It’s one I personally had not seen coming. Not that I know much about markets. But I’d thought that systems that ORGANISE software development would be relatively safe.

Not so, apparently. Atlassian, the Australian company best known for software collaboration and task management system Jira, just made known that 1,600 of their workers have been laid off. 

Why was I so wrong?

We’re a small software company. We use Jira for tickets, customer support, documentation. We've a dedicated Confluence space for our ISO 27001 certification program.

And of course we’re aware of the new AI features cropping up in the system. Not that we use them much, we’ve built our own AI-powered workflow. And yes, that’s now built around Jira, but it could be any other. Or our own.

Before we used Jira we used Basecamp. But that’s not a ticket-based task management system, you might retort. No, it’s not. But it was the perfect fit for us at the time, the middle way between ease of access for our clients while giving enough structure to get things shipped.

We used Basecamp because it was simple. These days I can build a Basecamp clone in an afternoon, using an orchestrated set of AI coding agents. Self organising. No Jira needed.

Any pattern-based skill set is replaceable by AI. 

Task management used to be a thing of value. Now, the likes of Notion, Clickup and Basecamp are scrambling to find new avenues of revenue. 

Notion has rolled out "Custom Agents" that go far beyond simple task automation. These agents can now autonomously research competitors, generate strategy documents, populate databases, and even draft content calendars or product roadmaps based on market trends and internal data.

Task management tools are moving far beyond their initial scope, integrating with CRM, HRM, and business intelligence tools, allowing AI to connect dots across departments and suggest strategic pivots.

To survive in the land of AI, you need to move up in the chain of command 

And that’s exactly what Atlassian is doing. They are moving beyond task management to an echelon higher, business strategy. They are targeting enterprise with new, AI powered technologies. 

Actually, that’s what we’re experiencing too, of course, at much smaller scale. We’re building orchestration systems that empower our developers to work at a much higher velocity. But it’s having the effect that product managers struggle to keep up. 

Which means that to make full use of AI, product managers must become developers, or developers must become product managers. And that’s exactly what’s happening at our company.

AI powered methodology makes that everyone needs to move up the chain. Or leave.

When you’re up the chain, it’s the human touch that matters 

Atlassian moving up the chain into business strategy means that they’re leaving their roots of humble task management software to grow out into the real stuff that makes businesses thrive. 

But businesses are not all the same. It’s no longer about taking one aspect and automating it. Automating the higher levels of business is a very complex job. 

Which is why there’s a new, high-touch approach to customer service for enterprises, where specific humans are made responsible for the client.

And again, we see that mirroring on our much smaller scale. The human touch is evermore important as the role of the traditional developer diminishes. Our project managers and developers are morphing into business consultants, offering our clients insights into marketing strategies, or even initiating campaigns.

However much AI takes over, people still like talking to people. It’s the human touch that matters.

Header image: David Teniers the Younger, The Vagabond, second half of the 17th century. Hopefully those laid off by Atlassian will find new purpose.