Strategic Gap Analysis in Action: Atlassian's $20M Opportunity (Case Study)

Today, we talk about Atlassian's public roadmap, and in this post, I'm going to perform a strategic gap analysis to see if it's aligned with their strategic goals. I want to show how a company can use strategic alignment to identify hidden opportunities. If you're not familiar with Atlassian, you might know them from Jira, which is the popular tool used by software and product teams. But they also have a whole suite of tools that help teams with documentation, planning, and delivery of their work.

Atlassian's Strategy: What Are They Trying to Do?

To understand their strategy, I dug into their shareholder letters and recent earnings call transcripts. It's a great way to find out what a company is really focused on. From what I found, I’ve pulled out four main strategic goals for Atlassian.

• Systems of Work Philosophy: Atlassian is trying to break down the silos between IT and business teams. They’ve seen a lot of growth in the usage of their tools by business teams—think marketing, sales, and support—and they want to become a key part of every large enterprise's tooling.

• Serving the Enterprise: They have probably conquered most of the development market at this point. So now, the question is how they scale with large enterprise customers. These big companies have a different set of needs—from security to compliance—that smaller and medium-sized companies don't typically have.

• Cloud Migration: Atlassian is continuing to drive customers from on-premise data centers to the cloud. This is a key driver for long-term revenue growth because it allows them to keep everyone on the most up-to-date version and gives them access to valuable data for future innovation.

• AI Innovation: They are heavily investing in AI, which they call "Atlassian Intelligence." This isn't just a buzzword for them; they are building AI-first products to leverage their massive amount of data on how organizations work.

I've spent years as a leader in different companies, and building strategic alignment has always been my main goal. 

Disclaimers (Just So We're Clear)

 Before I start this review of Atlassian's roadmap, there are a few things I want to say:

• First of all, thank you to Atlassian for having a public roadmap. This information is invaluable for me and for anyone who wants to understand where the company is headed.

• I don't have access to Atlassian's full roadmap or their actual strategy. This isn't a complete analysis; it's an exercise to help you understand a strategic problem that is present in most companies.

• I haven't contacted anyone at Atlassian, and I haven't received any information from them. I also don’t know their go-to-market strategy, which is a huge part of their growth.

Atlassian's Public Roadmap: Let's Get Into It

 As I've done in my other roadmap reviews, I took all the information from the roadmap and put it into an Excel sheet to better understand where the focus is.

What I found is that there are quite a few initiatives focused on serving the enterprise, including administration, user management, and security. There are also a lot of projects leveraging their data to build AI-powered insights, like AI-powered root cause analysis for incidents.

I also have to give a personal shout-out to one particular item: the Confluence Live Docs feature. If you've ever worked in Confluence, you know the frustration of having to remember to "publish" your document. This is a huge thumbs-up, even if it's a bit late.

There are also a couple of funny ones, like the opportunities to create Loom videos from text and Confluence pages from videos. It’s funny to see AI being built to do a process and then reverse it, but maybe I have a strange sense of humor.

I didn't have much else to say. I think the roadmap is very well aligned with their strategy and very clearly structured.

What I Think Is Working 

• Strategic and Focused Roadmap: This is the most strategically aligned work I've seen. Atlassian is using its roadmap as a powerful communication tool to show potential customers and investors that they are following through on its strategic plans.

• Focus on Scaling: I see a lot of focus on scaling and winning big customers. Serving the enterprise and strengthening the "systems of work" are key areas that will bring significant growth to the company.

• Good Mix of Mature and New Products: They are not trying to overcomplicate their mature products like Jira and Confluence. Instead, they're focused on making them more capable for enterprise customers. At the same time, they are investing heavily in new products like Loom and Rovo to drive new value.

What I Think Could Be Improved 

• No Customer Feedback: Unlike some other public roadmaps, this one doesn't include any customer voting or commenting. While this helps them stay focused on their strategy, it means they might be missing out on valuable customer feedback.

• Maintenance Work is Hidden: I cannot believe for the life of me that there is no maintenance, technical debt, or bug work visible on the roadmap for such mature products. This is not representative of their full development efforts.

• Technology First, Not Problem First: I still see a bit of AI buzz in the roadmap. I always prefer to see the problem or opportunity first, not the technology. Technology is great, but it should be used to unlock real solutions for real customers.

Strategic Alignment & Potential ROI 

Based on my analysis, I've estimated the strategic alignment of Atlassian's public roadmap.

• Strategic Initiatives: 63%

• Supporting Work: 7%

• Maintenance Work: 30% (Estimated)

This is pretty amazing. I haven't seen this level of strategic alignment in any other product roadmap I’ve reviewed.

But even with this high alignment, there's a huge opportunity. By shifting just a little bit of focus from their supporting initiatives, Atlassian could be looking at a potential reinvestment of $20 million per year. This isn't about hiring anyone new; it's about making small tweaks to their priorities to drive even more growth. Think about it, with $20 million per year, you could have several teams focusing on a couple of big initiatives (at least in Atlassian's scale).

Final Recommendations 

• Strategic Focus is a Differentiator: This is the most strategically aligned roadmap I've seen. It’s a great communication tool and a testament to their clear vision.

• Systems of Work and Serving the Enterprise: These are the key areas that will drive scale for Atlassian. They're making the right moves to improve collaboration across all teams and win over high-value enterprise customers.

• Integrated Suite: Atlassian is moving away from being "best of breed" tools and is now an integrated suite that bridges the gap between business and engineering teams.

Strategic Alignment is Your Unfair Advantage

 I'm really impressed with Atlassian's big picture. They are playing a very clever game and are definitely moving in the right direction. This kind of strategic focus isn't a happy accident; it’s the result of having a clear framework to align your team's work with your strategic goals.

It's what separates a roadmap that just "keeps the lights on" and does "nice-to-have" development from one that actively drives growth and innovation. If you want to build this kind of system for your own company, I've created a course that can help.

Turn Your Roadmap into a Source of Growth

 My Strategic Gap Analysis course gives you the tools and proven frameworks I’ve used in different companies to analyze your own roadmap and identify opportunities for growth. It’s a step-by-step guide to helping your teams become more focused and more strategic in the work they do.

Ready to unlock growth and stop wasting resources? Learn how to do a strategic gap analysis to turn your roadmap into a source of value.

Check out my Strategic Gap Analysis Course

You can find my video covering Ahref's roadmap here: