
Atlassian's mission is to "help unleash the potential of every team." This ambitious goal is pursued not just by creating powerful collaboration and project management software like Jira and Confluence, but by deeply embedding these tools into the very fabric of their own global operations. The practice of "eating your own dogfood"—or as it might be termed, "Atlassian on Atlassian"—is a cornerstone of their product development philosophy. By having their own diverse teams rely on Jira for everything from software development and IT support to marketing campaigns and HR processes, Atlassian gains unparalleled insights that continuously shape and refine the tools used by millions worldwide.

### Jira as the Central Nervous System for Atlassian

From its origins as a bug tracker, Jira has evolved into a versatile platform catering to various team needs, with specialized versions like Jira Software for agile development, Jira Service Management for IT and customer service teams, and Jira Work Management for business teams. Atlassian itself is a living testament to this versatility, utilizing the entire Jira family, alongside integrated tools like Confluence for knowledge management and Bitbucket for code hosting, across virtually every aspect of its operations.

* **Building Jira with Jira:** Atlassian's own software development teams are quintessential Jira Software users. They leverage its agile boards (Scrum and Kanban), backlog management, sprint planning, bug tracking, and reporting features to build, iterate on, and maintain Jira itself, as well as other Atlassian products. This intensive internal use by thousands of engineers provides a constant, real-world stress test and a rich source of feedback for improving performance, usability, and developer-centric features.
* **Powering Internal Service Desks:** Atlassian's IT and support teams utilize Jira Service Management for their internal help desks, managing employee requests, resolving incidents, and handling change management processes. This firsthand operational experience directly informs the development of JSM, ensuring it meets the practical needs of service teams in a high-velocity environment.
* **Orchestrating Business Team Projects:** Non-technical teams across Atlassian—including marketing, HR, finance, and legal—use Jira Work Management and other Atlassian tools to plan projects, track tasks, and collaborate. This broad internal adoption ensures that Jira's capabilities evolve to support a wide array of business workflows, not just software development.
* **Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration:** Confluence is deeply integrated with Jira and serves as Atlassian's central knowledge base. Internal teams document product specifications, project plans, meeting notes, and company policies in Confluence, all linked to and tracked within Jira. This seamless interplay is refined through their own daily collaborative practices.

### The "Dogfooding" Culture: Feedback from Every Corner

Atlassian's company values, such as "Open company, no bullshit" and "Play, as a team," foster an environment where internal feedback is encouraged and valued. This culture is crucial for effective "dogfooding."

In an [Atlassian Community discussion on dogfooding](https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Teamwork-Lab-questions/Ask-Me-Anything-DOGFOODING-best-practices-pitfalls-and-personal/qaq-p/1797710), Atlassian employees openly share insights into their internal practices. One employee noted, "By moving all of our communications within Atlassian products and making it a requirement our teams/team members have become more accountable to each other." Another shared, "It is true that internal Atlassian teams are encouraged to adopt new features and capabilities but is rare that we force them to (unless we are doing a forced migration and then Atlassian teams go earlier to test the migration process itself)."

This highlights a balanced approach where organic adoption is preferred, but strategic internal rollouts also serve as crucial testing phases. The same discussion revealed that successful internal projects during "ShipIt" (Atlassian's hackathon days), aimed at solving internal pain points with their own tools, have sometimes led to those features being incorporated into the official product roadmap. Examples cited include the "dot dialog for quick shortcuts in Jira, Confluence page layouts, find and replace in the editor."

### How Internal Use Shapes Jira's Evolution

The direct impact of Atlassian employees using their own tools is evident in many aspects of Jira's development:

* **User Experience (UX) and Usability:** Constant daily interaction by thousands of "Atlassians" with diverse roles and technical abilities helps identify usability friction points and areas for UI refinement. Feedback on aspects like the [Jira Software issue view](https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-articles/An-update-on-Jira-Software-customer-feedback-June-2022/bc-p/2076702) is taken seriously, leading to improvements in efficiency and ease of use.
* **Workflow Customization and Flexibility:** Because Atlassian teams use Jira for a vast array of different processes, the platform has evolved to offer highly customizable workflows, issue types, and fields, allowing it to adapt to myriad use cases—a flexibility born from their own diverse internal needs.
* **Integration Capabilities:** The need for seamless information flow between different internal teams and tools (e.g., Jira with Confluence, Bitbucket, and third-party applications) drives the development of robust integration capabilities.
* **Agile at Scale:** As Atlassian itself has grown into a large, distributed organization, its experiences in managing agile development at scale have undoubtedly influenced features in Jira Software designed to support larger enterprises and complex project portfolios, such as Advanced Roadmaps.
* **AI-Powered Enhancements:** With the introduction of Atlassian Intelligence and AI-driven features like Rovo, it's certain that Atlassian's own teams are among the first to leverage these capabilities for tasks like summarizing issues, generating content in Confluence, and automating workflows. This internal adoption is crucial for refining these AI tools and ensuring they deliver tangible productivity benefits. Atlassian's [Team '25 conference previews](https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/CW-Developer-Network/What-to-expect-from-Atlassian-Team-25) indicate a strong focus on AI-powered teamwork, a direction likely validated by internal use cases.

### The Benefits and a Balanced Perspective

Running "Atlassian on Atlassian" offers clear advantages:

* **Deep Customer Empathy:** Atlassians experience the product as users, fostering a profound understanding of customer needs and pain points.
* **Improved Product Quality:** Internal teams act as a constant, rigorous testing ground, catching bugs and usability issues early.
* **Faster Innovation Cycles:** The tight feedback loop between internal users and development teams can accelerate the iteration and improvement of features.
* **Authentic Product Advocacy:** Employees who use and believe in their own tools become powerful and authentic advocates.

However, as acknowledged in the Atlassian Community discussion on dogfooding, internal users may not always perfectly represent the full spectrum of external customers, particularly those with different technical skills or organizational contexts. Atlassian mitigates this by complementing internal feedback with extensive customer research, community engagement, and dedicated user testing programs. They also recognize that sometimes teams might adapt their processes to fit the tool, and strive to learn from instances where even internal teams might use a competitor's product for specific needs.

### Conclusion: Building for Teams, By a Team Living Its Products

Atlassian's commitment to using its own suite of tools, with Jira at its core, is a fundamental aspect of its identity and success. It’s a continuous, company-wide "dogfooding" effort where every employee contributes to the refinement of the products they build by using them to do their own work. This deep, practical immersion ensures that Jira and the broader Atlassian platform are not just designed with teams in mind, but are actively shaped by the daily experiences, challenges, and innovations of one of the most dynamic and collaborative teams in the software industry: their own.

Unleashing Team Potential from Within: How Atlassian Builds Jira by Living in Jira


Pivotal Labs, a name that resonates deeply within the agile software development community, built its reputation not just on the tools and services it offered, but on a profound commitment to "eating its own dog food." This wasn't merely a casual adoption of their own products; it was a foundational element of their culture, their development process, and how they engaged with clients. By rigorously using their own flagship tool, Pivotal Tracker, and religiously adhering to the agile and Extreme Programming (XP) practices they championed (like pair programming and Test-Driven Development), Pivotal didn't just build software—they lived their philosophy.

**Pivotal Tracker: Built by Pivots, For Pivots (and the World)**

At the heart of Pivotal's dogfooding story is Pivotal Tracker. This agile project management tool was conceived and developed within Pivotal Labs to address the real-world needs of their own software development teams. It was designed to facilitate the core tenets of agile: visualizing workflow, breaking down projects into manageable "stories," estimating effort, and enabling teams to maintain a sustainable pace based on their actual velocity.

It's a quintessential example of dogfooding:

* **Internal Use as Primary Proving Ground:** Pivotal's own engineering teams used Pivotal Tracker extensively for managing their internal projects, including the ongoing development and enhancement of Tracker itself. This meant that the primary users, who were also the creators, were constantly experiencing its strengths and identifying areas for improvement.
* **Refinement Through Real-World Application:** Every feature, every UI tweak, and every workflow enhancement in Pivotal Tracker was born out of the needs and experiences of teams practicing agile development at a high level. This direct feedback loop is invaluable, ensuring the tool evolved in a way that genuinely supported agile principles. As [FreshBooks notes in its overview of Pivotal Tracker](https://www.freshbooks.com/hub/projects-management/what-is-pivotal-tracker), the software is designed for real-time collaboration and developing realistic plans based on team performance – features undoubtedly honed by Pivotal's own usage.
* **Client Project Management:** When Pivotal Labs engaged with clients to help them adopt agile practices and build software, Pivotal Tracker was the go-to tool for managing those projects. This was dogfooding in action, demonstrating confidence in their product and using it to deliver value directly to customers.

**Dogfooding Methodologies: Practicing What They Preached**

Beyond the software itself, Pivotal Labs "dogfooded" its agile methodologies with an almost religious fervor. Practices like Extreme Programming, pair programming, and Test-Driven Development were not just concepts they taught; they were the non-negotiable way Pivotal teams built software.

* **Pair Programming as Standard:** As highlighted on resources like the [Labs Practices Site](https://labspractices.com/learningpaths/application-development/pair-programming/) and discussed in educational materials referencing Pivotal's methods (like [saasbook.info's section on Pair Programming](https://e.saasbook.info/chapter/2/section/2)), pair programming was a cornerstone. Two developers working at one machine was the norm. This intensive, collaborative approach was used for all development work, ensuring high code quality, constant knowledge sharing, and intense focus. By using this method internally for all projects, Pivotal could refine its coaching on pair programming, understand its nuances, and authentically advocate for its benefits.
* **Test-Driven Development (TDD):** Writing tests before writing code was another deeply ingrained practice. This ensured that software was built with quality from the ground up and that requirements were clearly understood. Pivotal teams lived by TDD, making them intimately familiar with its challenges and rewards, which in turn made their client coaching more credible and effective.
* **Sustainable Pace and Iterative Development:** The entire Pivotal approach, built around short iterations, continuous feedback, and maintaining a sustainable pace, was something their teams experienced daily. This wasn't just theoretical; it was the operational reality.

This rigorous internal application of their own prescribed methodologies meant that when Pivotal consultants advised clients, they did so from a place of deep, practical experience, not just academic knowledge.

**The Impact of Living Their Principles**

Pivotal's dedication to dogfooding had a profound impact:

* **Highly Refined Products and Services:** Pivotal Tracker became a beloved tool in the agile community precisely because it was shaped by the needs of expert practitioners. Similarly, Pivotal's consulting and development services were highly regarded because they were based on proven, internally validated practices.
* **Credibility and Trust:** Clients were more likely to trust Pivotal's advice because they knew the company practiced what it preached. Seeing Pivotal teams use Tracker and adhere to XP principles in their shared projects was a powerful testament.
* **Strong Engineering Culture:** The commitment to these practices fostered a strong, disciplined, and collaborative engineering culture. This culture was, in itself, a key selling point and a reason for Pivotal's success.
* **Continuous Learning and Improvement:** By being their own first and most critical users, Pivotal ensured a constant cycle of feedback and improvement for both their tools and their methodologies.

**The Legacy of Dogfooding**

Pivotal Labs went through significant changes, including acquisitions by VMware and later Broadcom. While company structures evolve, the legacy of Pivotal's intense commitment to dogfooding its tools and, crucially, its *way of working* remains influential. Many developers and product leaders who passed through Pivotal Labs have carried these principles into other organizations, spreading the ethos of building with quality, discipline, and a deep understanding that comes from truly using what you build.

In essence, Pivotal Labs demonstrated that dogfooding isn't just about testing software; it's about embodying a philosophy, building expertise through experience, and creating a virtuous cycle where internal practice drives external excellence.

Articles tagged with "Agile Development"

Unleashing Team Potential from Within: How Atlassian Builds Jira by Living in Jira

Pivotal Labs: How 'Eating Their Own Dog Food' Forged a Legacy in Agile Development