The University of South Florida (USF) serves a large and diverse community of students, faculty and staff, creating growing demands for efficient service delivery, transparency and collaboration. As the university expanded, leadership faced challenges with fragmented systems, email-based request tracking, limited visibility and inconsistent processes. In this episode, discover how USF adopted Atlassian Cloud Enterprise to centralize request management, standardize workflows, improve collaboration and gain real-time visibility across departments. Hear how USF worked with Atlassian and Carahsoft to migrate to the cloud, strengthen security and compliance and scale Atlassian solutions across the university to better support students, faculty and staff. Fill out the form to watch the full podcast and learn how USF improved transparency, streamlined operations and scaled collaboration with Atlassian Cloud Enterprise.
Anthony Jiminez
Welcome back to Carahcast, the podcast from Carahsoft, a trusted government IT solutions provider. Subscribe to get the latest technology updates in the public sector. I'm Anthony Jimenez, your host from the Carahsoft production team.
On behalf of Atlassian, we would like to welcome you to today's podcast, focused around how the University of South Florida is leveraging the Atlassian ecosystem to improve service delivery, accelerate project execution, and drive enterprise-wide transformation. Atlassian's Dee White and Elisa Aviles-Bodwin, along with USF IT leaders Juan Diaz-Davila, George Wolfe, and Rodrigo Angulo, will discuss AI-powered workflows, project delivery improvements, data-driven decision-making, change management, and digital transformation.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Hi, welcome to the Atlassian and Carahsoft podcast. Today we are at the University of South Florida, and we are excited to talk about digital transformation with the university. My name is Elisa Aviles-Bodoin, and I have been with Atlassian for six and a half years, leading solution engineering as it pertains to state and local government within the public sector vertical.
I'm joined by my colleague.
Dee White
Hey, I'm Dee White. I'm an account executive with Atlassian, focused within our higher education market, and I have the pleasure of working with the University of South Florida.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Now, I'd really like for everyone on the panel to kind of introduce themselves and have you guys kind of go through your role and how you guys utilize Atlassian today, and just look forward to you all introducing yourself to our podcast viewers.
Juan Diaz Davila
Good morning. My name is Juan Diaz, and I am the product owner for the tool specialist team. I played a key role here in the university, making sure that the move to Atlassian Enterprise was just not a technical move, but a strategic move for the university.
George Wolf
My name is George Wolfe. I'm the director for the portfolio program and project management practices within USFIT. My role with Atlassian is to ensure that the solutions that we're putting in based on the Atlassian platform work to support our portfolio program and project management practices.
Rodrigo Angulo
Hey, and I'm Rodrigo Angulo. I'm one of the Atlassian admins here at USF. I've started with USF back in 2018, I believe, and I've seen the product grow ever since.
It's been a great journey, and shout out to the other admin as well. I've also done great work with it, but yeah, we're excited to see where it goes.
Dee White
Okay, so tell us a little bit about the foundation of USF, some of the exciting history, as well as the demographics. Like, who do you all serve, a number of students and staff?
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, sure. So we were founded in 1956, I believe. Actually, we're the most southern university for a while, and it was thought of as a kind of a commuter school for a while, and it kind of just grew, blew up, and now we're here.
We're serving about, I want to say, 40,000 to 50,000 students now, so that's a big group of people. That doesn't include, obviously, the faculty and staff and stuff like that, but yeah, we're a pretty large organization, I'd say, when it comes to the university kind of scene.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Yeah. So for listeners that may not know USF or their journey, can you guys share a little bit about like a quick snapshot of how the university has changed and a little bit into your IT organization today?
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah. How it's changed and where it started. So we started with, I believe, a product called SoarPrince.
I'm not sure what the time frame is because I wasn't here at the time, and then we eventually transitioned to ServiceNow for a while. And then when I was hired, we were making the push for Jira at the time, but I think Jira was being used kind of in a disparate fashion like, hey, we're going to try it out, we don't really know if this is going to work, that sort of thing. And eventually, we started to push it to all of our T departments and we started to see like the benefits of the transparency it's been bringing and just the amount of like cohesive work that it brings with all the different products and stuff like that.
And we've just been using it ever since as updates come by, we enhance our processes and we just collaborate better, you know, what would you say about it?
George Wolf
I mean, I think that's a really good summary for it. What it's really helped out with is the request management side with Jira Service Management. Used to be a lot of emails, a lot of back and forth spreadsheets that people would receive, especially even for project management and tracking of things.
So it's helped with actually getting us into something where you can see where the work is at back and forth. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I would say.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Awesome. So before it last year, how were you guys managing requests, incidences, and even projects? Which tools do you think were in play?
I know that's many moons ago, given that we've been here together for a while as a partnership, but kind of what were those big day-to-day pain points that you guys were really looking to solve for? And then like, who would you consider to be your customers? Would you consider that to be, you know, staff, faculty, or even students?
So I know that that's a lot of questions rolled into one, but like kind of help paint that picture for us.
George Wolf
I would say that we have a couple of different client groups, right? So we have the students, faculty, and staff. Based on the solution that we're providing to them, it really just depends what their use case is going to be.
For instance, we have our help project within USFIT. That's students, faculty, staff that's covered by, and they have instances like the business and finance side. That's really just covering one specific function, and it is mostly used by faculty whenever there's like a purchasing card transaction.
So each of the solutions we have, it really just depends on the audience it's tailored for.
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, that's fair to say too, because as my colleague said as well, and as we've expanded, we service a lot, a lot more people. So we always have to continually adapt to the grander scenario. That's also been really cool to see because we get to explore the customer base and their needs even further every time.
So that's...
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Yeah, so I would have to say like, based off what you were explaining, in a way it was almost like a Frankenstein system, right? You had all of these different pieces kind of connected to try to make the whole system work together. And adaptability, and not only adaptability, but growth in that change was super important for you guys in general, right?
As an IT organization within the university. So that kind of leads me to my next question, kind of what was the tipping point that kind of made leadership say, hey, like we need to change what we're doing. This isn't working for us.
George Wolf
Yeah, it's funny the word transparency comes to mind whenever you bring up that question, because that was the big driver from a senior leadership side of, okay, if I'm putting in this request, do I know where it's going and what the next step is for it? That's true. Yeah.
And that was, I think, one of the big pieces in the tipping point. And then also in the standard side of it. So it's like, again, if I'm sending somebody a request, I want to know what the workflow is.
Can we measure it and figure out how long it's going to take to get that solution or the request resolved out in the end?
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, SLAs were a big thing. I'd say just general, I guess, how would I say this? General knowledge of where the request is at.
Expectations were set at that point before they were kind of loosey goosey, I would say. To a degree, obviously, but now it's pretty well known, like, hey, this is going to get done and within a reasonable timeframe. And that's really helpful for students, I think, because they're so busy, right?
And everyone's so busy nowadays that that's been really wonderful to see, you know.
Dee White
So you had many options. Why did USF choose Atlassian, specifically why Atlassian Cloud Enterprise?
Juan Diaz Davila
That is a good question. So we evaluated many different platforms before choosing Atlassian. And one thing that really stood out with us was how flexible and yet highly configurable it can be at the same time.
We really required a solution that was going to be able to mature with us over the next couple of years, and Atlassian just did that for us. One thing that we really liked is that it's not only for IT, it's also very flexible for the different units and departments across the university. For example, we have business and finance office using that, and we also have different colleges such as the College of Public Health or Bellini College of AI using it.
And one key thing about moving to enterprise was first the support that Atlassian provided, but also the centralized management, and as well the unlimited access. So as a university, we continue to expand Atlassian across the university. So that was a key factor for us to move to enterprise.
Dee White
Now, compliance and risk are a huge concern, you know, I think for organizations, certainly in public sector, how did security and compliance factor into your decision as you were looking at Atlassian Cloud Enterprise?
Juan Diaz Davila
So security and compliance are definitely non-negotiables for us as a public university. One thing that really stood out for us is that Atlassian Cloud met our requirements right out of the box, which was a big win for our team. It also reduced the operational risk by removing the need for us to manage the security aspect.
Instead, Atlassian is able to help us with that. And one thing to really highlight was the security updates. Atlassian is always bringing new updates as we evolve.
So that is very helpful from our end.
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, I would say that's true. You mentioned compliance. I think it's been really nice to see the amount of control we have with from like the policy perspective because sometimes we do need to make exceptions here and there for like local accounts and all that.
So that's always really useful. But mostly, what's also been a game changer has been those, I'm sorry, what was it? The data privacy.
So like, you know, when people are sharing information out, we definitely take that pretty seriously, especially if we have like sensitive content or, you know, some compliant regulation information like we have an example with like our engineering college and stuff like that. We have like patents and stuff like that, right? We don't want that out.
But yeah, I would say to Juan's point, the security has been a really, really big help. I know we use like Guard for that, for our identity and our identity management. And that's also been really helpful as well because we have a lot of developers as well.
So we're always managing those API keys pretty often, I'd say. And we're always on top of that sort of thing, especially with all those integrations we talked about.
Dee White
How did working with Atlassian and Carisoft help shape the rollout and the adoption for your staff?
Juan Diaz Davila
Partnering with Atlassian and Carisoft was huge for us. It's really what led us to our success. Working with Elisa and also Dee, it was great.
They were able to give us the technical guidelines and as well as the best practices for going enterprise. So that was really huge for us. It did not only benefit IT, but it also helped all the other departments and units across the university.
It really made us reflect on how we can improve and standardize our processes.
Dee White
So to add on to that, what type of support was most valuable as you helped to maybe train and onboard new teams with Atlassian in those early stages?
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, that's a good question. For context, we were on server for a while. And as you know, you guys pushed the cloud and everything like that, along with the data center stuff that's going on now.
And I would say the biggest help was probably the... We were actually one of the early adopters, actually. Which was fun and a struggle at the same time.
It was a wonderful experience though, because I really think everyone really benefited from that experience. And that's a lesson learned for sure. But the migration tool that you guys provided your customers was solid.
It had some bugs and stuff like that. But honestly, with anything, everyone's going to have bugs with anything. But we always came back to the partnership, right?
We always came back to the collaboration of it all. And that was really, really wonderful. Even on weekends, you guys were always really responsive and stuff like that.
And that was wonderful as well. If we had any questions, however small, we were always getting an answer in a timely fashion. I would say that from the Carisoft side as well, any sort of contract question we had, always great to work with them.
We had tons and we still have tons every now and again, especially on the move to enterprise. We've had a lot of questions here and there and stuff like that as everything evolves and stuff like that.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Yeah. So essentially, you're saying adaptability and adaptability were really important for you all in this journey. And I really love that you guys really articulated that.
It kind of brings us to our next point, which is kind of where you guys are today in terms of what is in your toolkit, right? Your Batman belt, if that makes sense. So what is USF running today?
Talk to me not only about the core Atlassian stack, but walk us through your Atlassian footprint, which products are running and for which teams are utilizing them.
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, sure. So to start off with basics, we use Jira, Jira Service Management, also the assets aspect of it, Confluence. And we've been messing with Jira Product Discovery as well.
The assets portion from the Jira Service Management, we hold a lot of our inventory there, a lot of record keeping for budgeting reasons and all that. So we started off with Jira for development purposes. A lot of the development process for our teams was a little bumpy sometimes, but we all kind of settled in and we found home in it.
And then we started to really, as I said earlier, kind of start to migrate off service now because we found so much success in that, as George said earlier, like the transparency aspect of it. So we really wanted to foster that a lot. When we moved over to Jira Service Management, and keep in mind, actually, we were on the server version and we were there for a while.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Oh, I recall.
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah. We migrated and we went to cloud and we kind of revamped everything as well. But I can go into the detail about that later.
Yeah. So JSM is a big part of it actually here, I would say, because a lot of requests fly, as we said earlier, like a lot of students and faculty have different forms and different requests and different workflows and all that. And that's been a very big key driver.
Actually now as well, Confluence has been a pretty good product for us as well, not only for the wiki aspect, for the robo aspect of it all as well, because it hooks in pretty nicely. But then maybe I can look to George for the Jira product discovery aspect of it, because he's worked with it the most, but I think it's been a great tool as well.
George Wolf
We've done a little bit of exploration with Jira product discovery. The thing I would say that I've noticed about USF is we're primarily a service-based organization. So the product discovery side has been a little bit harder to figure out adoption with us.
I do like the roadmaps in it, though, it's just we haven't figured out the full use case for it. Jira Service Management seems to be the most popular thing. I would say, though, instead of trying to focus on teams, I would look at USF as being a small city.
And we have all of these different business units, and depending on their way of operating, they may use just Jira Service Management, some of them may use Confluence. But across the board, pretty much all of them that have reached out to us have gone for the Jira Service Management side. But a specific use case of some of the Atlassian products within IT, we have the business operations side.
We do use Jira Service Management in combinations with the assets product as well to make it easier to keep track of the physical assets that we have.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Awesome. That's great to hear. All right, guys, we're going to get into the meat of this.
So let's pop open the hood and let's talk about the architecture. All right. So for those who may not know, this is the good stuff we're about to get into, the more technical piece.
So what I'd love to understand is how does Atlassian fit into your broader ecosystem? What kind of integrations are utilized within Atlassian that kind of help, you know, not only promote your overall technology strategy, but also kind of help with other users in terms of adoption? Things that kind of come to mind for me are kind of like integrations for certain workflows or even CMDB or even different data platforms.
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, it's a good question. There's so many to think about and talk about. So since we're focused on geoservice management a lot, I would say a lot of our integrations are a lot of contextual based integrations.
So for example, at our library, we have a lot of inflow and outflow with our students and stuff like that. So a very quick win for us has always been like a card reader and just having those, you know, university cards flow like intake data into like our software essentially. And we just quickly churn through customer requests that way.
It's very easy to like record a message because that also is a part of it, right? So that's been nice. Pick pictures of anything.
Anything that can speak to the problem has been really helpful as well. I would say another solid integration is, as you mentioned, the identity piece. We can take our system of records and identify who somebody is pretty quickly now as soon as you intake, you know, a request because there's lots of rich information that we've collected and show up on the tickets for our users or our agents, I should say.
And I would say another one is the assets. We've really used that a lot for the operational side of things. We containerize a lot of our infrastructure there.
We're always growing that because things are always shifting and stuff like that. But a lot of the growth there has been around the tracking of our tickets alongside or associated to those assets, which has been really helpful for transparency. Not only for budgeting reasons, but, you know, again, just getting the full picture.
As I said earlier, like we really like to see the whole picture at all levels, right? Yeah.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Awesome.
Rodrigo Angulo
There are others, but...
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
No, no, that helps. I think a question that I do have for you, George, let's talk a little bit about analytics. This is kind of was a really good bread and butter of and a really good kind of like tipping point into why we even looked at enterprise, right?
For you all. Talk to me a little bit about your analytics journey. I know that you guys use Azure Fabric and Synapses for your ETL jobs and Power BI was really huge for you all.
So being able to do that data share into Power BI, and I remember we recorded that demonstration and was able to show you kind of how that worked. Talk to me a little bit about that. I would love to hear kind of how analytics is being utilized today and kind of the journey that you guys are seeing with the adoption of it.
George Wolf
Yeah. So Atlassian as a platform provides a lot of different analytics that we could go and look at. What we first started with was time in process, which was a plugin for Atlassian or for the Jira product, I should say.
That primary purpose was just so we could actually get an idea of how long items were staying in a given process or status as they move through the workflow. So we could start to identify bottlenecks and deal with it. And then when we moved to the enterprise solution and licensing, we had the data lake that we now have access to.
One thing I'm looking forward to, but we haven't set up yet is the connection between that data lake and something like Fabric. That way we can pull in that information to some of our other reporting systems. Right now, it's totally separate.
And any type of Jira reporting is being pulled out as its own custom dataset or via API call. For example, we've talked to some of you guys before actually about the pizza tracker that we were building. And I know you guys worked with Domino's on creating that initially as well.
So that's actually pulling directly via API. I think it's a thousand records or something at a time right now. There's some rate limiting, but yeah.
But that's the type of improvements we're looking to get, I would say, over at this point now. To get away from the API connection, actually start using maybe something like the Atlassian analytics solution, or if we can just get it again into Fabric so that all of our reporting is out of Power BI. The university as a whole is putting a lot of effort into training around Power BI.
So that's why it's become kind of the standard for them. It's just easy to use.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Yeah. You don't have to be a SQL expert, right? And that's kind of one of my joys is I get to demonstrate the analytics product within the platform.
So it is really, really choice for our customers to be able to see that in real time. Talking about like one of colleagues and just like being able to work with different individuals. While I love Dee White, she's one of my favorite colleagues, I often talk about Rovo being one of my favorite colleagues as well.
And you guys are utilizing Rovo from a help desk perspective. Talk to me about how that's working for you all. Are you utilizing it in an onboarding perspective?
What did that transition and adoption look like for you all as you essentially adopted Rovo, right?
Rodrigo Angulo
I would say we definitely use that a lot more now, but at the initial stage of everything because everything in a request can be kind of a jumbled mess at first. And then that kind of brings a lot of form to it. So for example, we can understand the context of the request through like the summary and the description mostly.
And we can kind of identify the general area at first and then we fine tune iteratively. And so that's been really helpful because you got the tier one through three support going on and it's been such an accelerant, I'd say, to that realm of things. Not only that, but also it's been really cool to see what it can do agentically.
So little bots to subdivide the workflow has been really, really cool. I think you have an example actually that you use every day now for the intake one, right?
George Wolf
Yeah, so we actually have one that's for any initiative or project request that comes in the USFIT, it's sitting at the funnel or whenever a request is first submitted, it's looking over the content of it, the problem statements, scope details that they're providing as a requester. And it's comparing against actually assets for all of our team schemas to see, okay, what are the team's products that we have? What are the services they offer?
And then what is the potential primary team that should take this request? That way it just helps cut down some of the decision making required whenever something gets to intake for us. It's, oh, this is more than likely the primary team, yes, no.
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, and so to marry the two ideas, basically it's the same idea, right? It's like sorting and triaging, but it's the different, it's like two different sides of the coin. We have the internals versus the externals, right?
And so it's still, it's not like replacing anything, it's just augmenting our decision making. And it's been, again, really, really helpful to do all that pretty quickly, I would say. Right.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Let's talk about governance. It's the standing question that every customer has from an Atlassian perspective, whether you're higher education, state and local government, or even our commercial customers. But how do you all manage governance within the university?
Who owns what in terms of the platform and how do you kind of manage the standards and define those standards as users and super users, right, about the product in general and the platform?
Rodrigo Angulo
To answer that, I would say we, I think George, correct me where I'm wrong here. I would say my take on it is we really start to identify how, in the analogy of a neighborhood, let's say all the houses operate, right? So like we have a big neighborhood and we have individual homes that have different security systems and so on and so forth, right?
And different ways to like act in the house, right? And so like all these different bases essentially work under their own rules because that's all they've known. Right.
So when we come in and we say, hey, we're not changing things like a landlord or anything like that. We're kind of just saying, hey, we're inviting you to come along and kind of unify and be better. Right.
We're not really like mandating anything. Right.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
To that analogy, would you say you guys are like the HOA?
Rodrigo Angulo
I guess. Yeah. You know.
We're like the HOA, sure. But like a nice HOA? I don't know.
But no, in all reality, like we have noticed, you know, through usage metrics and all that and like just talking to people and like, hey, this is going to be a benefit if we all are under the same page. To your question earlier, though, about like your Gandalfs and like your wizards and stuff like that. We typically get the head of the house to like come in and come to the table and like talk in the forum for the HOA.
And we kind of just say, hey, here's what's happening at a grander scale. How does it fit for you? If it does, great.
If it doesn't. Well, whatever. But yeah, no, we really invite people just to come in at the same table, really.
And we've just learned through time and experience that like certain things work and some things don't work. What would you say about all that?
George Wolf
I mean, everything you said is accurate with that. The Atlassian community of practice, I think, helps you guys because any of the clients that we have internally with USF as we're configuring and releasing projects or instances for them, you guys are engaging and continuing to train the admins that they have. And there's very simple guardrails that we have, right?
Which is they can't. Oh, integrate? Yes.
They can't integrate between JIRA and any other system outside of the Atlassian platform. That's the basic governance that we have whenever any of the clients are managing or running with it themselves. Right.
Outside of that, we also have our low-code governance group, which helps make decisions on the right low-code platform for any requests that are coming in. So we look at the requests the clients are making, and then based on the experience they're trying to create, what's the appropriate platform, JIRA being one of those potential options we have. Right.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
So flexibility at the project level is just really key for you all.
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, absolutely. I guess to further the point, two org admins kind of control it all. But we also adhere to the groups that George mentioned, right?
And we're a collective there as well. We have a voice there. So it's not like two people in charge of the whole thing by themselves.
It's more so like we understand that we can't do it all because there's so many people, right? And so we elect people who are more power users and kind of get the gist of their business model and the head of the household, back to the analogy, right? And so they get how everything kind of operates in their world.
And so we just educate them, as George said, to how they could utilize this tool in their mini tool set, right?
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Yeah.
Rodrigo Angulo
And then they kind of just run with it, I would say. As long as they have questions, we're always there. As George said, the community of practice has been a wonderful unifying entity.
We just use a big multi-channel room, essentially, and everybody can ask questions. It's a learning experience, like no judgment zone at all. And we just kind of bring everything together and no dumb questions, right?
We're here to learn at the end of the day.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Yeah. Like what is a work item?
Rodrigo Angulo
Right. Exactly. It can be basic.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
It can. And even hierarchies, like how you define them. And I think that's the beauty of the customization, right?
What I may call an epic may not be what my colleague would call an epic, right?
Rodrigo Angulo
Absolutely.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
And that's important.
Rodrigo Angulo
Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. No, we definitely have bent the rules, so to speak, in that sense for operational work.
It's something different. It's maybe a folder for a lot of different units of work. It can be a hodgepodge of things in that folder, right?
But for us, it's like something that should be closable and within an iteration or whatever. But yeah, no, a lot of different lexicons are joining together because of this. And it's all been because of that, I would say, governance that we've placed.
And everyone's kind of come to the table and kind of agreed on it. We haven't really demanded anything. Everybody just wants to be better.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
So I recall you guys mentioned essentially wanting to highlight your analytics approach. Walk me through how you guys get data out of Atlassian and into your Atlassian stack or your analytics stack, if that makes sense. And then what tools are you guys utilizing today?
I think you mentioned Power BI and we mentioned some others in the past. But talk to me about the data warehouse aspect of what you guys are utilizing.
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, where to start. So how we thought of Jira at first was kind of just a place for work to live. But then we quickly realized that there's a lot of gold in there.
We quickly realized that a lot of people want to understand where they are at a certain point in time. And it can be from any angle. It could be your execs.
It could be me. It can be a service desk tech. It can be whomever, really.
And that's the beauty of it. There's a lot of transparency in there as well. As long as it's not super sensitive information, it's all there.
So we worked on integrating it with a lot of our already kind of existing reports, like a lot of metrics for the service desk, a lot of metrics for the amount of time that you guys use it for the initiatives, the higher-level items. And we used Azure Synapse for a while. But as technologies evolved and Azure as a whole, or Microsoft as a whole, has provided us more.
And now that we're coming into the age of AI and stuff, we've been using Fabric more and more. And we're kind of working on getting that connection established. We have the...
We're almost there, I would say. But that's going to put us in a position for the consumption of, let's say, Copilot or Robo or any sort of LLM in general to augment our processes, like we've talked about as well. I know that we have typically used APIs to pull a lot of reports, but there's the rate limits with that and just the limits for the results on that.
And we've worked with you guys to actually increase those and stuff like that. But a lot of that has been really helpful for, like I said, everybody. It really comes down to what is your role and what do you want to know about your role or how you fit into the big picture, right?
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
So we talked a little bit about SLAs. That kind of makes me think of a little bit about KPIs, like what KPIs and metrics you guys are mostly looking at and what your leadership cares about. And the reason I say that is because what leadership is insightful for them may not be as relevant for us, right?
We have two different things and two different data points that we need to see. And they're looking at it from more of an eagle eye view and we're actually in the weeds getting the work done. The question I really am asking is, who's utilizing the dashboards, what reports are they looking to see, and what are their expectations and how often they're utilizing these dashboards?
George Wolf
So any metrics or KPIs should always be something that's either actionable or outcome focused, at least for how USFIT operates. What we started with was flow time and flow efficiency. So that's just how fast do items move through stage gate to state gate in a given time window.
And then also the efficiency side, how much time is it spending in a waiting versus an active status. Sometimes we'll also pull like a flow velocity, which is total count that moves through. But we started with those and process time and that just, we really focused in on our project delivery life cycle.
It was, I think, a 430 or so days average.
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah. About like 460, 430.
George Wolf
Yeah. It was initially pretty high. A lot of that probably data cleanliness, things like that to go into it too.
But by focusing in on those areas, I think right now we're averaging around 250 business days to actually get an initiative or project out to clients. So from an SLT or senior leadership perspective for us, that's what Sidney, our CIO would call speed value, right? How fast can we get something from request to value in hand of the client?
So our focus has mainly been around those metrics.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Awesome. So workload volumes, you would say they really help your directors and your resource managers really determine even the appropriate amount of staffing that you guys are also utilizing as well.
George Wolf
Yeah. A hundred percent. So like breaking down the workflow for our projects as well with how they're managed, we're using JIRA service management to track like project from ideation all the way to solution delivery.
We broke it down into three phases, approval and prioritization, analysis and design and build and deploy. And each of those we can now see, okay, it's taking 60 days on average here. This is a bottleneck.
We can immediately go in and start remediation. I think a lot of organizations, especially one like ours, because we took the scaled agile approach, they'll almost wholesale take what you see is like a portfolio con bond, right? The safe would prescribe.
So the funnel reviewing. And if you do that, you're not really describing the processes in the context of your organization. And so whenever you're really looking for the bottlenecks, you can't find them.
And that's part of the transformation that we had to go through is describe the process, the input, the output, and then also measure that.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
So I think another good point from that is, can you all share an example of where insights from Atlassian data really helped directly influence decisions at a leadership level when it comes to USF, what changes were made?
Rodrigo Angulo
I would say there's been a couple instances. From a service management perspective, we have accelerated exponentially, I'd say, and also brought everyone together from an understanding. So like our SLAs are pretty fine tuned, you know, after some iterations within our organization and like also with the clientele in general.
I think as we've spoken about it a little bit earlier as well, everybody has that same lexicon at this point, and everybody can expect a certain action or at least an update at the very least, which is also huge, I think, sometimes because sometimes I'm like, where's this thing? I don't even know what I can do because I'm depending on something. And even, like I said, an update is helpful enough because then you can trickle that down to whomever you need to talk to, right?
But yeah, George, would you say anything else about that point?
George Wolf
No, I think the only thing I would really add on to that is one of the things I've noticed that's helped with like the reporting and metrics that you guys have been putting out, especially as it comes to like what we were talking about with like the flow reports or like the pizza track we were talking about before, is getting a standard template for whenever you're developing a report or releasing it so that you know client to client or user group to user group, they actually can, okay, look at this thing and quickly understand what they're trying to interpret. It doesn't go between this is how one team shows it and measures it and this is how another team does it. So it makes it easier for stakeholders and leadership to just quickly look at something like a service desk dashboard and say, okay, great, I know how we're performing and what channels we're getting these tickets from.
Dee White
So what kind of outcomes are you seeing so far that can be quantitative, like faster response times or qualitative, like better collaboration across campus? Tell me a little bit about, you know, what you've measured and where you found successes thus far.
Juan Diaz Davila
Quantitative, I would say our biggest win so far has been speed to value. With Jira Service Management or Jira, we're actually able to track the statuses and how things progress through the workflow. So I think we have been able to notice where the bottlenecks are occurring and focus on those and be able to improve.
So quantitative, I say that has been our biggest win so far. Qualitative, so a lot of departments across the university are currently using it, such as Business and Finance or Bellini College of AI. So we've been able to see multiple different departments interacting with one another.
Previously, they used to do these things via email and the thread used to get lost. And now we can see individuals in different departments interacting with one another, being able to share the ticket back and forth. So I think that's a very good big win, not only for IT, for the whole university with the Alaskan products that we're using.
Dee White
So I'd love to know, like looking back, what were some lessons learned or surprises, either organizational or technical, that you may have encountered?
Juan Diaz Davila
So I would say, so first, whenever we started implementing Alaskan was mostly in IT. And then we saw big growth around the university, which brought up a lot of demand. And I would say focusing on self-service, being able to enable the clients to be able to configure and do what they want to build.
So we're just there to support them. So basically, instead of fishing for them, show them how to fish. So I think that was a big win for us.
And this is how we were able to keep up with the demand. And another big benefit, again, is the local governance group. We were able to set up that structure for them and parameters that we wanted everybody to stay within.
So that way, we were all aligned with the overall outcome that we were trying to use the Alaskan products for.
Dee White
So I want to lean into change management. It's a question that I get asked all the time, as I'm speaking with other leaders that are looking to go through something similar, where you're talking about consolidating and optimizing on a single platform. So tell me about how you all manage that with different stakeholders, different opinions across the campus, and also to ensure the adoption of this platform that you were really looking to optimize on.
Juan Diaz Davila
I would say change management was really huge for us. Not only within IT, but also the different departments and units across the university. One thing that really helped us out was working individually with the different departments and units and actually understanding the problem and what their current blockers are.
That way, when we were building the actual instance or the different projects, request types, we were keeping that in mind on how we could fix their problems. So I think that's what really helped sell the product and for them to be able to understand it was a product that was going to be able to help them in the long run.
George Wolf
Yeah, I would agree. I think it's a combination of meeting people where they're at, right, in terms of how their business process functions, and then also just not leaning into the technical side of it as much as what is the actual business practice that they're trying to figure out. Once you understand that, you can then solve it in tons of different platforms, right?
And then Jira, for the majority of it, has been the best workflow solution that we have. But spending the time with the users, one, gets their buy-in, and then two, also makes it so they have some trust in you whenever you start to allow something to them.
Dee White
So we talk about lessons learned. If you were to start over again tomorrow, what would you do differently? So like if they got into a time machine is what you're saying, right?
Exactly. Time machine, you're starting tomorrow, what is something you might do differently?
Juan Diaz Davila
So we were starting all over again. I think we would definitely focus on the governance aspect, focusing from the beginning, setting those standards and guardrails. Especially right now, a few years ago, we were very reactive rather than being proactive.
We were trying to catch up and set those standards as we were expanding across the university and the different units. So I think that has been our main takeaway as we've been growing with the Alessin platform.
George Wolf
Yeah, I would agree with that. It's probably, to most users or most admins, the least fun part of it because it's, oh, policy standards, guidelines. Nobody wants to sit down and document those things.
But when you establish those agreements early on, it's much easier to work together in an instance or any of the Alessian products, because you know, if I'm saying this item blocks the other one, okay, this is what a block link means or whatever we're using specific work items, what they actually mean for us within our organizational context. But the situation we wound up in is going backwards and defining those things. So that's one thing I would recommend to anyone, just sit down, do the work.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Yeah. So as we kind of wrap up our conversations, let's talk about what's next for USF, particularly as it comes with your Alessian platform. What are some key initiatives that you guys are really jazzed about, you're excited about, that you want to roll out next?
And talk to me about some capabilities that you know are coming down the public roadmap that you're excited to take advantage of.
Juan Diaz Davila
So one big focus for the tool specialist team is further client enablement. That way we can empower the teams to do more, either update their workflows, request apps, or even continue to expand with Jira service management, which is what most units and departments are using. And then another thing that the team is very excited about is Forge to be able to solve more of those complex problems.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
I think one time in an earlier conversation and what we actually saw a team, I think it was last week, right? It's all moving rather quickly. One thing that we had also talked about was probably like a digital front door.
Is that something that you guys can kind of explain a little bit? I know where you got to see another university kind of speak on that, but I know that that's something that we had discussed as being a roadmap for you all.
Rodrigo Angulo
Yeah, good question. So I would say we have something there already. We definitely work on that front a lot.
George spoke about the initiatives and that layer of our customer base and understanding the flow metrics there. What we're trying to do, I think now is unify even further. Because we have, like I said earlier in that analogy, right?
We have that neighborhood. Now we want that neighborhood entrance that looks nice, right? And all the different houses already have their entrances, but sometimes we couple these houses together.
But now we're refining that, right? And so now we're going to have a more collective understanding of all the homes and their intricacies for one hopefully unified front door that can really serve everything that we stand for, right? Or that we need to collaborate on.
I think it's going to be a very fun process, but it's definitely going to take some work because there's always had a lot of debate on what's right and wrong or what is needed and so on and so forth. But we're definitely headed in that direction for sure.
Dee White
So one of the things that I love about the higher education industry is how collaborative everyone is and how you want to help one another. So here's your chance on the podcast, right? Like if you had advice to give to another university or public sector organization for that matter that's still in spreadsheets and email phase and thinking about a transformation and what's a modern platform, what would you tell them?
Rodrigo Angulo
Actually, my biggest piece of advice is something that's been said already. Meet your people where they're at and talk to people. Like don't make decisions for people, collaborate on the decision.
Everyone knows their issue and is really willing to speak about it most of the time. But they're going to guide you and you're going to guide them. It's a give and take, right?
And it's always been easier in my opinion that way because then there's a lot less misunderstanding and the second thing I would say is probably give them the keys and let them try it out in front of you and then just kind of guide them saying, hey, this is what this does, that's what this does. But think about the big picture. You could, now that you've told me about how you cook your meal, think about how this pan can be heated in a certain way or back to home algae or whatever.
But there's a lot of tools that can be used in multiple different ways depending on the profession you're in, right?
Juan Diaz Davila
So, no, and I would say for different companies or even universities that are using spreadsheets or even communication back and forth via email and you're losing that communication, there's a lot of advantages that you can use the Atlassian platform for. Especially like for example, Jira Service Management. Now all the communication is all in one thread and now you can incorporate Robo as well which is able to summarize that thread for you and even guide you for the next steps.
So it's a big win for all of us.
Dee White
That's really great advice. And I know our customers love to hear it and probably helps to settle some nerves, if you will. So before we close, like where can our listeners learn more about USF, about your work and the Atlassian and Kerasoft partnership with you all?
Juan Diaz Davila
If you guys have any questions or would like to collaborate, please reach out here.
Elisa Aviles-Bodoin
Well, team, I'm just so appreciative of everyone's time and the thoughtfulness that you guys had in coming to our podcast and allowing us to share in your wonderful campus. We are just really excited for the digital transformation that you guys have and the journey that you've taken but also what's next and what's going to be coming out of this partnership with Atlassian and with Kerasoft and with USF.
Dee White
Yeah, I just can't express enough like how grateful we are for your partnership. It really, yeah, truly is a partnership, just great collaboration and look forward to seeing, you know, what's next.
Juan Diaz Davila
No, I just want to say the partnership really goes both ways. We really appreciate all the support that you guys have provided us throughout this past six years trajectory. And thank you for coming to USF.
We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Go Bulls.
Anthony Jiminez
Thanks for listening. Thank you to our guests, Juan, George and Rodrigo. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe to KeraCast and be sure to listen to our other discussions.
If you'd like more information on how Atlassian consists your organization, please visit www.kerasoft.com or email us at alassianatkerasoft.com. Thanks again for listening and have a great day.