Lessons from Atlassian: Launching new products, getting buy-in, and staying ahead of the competition

Megan Cook, head of product for Jira at Atlassian, discusses building psychological safety and play on product teams, running remote work effectively, getting executive buy-in through staged proposals, and how Atlassian has launched many successful products. The conversation covers peer feedback groups, a gated new-product process, and lessons from her own failures.

01Key learnings

• Pair product managers in small peer feedback groups every couple of weeks so people can share rough drafts and get feedback in a low-stakes setting.
• Treat psychological safety as a precondition for bolder ideas; Megan argues the opposite of play is fear, not work.
• Schedule a recurring block for working through conflict early, so disagreements are addressed before they grow.
• Protect deep-work time in remote settings by syncing leadership calendars and moving status updates out of meetings into asynchronous tools.
• When seeking buy-in, involve affected stakeholders early, state your hypotheses and facts openly, and set a clear ask for each meeting.
• Start new initiatives small, make the benefit visual and concrete with data and prototypes, and build momentum through regular updates.
• Launch new products through stage gates (wonder, explore, make, impact, scale) with small teams and different standards than the core product.
• When committing to an idea, ask how it would look 10x bigger or applied across other products, to avoid missing larger opportunities.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.