Lessons from Atlassian: Launching new products, getting buy-in, and staying ahead of the competition | Megan Cook (head of product, Jira)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2024

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Megan Cook is the head of product for Atlassian’s Jira software, which is used by 75% of Fortune 500 companies, has over 125,000 customers globally, over 15 different products, and is by far the most popular project management tool in the world. Megan has been at Atlassian for just under 11 years, and before this role, she was an analyst, a developer, and an Agile coach. In our conversation, we discuss:

• How to get buy-in for your ideas

• The value of starting small

• How, and why, creating space for play is so essential

• How Jira stays ahead of endless competition

• Atlassian’s approach to launching new product lines

• Tactical tips for making remote work, work

• A personal failure and the lessons learned from it

—

Brought to you by:

• Teal—Your personal career growth platform

• Sprig—Build a product people love

• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security.

—

Find the transcript for this episode and all past episodes at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/episodes/. Today’s transcript will be live by 8 a.m. PT.

—

Where to find Megan Cook:

• X: https://twitter.com/meganwcook

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cookmegan

—

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Megan’s background

(03:50) Creating space for play and psychological safety on teams

(07:36) Peer feedback groups

(10:30) Sharing stories of failure

(13:33) The “10 dollar” game for priorities

(15:24) Advice on making remote work, work

(24:16) Getting buy-in for your ideas

(28:33) The importance of staying open-minded

(34:05) A quick summary of how to get buy-in

(36:45) Fighting the good fight

(38:15) Identifying customer pain points

(43:04) Starting small and showing success

(46:08) Launching new product lines

(53:35) Atlassian’s gated process for new product ideas

(58:00) How Jira stays ahead of competitors

(01:04:28) Learning from failure

(01:08:30) Fight club

(01:10:08) Lightning round

—

Referenced:

• Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

• Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/

• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/product

• Ben Crowe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-crowe-67299714/

• Ash Barty on X: https://twitter.com/ashbarty

• Atlassian’s blog, Work Life: https://www.atlassian.com/blog

• Lessons learned: 1,000 days of distributed at Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/distributed-work/distributed-work-report

• New research: How to make time for the work that matters: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/distributed-work/calendar-redesign-experiment

• Atlas: https://www.atlassian.com/software/atlas

• Confluence: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence

• Lenny’s swag store: https://lennyswag.com/

• What is CSAT and how do you measure it?: https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/customer/what-is-csat

• The UX research reckoning is here | Judd Antin (Airbnb, Meta): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ux-research-reckoning-is-here-judd-antin-airbnb-meta/

• Charlie Sutton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charliesutton/

• Nokia 6100: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_6100

• Compass: https://www.atlassian.com/software/compass

• Jira Product Discovery: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discovery

• Canva: https://www.canva.com/

• Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love: https://www.amazon.com/INSPIRED-Create-Tech-Products-Customers/dp/1119387507

• Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building: https://www.amazon.com/Scaling-People-Tactics-Management-Building/dp/1953953212

• Foundation on AppleTV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/foundation/umc.cmc.5983fipzqbicvrve6jdfep4x3

• Foundation book series: https://www.amazon.com/Foundation-3-Book-Boxed-Set-Empire/dp/0593499573

• Traeger smoker: https://www.traeger.com/shop/wood-pellet-grills

—

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

—

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	What we put into place is something we called Fight Club.
0:02.6	We'll probably get in trouble for talking about Fight Club.
0:04.9	The first rule is you don't talk about Fight Club.
0:06.9	But it's 30 minutes every week, and it's just for myself,
0:12.1	my engineering, and my design leader, and we get together, and we know that we're going in there to have a conflict.
0:18.0	I think often when there's difficult conversations, all these conflicts come up,
0:22.6	you can put them off until they become much bigger,
0:25.6	or if somebody is conflict adverse,
0:28.1	they can try to avoid having it at all.
0:30.3	But by having, you know, like a specific sort of time in your week for something like that
0:35.0	then you're sort of in that mindset you know you're going in there to solve a high
0:39.2	problem you know that there's going to be a disagreement and it makes it much better and I think the
0:44.4	relationship we all have is so much better because we get on top of these things early.
0:48.8	Today my guest is Megan Cook. Megan is head of product for Jura, which is used by 75% of Fortune 500 companies, 125,000 customers globally, and is by far the most popular project management tool in the world.
1:07.0	Megan has been at Atlassian for just under 11 years.
1:10.6	Prior to Atlassian, Megan was an analyst, a developer, and an agile coach.
1:15.0	In our conversation, we discuss what Atlassian has done so right in being able to offer 15
1:20.0	different product lines, which many companies dream of, how they continue to stay
1:24.4	ahead of the market in spite of the many competitors in the space, why Megan considers
1:28.6	play so essential to building great teams and great products, a bunch of tactical advice for getting
1:33.8	buy-in for your ideas, tips for being a successful PM in a remote environment, also a great story
1:40.1	of failure and so much more including surfing tips. With that I bring you Megan Cook
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lenny Rachitsky, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Lenny Rachitsky and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.