Tune in to the Atlassian podcast to hear Erin Philips, Director of Product Marketing, and Kirk Shultz, Atlassian Consultant at Isos Technology, discuss how Atlassian JSM reduces resolution times for citizen inquiries and internal requests. Explore how Atlassian’s simple user interface fosters collaboration, enhances service delivery, promotes transparency and complies with Federal security requirements.
Anthony Jimenez
Welcome back to care cast the podcast from care soft, the 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 run Atlassian is Jira Service Management, Erin Philips, Director of Product Marketing and Kirk Shultz Atlassian consultant at Isos Technology. We'll discuss how Atlassian Jira Service Management can revolutionize the way your federal agency operates.
Erin Philips
Welcome, Kirk. So excited to have you. To kick things off. Could you introduce yourself and share a little bit about your background experience and your current role at Isos?
Kirk Shultz
Sure. I've been working in the Atlassian ecosystem since 2018. I've been working here at Isos for two and a half years now. I was previously at Defense Media Activity in Fort Meade, Maryland. Prior to that I was active-duty Air Force for four years and reserves for one year. My current role at Isos is I'm a an Atlassian engineer primarily scoped for JSM Jira Service Management. And I'm also the asset management subject matter expert.
Erin Philips
Which is a big and growing part of all of our ITSM and ESM. consulting engagements, it feels like you can't do anything in GSM without assets anymore. So, for our listeners who might not be familiar, can you explain what Atlassian Jira Service Management also known as GSM is and why it's particularly beneficial for federal environments.
Kirk Shultz
JSM is Atlassian solution for a robust ticketing slash service delivery system. To go into a little bit more detail. It's Atlassian is primary ITSM solution. And that's delivering service management practices like service requests, incident and Problem Management, change request, change management, next type of stuff. And of course, asset management, my favorite, as well as configuration management, in terms of like how it relates to federal practices, it's really flexible, you can do a bunch of configurations with it. And a very important thing for federal is change enablement.
Erin Philips
There's like so many different types of service delivery that have to happen within government, federal DoD agencies, all the different customers, quote, unquote, that the government has to serve. So how does JSM enable federal agencies to deliver better service management experiences?
Kirk Shultz
So, I've got the perfect example. This is something that I worked on with my previous client, we utilized asset management as well as JSM, and Jira server for the Kanban boards and all that, to create a robust in and out-processing system. This was done for a host of individuals, military contractors, and civilians all working within the federal space, when I was in the military, and I'm pretty sure they still do it this way, in and out processing was all done by paper. And I mean, I can tell you, it's a big pain, time sink, you know, you've got to go from one office to the other, kind of get all your wet signatures and everything. How we did it for our Air Force client is like I said, we tied in all of you know, Jira JSM, as well as assets. So, they would come in their sponsor who would be you know, someone who's already been in that unit or that area for a while they know kind of where everything is they walk these folks through, we've made it to where it's a whole lot easier. So, they'll come in their sponsor will say, Hey, here's your in-processing checklist. And it's all on Jira, you don't have to walk to someone else's office with the exception of handing in your orders, that still has to be done in person. But everything from getting your account your you know, your Active Directory, or your Atlassian account spun up, all the way up to training and security and all that was all done on Jira. And we tracked it all, on this robust checklist that we made virtual, and every change that was made, we ported that over to the assets database that we had. So, you know, let's say your first day, you don't have a duty title yet. You're just getting started. By the time you're done in processing, you know, let's say you start on Monday, now it's Friday, you've got your duty, title, your rank, and all of that is in the system. So, you can pull up assets. And you can see the person's entire personnel profile. And you can also add in skills, the team that they're on stuff like that. So that was one of the best examples I have to where we've really helped improve the federal practice.
Erin Philips
That's great. And I think a lot of government agencies right now are trying to figure out how to embark on digital transformation, right? They want to get out of actual paper, or spreadsheets or things like that. And how do you move all of that into a digital more streamlined, more automated system somehow that makes that easier. So, I know transparency and control are key in federal agencies and every organization but especially when you're dealing with the government, how does JSM facilitate this and make sure that, you know, operations are secure and efficient.
Kirk Shultz
With Jira JSM every ticket workflow transition, every action you take, you know, whether it's simply commenting on a ticket, all the way up to administrative tasks are all tracked and audited. And they can be viewed in a number of different ways. For a standard user, you know, let's say that you're having an issue with your computer, and you log into the JSM portal, which is think of it as a help desk, and you'll click on, I have a problem with my PC. And then you'll be able to monitor what the sheriff agent is kind of doing. So, they'll say, hey, I've, I've looked up your PC, I can see that it's using a lot of RAM, so they can comment that in. And you can kind of track the troubleshooting process, with the exception of, you know, admin background functions, right? All of these actions are on full display in the Jira audit log. So, administrators can go into that audit log, and they can say, hey, you know, at 3pm, on Thursday, so and so ran a script that kind of did this and that. And if that's not something that we want on the instance, were able to see, okay, this is what it was done, here's where it is in our system, we can go ahead and disable it, if it's not something that we were wanting to enable. So, assets, obviously is typically used for physical or digital assets, like our computers, or microphones, keyboards, stuff like that. But like I was saying, we were using it for personnel, it adds a unique feature to it to where let's say that I'm in an e4, a senior airman, and let's say that next month, I'm going to rank up, I'm going to be a staff sergeant, it's gonna be great, I will be able to say, here's my paperwork that shows that I have ranked up, and then whoever is monitoring or managing that asset database can go in, make that change and say, Okay, at this time, so and so has ranked up to staff sergeant, so you know, a couple years down the line, you can go ahead and look at that audit log, it's not going to go anywhere, we don't have a disposition date, when it comes to asset audit trail, so that data is going to retain.
Erin Philips
That's amazing. It really Institute's sort of checks and balances, you know, exactly what changes are being made by who. And then I think we also want to touch on so not just anyone can change data.
Kirk Shultz
Absolutely. In our asset databases, we have a section called roles. And there's typically three type of roles, you've got your user, the people who are doing management on it, and then the administrators, users will have pure read only. And of course, if you have you know, Cui or PII data, you can just mix that all together and say, No users can get in this with the exception of upper management, leadership, that type of thing, in terms of locking down, who can control it best, the same type of thing, you can lock that through groups that you've got in Jira, you know, if you only want your middle or upper management to be able to make those type of changes, you know, like I was saying, you would have to hand in your credentials to say, Yes, look, I have ranked up that person. And maybe you know, a handful of other people inside of that office would have the ability to make any of those changes.
Erin Philips
So, I like that there's control. And then there's transparency for the changes that are made by the people that are authorized to make those changes. And I could see how that is very important, obviously, in a secure government, DoD type setting. I want to clarify something. So, we've said the word assets a lot. And I think that that gets confusing for people because there are there's, you know, asset and configuration management and assets, like you talked about, which could be physical, which could be digital, which could be people, but then Atlassian also has a product called assets. And that's kind of what we've been talking about using in conjunction with Jira Service Management. So, can you talk a little bit about assets, the tool and how that's so helpful for Asset Management for government.
Kirk Shultz
agencies? Assets is a software in terms when we're talking about Jira and Atlassian assets, the program used to be known as insight. And that was created by the folks over at mind Ville Atlassian ended up acquiring it. And just so that people kind of understood it more, we're going to call it assets, people know what assets is going to do, because it's an asset management tool. And they immediately integrated that into JSM. Premium. You know, I've met, I've met so many people during my time with federal clients, and their entire portfolio is nothing but Excel spreadsheets, they've come to me and they said, I've got so many spreadsheets, I've got to track everything, I've got to make these little modifications, I've got to figure out what sell I've got to, you know, how can assets work for me? I've told them, you know, assets natively ingests your CSV spreadsheets, and with very minimal changes, I've got all of your data the same way that you've seen it for years, but it's in a much more digestible user interface.
Erin Philips
So, with that, I mean, anytime you adopt a new process, or a new technology solution, there's always going to be challenges, right? People don't like change. What are some of the common challenges you've seen federal agencies face when adopting JSM adopting assets? And how have we navigated those issues?
Kirk Shultz
There is a lot of government red tape, when it comes to implementing new software's. You know, is it right for us long term isn't going to be good for us? How much is it? And Atlassian has always made it to where it's relatively cost effective for federal agencies to take on this software. Another kind of issue that you're trying to get through is changes usually have to go through a chain of command. However, what I've seen is a lot of folks in leadership positions are starting to see the benefits of Atlassian. I mean, how many triple A companies right now are utilizing it, they're starting to see that and they're saying, you know what, I think I want a piece of that. So, the chain of command hurdle is slowly starting to go away. One of the best examples I have is a server-to-server migration of Atlassian instances. So, you know, some people there'll be utilizing on premises, which means they've got the Atlassian software on a server somewhere in their building. AWS is a really good example, Amazon Web Services, migrating Matt, it can be very challenging. We've got a whole, you know, checklist. I know, we've been talking a lot about checklists today. But we even have migration checklists for just such a thing, so that nothing gets missed. That is definitely one of the more challenging aspects of it. But Atlassian has made it a lot easier to do those migrations, you know, I hate to say it, but it is experience some of this stuff, you do need to be experienced them. And it's not just experienced in Atlassian, you need to have experience in the federal sector to kind of understand how to navigate that red tape, there's a lot of different nuances that come into, you know, getting through all of that difficult conversations, higher ups, whether it's, you know, civilian or military, they, they know what they want, but they don't know how to get there. So, it's our job as the experts to kind of take what they are saying to us and explain how we're going to get there step by step.
Erin Philips
And every organization that we go into has a little bit of this, the culture in a federal agency is very different. And like you said, like you kind of have to know the ins and outs and how to navigate that, let alone like, implement a brand new solution or migrate data over or so it's, it's a lot of moving parts and having familiarity and experience, not only with the tools, but with the people and the processes on that government side, I think is key. I know sometimes people think oh, like, you know, we could implement this ourselves, or we could do it and obviously, like shameless promo like, you know, but it's like, that's really why companies like Isos exist, because we have experts, we have experience, and we can really help there. So, it's not that there won't be no risk or there won't be no challenges. It's just that we can help mitigate some of some of the pain of implementing anything new. Looking ahead, are there any developments or new things coming to JSM that you're excited about? And that you think would be really beneficial to federal agencies?
Kirk Shultz
Absolutely. Yes, there is. There's a seminar called the Atlassian team tour for government that was actually hosted this month, they talked about all the innovations that are going on right now in the government sector. And those are features including developments such as the enablement for government wide shared services through Atlassian tools, how they're transforming employee lifecycle management, and then they've also got lessons learned from a handful of agencies. that are trying to migrate from on prem services to Jira cloud, what you'll hear most often in the federal sector is that they are using Atlassian data center. That's pretty much the standard because they've got to have their control and their transparency like we're talking about. If they're not able to touch the servers, like I was saying with on prem, they have their access to their AWS servers, with Jira cloud, that's all on Atlassian side. So, some federal practices are now trying Jira cloud out. And they're meeting success. So, I highly encourage going to events.atlassian.com and checking that out.
Erin Philips
The next big frontier that we're talking about for the government spaces, cloud, and it's super scary, and how do we get to cloud? And how do we make sure it's secure? But it's, it feels like it's sort of inevitable, right? Like everybody's moving to cloud. So, I'm super excited about that. I think there's gonna be a lot of development and a lot of change over the next couple of years that make Atlassian cloud viable for so many more government agencies in public sector, you know, organizations. We talked a lot today, assets, control, transparency, change management, you know, within a government org, for anyone considering making some sort of change to their service management solution. Do you have any advice for them? What should they look out for? What should they know? In your experience? Like, what is that key piece of information that is going to make this a better experience for them.
Kirk Shultz
So, for my experience, the best piece of advice that I can say is, please be upfront with what you want. Be patient. These things take a lot of time to build. And you know, there's some Nuance to it, bring in experts like those that Isos Technology, because you'll need them to get where you want to go. You can do a lot yourself. But when you bring in the experts, you know that you're going to get exactly what you want. Isos has some of the most experienced engineers that I've ever met in my entire career. We've been doing federal consultancy for a long time; we've had Getty from the Air Force as a subcontractor. You know, we've worked with the DoD in the past. So, we have a breadth of knowledge that is just ready and raring to go.
Erin Philips
Thank you so much. This was great for me, like I get to gain a lot of insight into the federal sector, hopefully really helpful for all of our listeners. I'm sure we'll have to talk more about JSM and assets and, you know, public sector at another time. So, yeah, thanks, Kirk. And hopefully we'll talk to you again soon.
Kirk Shultz
Thanks, Aaron. I really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much.
Anthony Jimenez
Thanks for listening. And thank you to our guests, Erin Philips and Kirk Shultz. Don't forget to like comment and subscribe to carrot cast and be sure to listen to our other discussions. If you'd like more information on how Atlassian can assist your organization, please visit www.carahsoft.com or email us at atlassian@carahsoft.com. Thanks again for listening and have a great day.