“Oh Yes, We Did!” That’s a phrase that Dominos uses to reference an accomplishment that was once thought to be impossible, but has now been successfully accomplished.
After listening to Mike Sheppard’s delivery of his highly enthusiastic talk “Dominos’ Delivery of a Faster Response was No Standard Order” during Atlassian Summit, it’s clear that a lot of once impossible things were accomplished in route to his session. All though not uncommon in many enterprises, the ability to collaborate is crippled by a lack of communication. Dominos is no different; it was obvious in their lack of communication between Security and Application Development.
While software is driving the company to new heights, the greater the innovation the greater the risk! In the “Uncommon Honesty” of their culture, they recognized that the process and engagement had to shift for that two-edge sword not to be their undoing. Understanding how to automate and streamline the engagement was the only way to open up the lines of communication and visibility needed to assist both teams.
This would be the catalyst to turning a spirit of avoidance to one of collaboration. With security leading the way, the decision was made by Mike to not just meet the development team half way but to walk across to the other side. In deciding to leverage both Atlassian’s JIRA and Confluence applications, common development tools, Mike was playing squarely in their backyard. Now that the security team had decided they wanted the conversations to be easier between the two by playing on developments’ turf, the question remained. How?
Several partners would be posed the question of how to help broker the right level of integration between the Atlassian Products and Dominos’ needs. The sole goal was to assist in opening the valve of collaboration and visibility. Several partners came and went saying it couldn’t be done. However, there was one who said: “Oh yes, we can!”
At Forty8Fifty, we say the impossible is typically very possible. Just give us a crack at it. So, when Dominos gave us the problem, we went into our normal think tank mode. We figured as long as they knew what they wanted the outcome to look like, we could figure out the how. It took a few months of mad scientist-like prototypes, a few (many) late nights, and relentless feedback.
Both Dominos and Forty8Fifty Labs can still remember the virtual high-five when the first successful form was completed, interpreted, and acted upon to assign tickets. Now, that initial “impossible” challenge has turned into a highly automated, multi-platform (JIRA/JIRA Service Desk) ticket generator that’s available in the Atlassian marketplace.
Watching the Atlassian Summit audience nodding their head made it easy to see that they can all relate to the issue we solved. Not to mention that Mike tells the story in such an electric way!
If you missed this great session, you should check it out on YouTube!
