About Atlassian
Atlassian is one of the world’s leading companies in team collaboration software. Their software, like Jira, Confluence, and Trello helps teams organize, discuss, and complete shared work. The majority of the Fortune 500 and over 250,000 companies of all sizes worldwide - including NASA, Kiva, Deutsche Bank, and Salesforce - rely on Atlassian to help their teams work better together and deliver quality results on time.
We had the chance to speak with Alex White, Senior Software Engineer at Atlassian, to learn how Clockwise helps Atlassians use their time in the most effective way possible.
“Before Atlassian, I’d been an engineering manager and architect — wearing a lot of hats, all at the same time. My calendar was always slammed,” Alex shares of a previous experience. Not wanting this source of overwhelm to follow him to his new role at Atlassian, Alex made an effort to stack his meetings together to make time for productivity. These efforts were successful, but they also created more manual work.
Then he discovered Clockwise.
“I saw my colleagues at Atlassian had their Slack statuses synced from Clockwise. And so I'd hover over the little icons and wonder, ‘How does this all work?’”
Curiosity piqued, Alex learned that Atlassian was already a Clockwise customer, soon discovering the power of time orchestration.
How Clockwise helps Atlassians respect each other’s time
Teamwork is part of Atlassian’s DNA — but even Atlassians recognize the necessity of solo productivity time, as seen in the investment they’ve made in products that can replace status meetings. Deep-work allows individuals to perform at their best, and that, in turn, makes the team stronger.
With the help of Clockwise, Atlassians can make Focus Time a consistent part of their work schedules. Clockwise uses AI to schedule meetings at their ideal times, creating long blocks of uninterrupted time in the process.
Even better, Clockwise considers everyone’s unique work styles, goals, and preferences. Alex personally targets three hours of Focus Time daily and shares that Atlassian has promoted a company-wide culture of respect for time.
"It's part of our company culture to use Clockwise. It's been really beneficial because it's a respected spot on our calendar, whether it be for lunch or Focus Time. I use it for both, and it's been great."
<span class="quote-author-name"> - Alex White</span>
13 countries, seamless collaboration
As a distributed-first company, Atlassian practices async collaboration using their own products like Jira, Trello, and Confluence, but that doesn’t mean meetings never happen. And with 10,000+ employees in 13 countries, the meetings that do happen require a fair amount of coordination.
Alex works in St. Louis, Missouri, and regularly meets with members in Australia, most of whom are 15-17 hours ahead of the US Central time zone. Alex adds, “It could even just be across the US, from East Coast to West Coast. That only gives us a solid four hours of the day where everyone is in their meeting hours.”
Rather than deal with manual scheduling — calculating time zones, referencing everyone’s calendars, and finding that small sliver of availability — Atlassians let Clockwise handle it. Clockwise takes into account a range of factors and, in a few seconds, suggests optimal times to meet.
Scheduling through Clockwise makes it easy for Atlassian to practice Team Anywhere, their approach to distributed work that gives employees greater flexibility over how and where they work.
Opening work up
Aside from the platform itself, which Alex calls “well-written software,” Alex is a fan of Clockwise’s support system — a method that perfectly aligns with Atlassian’s philosophy of opening work up.
Alex shares, “I've liked that between Atlassian and Clockwise, they've allowed an AMA [Ask Me Anything] Slack channel, where there are Clockwise representatives, and we Atlassians can go in, ask questions, and give suggestions. It’s a great way to collaborate with the Clockwise team. That's just a good support model, because they're learning from us, but also, we can learn from them about how to use the software.”
“That open communication and opening it up to anyone — not just a select few individuals that have access to that channel — has been pretty nice.”
Going forward
Atlassian helps unleash the potential of every team; Clockwise helps Atlassians unleash the potential of time. Try Clockwise for free and discover what’s possible with AI-powered time orchestration.
