Atlassian Cloud Mythbusting Part 7: Can I still Customize my Cloud Instance?

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It's been a long time since the Rolling Stones were telling people "Get Off of My Cloud", and times have certainly changed; nowadays, we move more and more "into the Cloud". But what seems so simple for people privately can cause quite the headache in a professional context. Especially when it comes to sensitive topics such as data protection or information security in general. And so it's not surprising that in many countries, many companies that are considering moving their operations into the Cloud are hesitant at first. Questions about topics like security, performance and customization weigh heavily on the minds of the decision-makers.

These concerns are understandable, as there have been repeated discussions and negative examples in the past. Reason enough for Seibert Media to take a closer look - and to do some "myth-busting"! Because many things you might think you know about the Cloud are not accurate (anymore). And one thing is clear: the future is looking up!

So join us in a journey into the clouds and read in our seventh article in our "Cloud Mythbusters" series if and how you can still customize your instance in the Atlassian Cloud (which, by the way, is not limited to the Atlassian Cloud!). The other articles will deal with the following topics:

  • What's the Deal with Data Security?
  • Put on a performance!
  • Bye-Bye Server Apps – Hello Cloud?
  • Should I Change Anything in My Change Management?
  • What Happens to my Data?
  • What Does My Admin do When There's Less to Admin?
  • Will Cloud Still Work Well When My Company Gets Bigger?

In every blog article, we'll get to the bottom of each myth together, and we'll see what's left of them afterwards… And now: enjoy reading and "busting myths"!


Atlassian Cloud mythbusting 7 customization

Customizations make our Jira and Confluence instances unique. They help you and your colleagues quickly know they are in the right place to find their work, everybody feels “at home”. After all, every team is different, right? So you should be able to customize your Atlassian tools to fit the various business needs. At Seibert media, we do this all the time! It’s part of our jobs as Atlassian experts, but have you ever stepped back and asked “why the heck am I doing this”? Probably not, because we commonly believe customizations are vital to the success of our systems.

In your journey to the Cloud you may have heard some objections such as “I can create more custom workflows in Server than Cloud” and “these customizations are what’s best for my team so we absolutely need them.” Then, when you explore the path for you to migrate to Cloud, you see that these customizations might not be possible. Thus, the objection from your stakeholders comes through to not migrate to Cloud.

Let’s explore both of these objections in the following sections to see if they are in fact valid when deciding on your journey to the Cloud.

Myth 1: I can create more custom workflows in Server 

Atlassian Cloud solutions are standardized. That’s just a fact. What’s not a fact is that there is no room for customization. As an administrator, almost everything that you were able to do in a Server, you will be able to do in Cloud. 

The problem when looking at Server vs Cloud is that we think the method to our customizations will be the same on both deployments. This is not true. On a Server instance, you might decide to do some customizations by adding custom code to Jira. This is not possible in Cloud, you cannot alter the codebase of Jira. So many administrators may think that it’s impossible to do their customization, but in reality, it depends on what the customization is. If they wanted to customize Confluence pages with different elements such as a button, they could consider an app such as Aura.

In our consulting experience, we have asked Jira and Confluence Administrators about their switch to Cloud. They often tell us the following about their Server administration experience:

  • Workarounds for things they couldn’t figure out were messy
  • Their team used bad hacks to accomplish things that should have been more intuitive
  • Oftentimes they found themselves over-configuring the system to accomplish what users wanted
  • They focused too much time on firefighting and not enough on solving longer systematic problems
  • They still have tech debt they never addressed

A common Atlassian phrase we like to often echo is, “the tool is only as powerful as the people that use it.” The design of Atlassian Cloud out-of-the-box embraces agility, and agile teams are the ones that are most successful in this fast-paced, technology-driven world. As one of the Atlassian Community Leaders said:

“Atlassian cloud is the reason I’m still such an incredibly passionate advocate for Atlassian. It reflects everything that made me first fall in love with Atlassian products all those years ago… The tool is there to support and elevate the team, not [forcing] the team to change how it works to support the tool. If you keep your configs simple and leverage the out-of-the-box offering… you’re embracing agility.”

Myth 2: My tailor-made customizations are what’s best for my team

 

Customizations are great for the different features they can bring you. What’s not great about customizations is:

  • Maintenance
  • Lost documentation
  • Workarounds
  • Altering a software with unsupported customizations

Let’s talk through each of these pitfalls of customizations one at a time.

 

Maintenance 

Atlassian constantly rolls out new updates to their Cloud instances. You can see weekly updates of these changes here. What happens in the backend of Jira with these updates? Probably quite a bit of code change and adaptation. How will those changes affect your customizations? You'll just have to wait and see… With every change Atlassian makes, you may have to make some changes yourself within your instance. This could lead to significantly increased maintenance costs for your customizations. As you can see from the blog stream linked above, changes are constant in Atlassian cloud products. Do you want your maintenance to be constant as well?

Atlassian Cloud customization

Lost documentation 

Whenever you make a customization, you need to document it. Why? Well, you might need to transfer ownership of all that information that’s stored in your head someday. Typing it into a document allows you to transfer that knowledge to someone else if you leave your organization. However, nobody is perfect and sometimes documentation gets lost. If this is the case, it makes maintaining your customizations or finding the reasons for building the customizations in the first place very difficult. On top of this, while documenting your customizations is great practice, it creates another item that you need to maintain, thus creating more work for yourself.

Workarounds 

Let’s be honest, a lot of customizations are workarounds. There might be a way to accomplish something through a paid app and instead you or your administrator decide to try and write a custom webhook. Atlassian didn’t write their software to include workarounds. If you find yourself looking for a customization that doesn’t exist, it’s likely not available for a reason and we wouldn’t recommend pursuing a workaround in this situation.

Altering software with unsupported customizations

Atlassian supports all their deployment as they come out of the box. With customizations, it really depends on how you achieve them. Atlassian is not going to support hacks or extreme workarounds. If you have a problem with any of your customizations, there’s a chance that Atlassian will not be able to support you, so customize at your own risk.

The decision is yours

In the end, it’s up to you to decide how much customization you want to do. If you want true agility in your organization then we recommend very few customizations in your Cloud instance. That’s saying a lot coming from an organization that feeds itself customizing Atlassian products. If you do decide to do some customizing in your Atlassian Cloud instance, please reach out for a consultation with us at Seibert media. We have been customizing Atlassian Cloud instances since the inception of the product.

Do away with the mess

In the end, your move to Cloud is going to help your organization more than hurt it. The vast majority of the customizations you were maintaining in your Server instance you will be able to do in Cloud. Most agile teams take on a very lean approach to tool customization, and we support that approach. If you need any help customizing your Jira Cloud instance, please feel free to reach out to us at Seibert Media.


Further Reading

Forget Less and Ensure Quality with didit Checklists for Atlassian Cloud Forget Less and Ensure Quality with didit Checklists for Atlassian Cloud Forget Less and Ensure Quality with didit Checklists for Atlassian Cloud

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