Compass, Atlassian
2024
Summary
As part of the Compass product team, I helped deliver and drive adoption of the new Software goals feature, transforming how engineering improvement initiatives are run at Atlassian. By giving teams a clear, trackable way to define goals and measure progress, we saw strong internal uptake—with 276 teams engaged, a 57.9% conversion rate, and a 2.5x lift in Health Details views. This validated Software goals as a powerful framework for operationalising software health, laying the foundation for external rollout.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
Product Manager, Engineering Manager, 12 Developers, Design Researcher
Context & Problem
Atlassian had an existing internal process for tracking Software Goals — initiatives aimed at improving software health across teams. However, this process lived outside of Compass, which made it fragmented, hard to scale, and inaccessible to external customers.
Our goal was to integrate Software Goals into Compass in a way that:
Streamlined internal workflows
Made the feature valuable and intuitive for external users
Aligned with Atlassian’s broader feature set and user model
This meant we weren’t just shipping a UI — we were translating a deeply internal practice into a productised, scalable experience.
Team & Constraints
We faced tight timelines getting the first couple of Software Goals into the product. Midway through, we had to pivot on naming and align with broader Atlassian-wide goal initiatives, which introduced delays and required coordination beyond our immediate team.
Throughout the process, we collaborated closely with the team manually driving early-stage campaign goals, the Compass team focused on surfacing goals to receiving teams, and stakeholders across product, design, and engineering to ensure alignment and clarity. While the concept of Goals already existed, we needed to spend time on knowledge-sharing to help the Compass team understand the framing and use cases specific to Software Goals.
We also faced some constraints with ambiguity around ownership, as the work intersected with other goal-related initiatives across Atlassian
Process
We began by leading a week of cross-functional workshops with stakeholders across product, design, engineering, and partner teams. The focus was to align on personas, map existing user journeys, assess the technical feasibility of integrating Software Goals into Compass, and run ideation sessions to capture early input from development teams.
We documented these insights—personas, journeys, feasibility considerations, and ideas—in Confluence and Figma, laying the foundation for our M0 milestone. This first release focused on delivering five initial Software Goals with a minimal, streamlined flow. After several critiques with design and product, we validated the flow with the Engineering Health team and key receiving teams. To support onboarding, we created a how-to guide and asked an initiative driver to record their experience using the flow, providing valuable feedback that shaped our next milestone.
Throughout the process, we collaborated closely with the Goals team to align on shared models and avoid duplication, and partnered with the Engineering Health team to co-design systems that supported threading goals throughout Compass. We also engaged directly with receiving teams to ensure initiatives were clear, actionable, and integrated respectfully into existing workflows.
From there, we delivered M1 by threading a single initiative through Compass to validate the end-to-end experience. For M2, we expanded the feature set to support goal integration and introduced a path to externalisation—laying the groundwork for broader customer adoption while continuing to build on shared infrastructure.
Solution
The internal Engineering Health team could define Software Goals, track relevant metrics through Compass, and surface progress summaries via Atlassian Home—making it easier for external stakeholders who don’t regularly use Compass to stay informed. At the same time, receiving teams could use Compass to monitor their progress against these goals and request exemptions where needed, creating a shared, transparent system for accountability and flexibility.
Impact
Exceeded OKRs:
We surpassed our 0.7 goal of 200 unique team engagements, reaching 276 teams (~59% of the internal target cohort of 470), just shy of our 1.0 goal of 300.
Strong Conversion:
The Software goals module achieved a 57.9% conversion rate (users encountering software goals and then interacting with Compass), nearly double that of comparable projects like the Developer Experience Dashboard and the Attention board (~30%).
Consistent Engagement:
50–100 internal teams interact with Software goals weekly (~200/month).
100–150 Atlassians engage with Compass via Software goals weekly (~330/month).
Increased Visibility:
The Health Details page saw a 2.5x increase in views following the launch of Software goals.
Reflection
One of the most effective parts of the process was running in-person workshops early on. These created space for teams to quickly align, share knowledge, and collaborate on ideas that may have taken much longer asynchronously. They were especially helpful in building shared understanding across Compass, Engineering Health, and the broader Goals teams.
That said, aligning with the global Atlassian goal object introduced significant friction. Despite early attempts, we encountered process bottlenecks and organizational red tape that slowed us down and limited flexibility. In hindsight, pushing for clearer governance or parallel tracks might have helped maintain momentum while still working toward long-term alignment.
Overall, the blend of face-to-face collaboration and fast iteration on the ground level was a highlight—while higher-level integration revealed where our internal systems still need streamlining.