Atlassian, a leader in collaboration and productivity software, implemented agile growth teams to accelerate their marketing and product development efforts.

The Challenge

As Atlassian scaled, traditional siloed teams created bottlenecks. Marketing waited on product, product waited on engineering, and growth initiatives stalled.

The Solution

Atlassian formed cross-functional marketing pods modeled after agile software development teams. Each pod included:

• Marketing strategist
• Product manager
• Designer
• Data analyst
• Engineer

Implementation

Pods operated with:

• Two-week sprints for rapid experimentation
• Daily stand-ups to remove blockers
• Sprint retrospectives to continuously improve
• Shared OKRs that tied directly to revenue goals

Results

• 3x faster time-to-launch for marketing campaigns
• Reduced dependencies between teams
• Higher employee satisfaction due to autonomy and ownership
• Better alignment between marketing outputs and product capabilities

Key Takeaway

By organizing marketing teams like product teams, Atlassian eliminated handoff delays and created a culture of rapid experimentation. The pod structure allowed them to test, learn, and iterate on growth initiatives at unprecedented speed.