reduced manual coordination across teams and improved collaboration during planning. This streamlined planning activities, reduced duplicate effort, and enabled teams to spend more time delivering strategic initiatives rather than on planning overhead.
The product owner at a retailer said, “Teams provided positive feedback on how much easier it is now to collaborate and run planning activities, including quarterly planning and other rituals.”
Optimized resources and reduced operational costs. Interviewees reported that establishing a strategic portfolio management operating model, supported by consistent planning processes and governance, reduced operational complexity across teams and minimized manual coordination across business units. This established a more scalable foundation for enterprise portfolio management as they grow.

TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT ANALYSIS

For more information, download the full study: The Total Economic Impact™ Of Atlassian Advisory Services, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Atlassian, January 2026.

Study Findings

While the value story above is based on two interviews, Forrester interviewed eight total representatives at organizations with experience using Advisory Services and combined the results into a three-year financial analysis for a composite organization. Risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include:

Internal Atlassian app team efficiencies from streamlined enterprise technical strategy and planning. Working with the internal Atlassian app team, the composite reduces the average project timeline by 25%, and this allows for significant savings on the management and development of app functionality. Over three years, these savings amount to $388,000.
Avoided technical debt and app optimization. Working with Atlassian Advisory Services allows the composite to develop improved solutions for users across the organization, which saves each an average of 2 hours per week on their tasks. This ongoing benefit saves the composite $1.5 million over three years.
Enterprisewide efficiencies from improved adoption of Atlassian apps. Teaming with Advisory Services reduces the deployment time the composite needs for tailored solutions, and users receive apps an average of 12 weeks sooner. The faster time to deployment saves the composite $9.6 million over three years.

260%

Return on investment (ROI)

$11.5M

Benefits PV

$8.3M

Net present value (NPV)

Appendix A

Endnotes

¹ Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists solution providers in communicating their value proposition to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of business and technology initiatives to both senior management and other key stakeholders.

² Strategy Collection is Atlassian’s AI-native strategic portfolio management solution that connects priorities, people, work, funding, and outcomes. It gives leaders and teams a dynamic way to see and respond to change, navigate complexity, and turn informed decisions into the right outcomes.

Summarize with AI

Get an instant summary of this study, shaped for how you'll use it. Pick a focus to begin.

Summaries are AI-generated and do not represent an endorsement by Forrester. Check key figures against the full study.

Get an instant summary of this study, shaped for how you'll use it. Pick a focus to begin.

Summaries are AI-generated and do not represent an endorsement by Forrester. Check key figures against the full study.

Disclosures

Readers should be aware of the following:

This study is commissioned by Atlassian and delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a competitive analysis.

Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly advises that readers use their own estimates within the framework provided in the study to determine the appropriateness of an investment in Advisory Services. For any interactive functionality, the intent is for the questions to solicit inputs specific to a prospect’s business. Forrester believes that this analysis is representative of what companies may achieve with Advisory Services based on the inputs provided and any assumptions made. Forrester does not endorse Atlassian or its offerings. Although great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy and completeness of this model, Atlassian and Forrester Research are unable to accept any legal responsibility for any actions taken on the basis of the information contained herein. The interactive tool is provided ‘AS IS,’ and Forrester and Atlassian make no warranties of any kind.

Atlassian reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its findings and does not accept changes to the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of the study.

Atlassian provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate in the interviews.

Consulting Team:

Mary Barton

Published

September 2026