With the help of ServiceRocket’s dedicated Center of Excellence (CoE), the enterprise addressed Atlassian platform sprawl and technical debt. They now have a new governance framework that de-risked their future cloud migration and enabled scalable Jira growth aligned with business objectives.

Challenge

For one of Australia's largest energy companies, the Atlassian environment had become business-critical infrastructure. As the user base grew, governance built for a few hundred users no longer worked.

Over time, the platform had accumulated familiar enterprise challenges:

• Sprawl of projects and spaces across Jira and Confluence
• Inconsistent standards and old customizations
• No clear lifecycle rules
• Hundreds of unused Confluence spaces, left behind by departed staff or finished projects
• Archived projects that could not be deleted due to data links
• Many workflows, some unused, some custom-built and very complex

With a Jira 11 upgrade approaching and a future cloud migration ahead, the enterprise needed more than a cleaner Jira environment. They needed a new operating model.

ServiceRocket partnered with the enterprise to solve three core challenges:

• No unified governance model. Platform standards, access controls and space lifecycle decisions were handled inconsistently. There was a need for more consistent and formal governance principles, such as stronger documentation discipline.
• Infrastructure and cloud readiness risks. The enterprise needed to stabilize their Data Center environment to ensure a smoother cloud migration. However, they lacked a clear picture of the migration pathways, user management strategy, scope and cost. They also needed a clearer strategy to manage limitations such as third-party app compatibility, unmigrated data and the impact of non-standard integrations or scripts.
• Upgrade pressure was mounting. Jira 11 was on the horizon. The enterprise needed to prepare for it and needed to manage the script compatibility risks, app validation requirements and the need for rigorous staging and user acceptance testing (UAT) processes.

Rather than proposing a large operating model on day one, ServiceRocket started small: proving lightweight program discipline before earning the mandate for a full Center of Excellence.

Solution

Once that early discipline had proven its value, ServiceRocket formalized a 12-month Atlassian Center of Excellence (CoE): an embedded, cross-functional team with three connected areas of responsibility::

• Program Leadership managed priorities, dependencies and decisions across workstreams. This kept platform work connected to the enterprise’s strategic goals instead of simply responding to the loudest request in the queue.
• Platform Architecture set standards, defined the target state and guided policy. It also prepared the platform for the move to cloud by making deliberate design decisions.
• Engineering and Advisory handled the practical work, including technical fixes, upgrades, automation, testing and ongoing platform improvements.

Establishing a Center of Excellence Cadence

A major change was moving from reactive requests to structured planning. The CoE introduced four governance routines:

• Quarterly Big Room Planning set priorities, sequenced major work and identified dependencies for the coming quarter.
• Quarterly Business Reviews checked progress, reviewed results and helped leaders decide where to focus future investment.
• Weekly Governance Forums kept security and standards consistent. The forums covered policy, architecture, access controls and licensing.
• A rolling backlog kept work prioritized within clear limits, so requests did not pile up without a clear plan.

Connecting Governance to Strategic Business Objectives

The CoE connected daily work to the enterprise’s larger goals. It organized work in a clear hierarchy: strategic goals led to major projects, or epics, which then broke down into the tasks and tickets teams handled each day.

As a result, each ticket could be traced back to the larger goal it supported. The guiding principle was simple: every piece of work should support a strategic objective. For example, goals such as stronger governance, a simpler platform and faster delivery flowed into specific epics and implementation tasks. This structure kept every work item connected to a clear business purpose.

The Results

The 12-month engagement delivered measurable gains across five areas: platform scale, cloud readiness, upgrade prep, governance and the customer relationship.

• The platform scaled with confidence
  The user base grew from about 2,000 to 6,000, and it grew without breaking the platform. This growth was possible because user management got better, access rules got stronger and platform standards were enforced. Along the way, old and unused workflows and third-party apps were cleared out.
• Cloud migration became a real plan
  What was once a vague and risky idea turned into a clear roadmap for FY27. The CoE worked through the key steps first: it controlled scope, reviewed apps and integrations, checked Atlassian Guard needs and cut down complexity. By the time migration begins, the groundwork will already be done.
• Upgrade readiness stopped being a scramble
  The Atlassian platform is now fully ready for Jira 11. The CoE ran a structured review of every app, script, dependency and environment assumption. It refreshed staging and built testing runbooks along the way. As a result, upgrade day is set up to be calm instead of chaotic.
• Governance became operational, not aspirational
  The user directory was cleaned up so it now reflects only active users. Active-user analysis was completed, and licensing was optimized. Runbooks were also documented for the tasks that come up again and again.
• The customer relationship grew stronger
  Over time, the enterprise moved from being a frustrated customer to a confident one, one that now sees their Atlassian platform as a real strategic asset. That shift happened because the enterprise chose, on their own, to redesign how they operate.

The same trust-based model that earned ServiceRocket the CoE mandate now carries the enterprise into its FY27 cloud migration, backed by the governance, standards and simplified platform the CoE built along the way.

ServiceRocket's winning edge

ServiceRocket took on the enterprise’s main risk: a business-critical Atlassian Data Center estate used by thousands of people, with governance that had not kept pace. Sprawl and technical debt threatened platform stability and the planned move to cloud before Data Center reached end of life. ServiceRocket did not lead with a sales pitch for an Atlassian Center of Excellence (CoE). It first proved lightweight program discipline through daily syncs, clear reporting, and a live backlog, building the trust that earned it the right to propose the CoE model. That trust-building sequence, rather than a generic architecture or managed-services pitch, was the differentiator. ServiceRocket then formed one subscription-based squad across Program Leadership, Platform Architecture, and Engineering, using Quarterly Big Room Planning. This hands-on model helped the enterprise grow from 2,000 to 6,000 users with proper governance and turned cloud migration from an open risk into a defined FY27 roadmap.

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