Atlassian Acquires Trello For $425M (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader shares a TechCrunch report: Atlassian today announced that it has acquired project management service Trello for $425 million. The vast majority of the transaction is in cash ($360 million), with the remainder being paid out in restricted shares and options. The acquisition is expected to close before March 31, 2017. This marks Atlassian's 18th acquisition and, as Atlassian president Jay Simons noted, it is also the largest. Just like with many of Atlassian's other acquisitions, the company plans to keep both the Trello service and brand alive and current users shouldn't see any immediate changes.

Comments

$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

How in the world do these people get so much money in the first place!?! I mean, seriously. Holy, fuck!

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[M0j0_j0j0]

I also have no clue, better raise a ticket!

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[Aaden42]

I agree that most of Atlassian's stuff is overpriced bloated crap, but comparing JIRA and Bugzilla is like comparing dial-up and FIOS and claiming they're both internet access from your phone company, so they're the same.

We looked at and rejected Confluence because MediaWiki is free, less resource intensive, and works. We rejected Bamboo because we find Quickbuild (another commercial product) is cheaper, less resource intensive, and much easier to use than Bamboo or Jenkins. Commercial packagings of OpenSource VCS systems like SVN or Git give me hives, and I won't touch them.

But... Especially when you need your ticketing system used by non-programmers, JIRA beats out Bugzilla in user friendliness, workflow tracking, and a bunch of other important features. It's not even a contest. We tried both Bugzilla and TRAC, but JIRA won hands down in terms of user acceptance. That's probably the most important metric there is for a ticketing system.

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[Junta]

much less productive than Bugzilla

I'd much rather see something like redmine raised as an example. Bugzilla is a terrible ticketing system. If JIRA is worse than that, that just seems like an extremely hellish proposition.

First they talk people into getting rid of Git then shove Bitbucket down your throat.

I assume you are talking about something else than getting rid of Git, since bitbucket is a git based solution. I prefer GitLab over bitbucket for on-prem, and github for community based work (networking effect and all).

What we have found to work best for us has been:
redmine - bugs/feature/project tracking
gitlab - repository and code review (I know, there are better code review systems out there, but we don't have fancy needs)
jenkins for CI - again nothing particularly sexy there to really feel strongly about one way or another
mattermost - team chat for larger teams that warrant that - benefits of slack without the drawbacks

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[Junta]

Maybe in the hands of a very dedicated team customizing bugzilla, it can be ok. I have not yet seen it happen (including Mozilla themselves, as well as RedHat).

However, out of the box redmine worked pretty well. With less than a day of learning, we could implement a new workflow in a few minutes. It's such an underrated piece of software.

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[kelemvor4]

Easy, let's say facebook has 1 billion users and each user is worth 5$ of marketing potential, facebook is now worth 5 billion dollars - get it?

You can't go down to the piggly wiggly and spend marketing potential.

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[sexconker]

Easy, let's say facebook has 1 billion users and each user is worth 5$ of marketing potential, facebook is now worth 5 billion dollars - get it?

You can't go down to the piggly wiggly and spend marketing potential.

But you can go to a bank and your investors, wave your "marketing potential" about, and then get some sum of {loan, stock, approval to spend some cash} to BUY the Piggly Wiggly outright for $100 million. You end up increasing your "marketing potential" by $200 million because of "synergy", the news of the buyout boosting the value of Piggly Wiggly, etc.

When the bank wants their loan money or your investors point to the plateauing stock price, you simply repeat the process with a new target. When you run out of targets you "spin off" prior targets into their own entities and sell their shriveled husks to some chump. If you can't find a chump, you cut the staff, burn it to the ground, and sell the IP and assets for pennies on the dollar.

If this goes on for a while, you'll end up posting successive quarters of losses and people will be calling for your head. Just jump out the window with your golden parachute and move on to the next company to repeat the process.

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[Hognoxious]

You can, you just have to sell it to some chump first.

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[sexconker]

AC probably confused Git with Github, as most Github users do.

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[EndlessNameless]

You can't go down to the piggly wiggly and spend marketing potential.

But you can ask advertisers to pay for access to your ad network, and then take their money down to the Piggly Wiggly.

It's called a market economy. Seems to work pretty well; I recommend reading up on it.

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I mean, Trello has 19 Million users, so that's ~$80 a user. Given that Jira runs $10 a month (plus more for related services), that could be cheap for high quality leads to upsell into Atlassian's ecosystem.

Re:$425 million!!!!???!!!!

[prezkennedy.org]

We are also a small company, and JIRA runs on a virtual machine with just two cores. I think you're doing it wrong.

Read the article

[ArchieBunker]

And still have no idea what these companies produce or why I should care.

Re:Read the article

[fiannaFailMan]

If you plan to work in an Agile environment then you might want to drop that attitude and make it your business to find out what these companies do.

Atlassian produces online collaboration tools like Jira and Confluence. Jira is a ticket-management system that lets you set up Kanban boards or SCRUM boards on which your team tracks the progress of tickets through the various stages to completion, and supports Agile visualizations such as burn-down charts. Confluence is a wiki-like tool for sharing documentation.

Plenty of employers are asking for Agile experience, so if you're familiar with these tools then it'll work in your favor.

Re:Read the article

[Shatrat]

Fortunately their ticketing (Jira) and documentation (Confluence) products are good for actual work as well. I've used them in the past in a network engineering role, and I use confluence now in an equipment support role. Confluence is what Sharepoint would be like if the Sharepoint developers had ever used Wikipedia and Sharepoint also wasn't garbage.

Re:Read the article

[fiannaFailMan]

Take it up with your sys admin who should be on top of these things. I use Jira and Confluence every day. There's nothing wrong with them.

Re:Read the article

[fiannaFailMan]

Any time I hear "Agile" or any of those other buzzwords, I run for the door.

Just you do that. If you don't want to learn a skill or method that employees are asking for then knock yourself out.

Re:Read the article

[SQLGuru]

Apparently you're ok with the bazillion emails you get when your PM goes and makes edits to a story you're assigned to. I've gotten as many as 11 emails in the span of minutes. I *LOTHE* Jira and Confluence. There are plenty of tools that serve the same purpose and fit the way I work much better. I realize they are popular and are mostly capable in managing a project, but they really irk me in the fringes.....the places where people don't concentrate because it isn't seen as critical path to the application.

Re:Read the article

[cbraescu1]

There are plenty of tools that serve the same purpose and fit the way I work much better.

Could you please give some examples? I'm also interested in JIRA (and Confluence) alternatives.

Re:Read the article

[mlts]

It really depends on the company. Almost all organizations say "we use Agile methodology", and it can mean either little or nothing, or a lot.

For example, one place I worked at was proud of their "Agile" system. However, I wound up spending 4-6 hours a day in stand-up meetings which were a combination of a confessional, Celebrity Apprentice blamestorm/tattlefest with people wringing their hands on how others are blocking them, and long speeches as each member defended themselves and tried to point the blame about why little was getting done, as well as the SCRUM master wanting in-depth explanations about what people are doing with every single ticket assigned to them.

Another place I worked at last year had their stand-ups be just significant notable issues, and would never last more than 5-10 minutes.

Re:Read the article

[Junta]

In my experience if I hear 'the Agile' then almost certainly the process actually in use is not Agile, but the company in question did give some consultant a lot of money to let them tell themselves that. Especially if they go on and on about their Agile process sometimes even more than they want to talk about what they actually *do*.

Real agile shops tend to not really think much about it. They focus on what they do, and they may use 'Agile' process and such, but it's never something that dominates in their mind. This actually makes sense because Agile came about as a rejection of a process-obsessed software development culture where teams would get so tangled up in formal processes that a lot of work was more process overhead than work, so while a process needs to be in place, it shouldn't loom large in the minds of those following it.

Now Agile is a buzzword milked for consultancy and certification fees. Atlassian gets some of my disdain for contributing to that (I've heard so many people say you can't possibly be doing Agile if you aren't using JIRA for example), but based on my experience at least their software isn't bad (though perhaps not worth the price compared to free alternatives), so they at least contribute something compared to other businesses invoking 'Agile' for financial gain.

This is the fate of *anything* that becomes hyped in the world dealing with something like software/project management, it will be diluted and perverted and become indicative of very little.

Re:Read the article

[Junta]

We have used redmine in the same capacity for requirements, project and issue tracking. It's not as shiny and almost no one knows about it, but it's got a surprisingly powerful project management and ticketing system. Unfortunately it's code repository integration is rather weak, but it can be hooked into Gitlab to try to have the best of both (repository management of gitlab with the project tracking of redmine).

Re:Read the article

[Junta]

GitLab does a decent job of having a private git repository and code review with ability to have continuous integration.

I really don't like the thought of one company (Atlassian) being synonymous with 'Agile'. You don't have to use their tools to be doing Agile right, and in general you shouldn't be so obsessed with 'Agile' and lose sight of what your actual objective is.

Re:Read the article

[0100010001010011]

And still have no idea what these companies produce or why I should care.

And in the same breath Slashdotters will whine that they have relevant skillsets and that it's because of their age they can't get hired.

Re:Read the article

[Aaden42]

So there's this thing called configuration options? If you don't want the emails for particular events, turn them off. If you have some barbarian of a JIRA admin who won't let you customize that stuff, invest in tar and/or feathers.

Re:Read the article

[Junta]

A good rule of thumb is if they mention they use Agile within 5 seconds of starting an interview, or in general devote more than 5 or 6 words to explain that they use Agile, then they probably are not doing it truly right. They can speak about the tooling they use with more words, but if they feel obsessed with explicitly wrapping every concept back to the word 'Agile' rather than leaving it implied then it's probably a good sign to run away.

Re:Read the article

[Aaden42]

If you have multiple release versions open in one sprint, you're kind of doing it wrong. Ship one version this sprint then move on to the next version in the next sprint. If you have tickets that span versions, you've really got epics and need to break things up more.

Re:Read the article

[SQLGuru]

Unfortunately, I'm a consultant and the barbarian Jira admin is with my client, so that investment wouldn't endear me with my boss......

Re:Read the article

[ArchieBunker]

I have no idea what any of those words mean. In five years they will be meaningless.

Re:Read the article

[AK Marc]

That's like the "Top 10 habits of successful people" books. That successful people all develop similar habits doesn't mean that if you adopt those same habits that it'll have any effect on your success. Forcing non-agile people to follow an agile method will not improve results, even if agile is used by the most successful teams.

Re:Read the article

[AK Marc]

Everywhere I've worked that claimed "agile" just used "quick waterfall/iterative". Agile is not much different than a weekly waterfall, done iteratively. Everything must be done iteratively. You can read a book "agile" by reading the contents, then reading the chapter appropriate to what you need to know that day, but you can't read every other word and have the result be coherent. But the reading of the chapter is iterative. Or, if that's too large of a chunk, then read the sentence iteratively.

Those using "agile" as better than "iterative" understand neither. Agile is an "improvement" of iterative to reduce the iteration time. Almost all tools designed for either work with the other. So someone that "can't do agile" can't do iterative.

And many who try agile are doing so because they can't do iterative either, so they are failing in new ways.

Re:Read the article

[Junta]

On top of that, the whole origin of Agile goes explicitly *against* what I hear from a lot of parties claiming to convert some process to agile.

"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools"

Yeah, that's not at all a profitable thing, so now Agile advocates mandate certain specific ways and tools. The fact people even say 'The Agile Process' seems to run counter to the very first sentence that started off the whole 'movement'.

This whole evolution from reasonable call for sanity to insane consultancy industry has produced crazy stuff like http://programming-motherfucke..., which if not for the fun and offensive choice of phrasing I could imagine becoming the new consulting fad in a decade.

Re:Read the article

[Junta]

If an employer gets hung up on whether a developer has used Atlassian product before, then they are crazy. The learning curve of these systems should be trivial. If the applicant at least seems comfortable with the principles of how you do things, knowledge of the tools should be easy.

I could see getting a bit nervous if they have not used git, but even then if they'd used any version control software, I wouldn't be too bothered.

Ideally you wouldn't even get *too* hung up on whether they have experience with the same programming language, as long as they are competent at programming language choice doesn't matter.

Of course if they are scared off by the prospect of dealing with a new tool or language, *that* is a sign of trouble. I find it valuable to fish for technology a candidate is not familiar with and see how they react to the prospect of having to deal with it, even if that technology would not be part of the actual job.

Re:Read the article

[Anonymous Coward]

You get an email for *every* *single* *change* made to your tickets. Typical day:

mail 1: Your boss changed the delivery date of your task
1 minute later: Your boss changed the sprint.
30 seconds later: your boss changes the sprint back to its original
1 minute later: your boss attaches revised requirements document
30 seconds after that: revised unit testing spreadsheet.
1 minute later: email chain in which you discussed the change of scope w/boss pasted into comments.
2 minutes later: QA pastes the same email chain with an explanatory note regarding scheduling
1 minute later: boss changes the due date again.
30 seconds later: boss changes the sprint again.
30 seconds later: boss posts a question in the comments.
30 seconds later: boss changes the state of a ticket.
2 minutes later: you've been assigned a new task because X just went on vacation.
30 seconds later: Comment added to said task asking if you have bandwidth for this.
2 minutes after that: Said new task assigned to developer Y.

Re:Read the article

[EndlessNameless]

If an employer gets hung up on whether a developer has used Atlassian product before, then they are crazy.

Not if they want new employees to hit the ground running.

The learning curve of these systems should be trivial.

What if it isn't? What if they don't want to pay you to figure it out?

I find it valuable to fish for technology a candidate is not familiar with and see how they react to the prospect of having to deal with it, even if that technology would not be part of the actual job.

Well, maybe you have a difference of opinion. And they just sold out for $425 million.

While your opinion may have value, we know they succeeded so their method is definitely workable.

The simplest counterargument to your entire line of reasoning is this: If they have access to a pool containing hundreds of competent candidates, they should choose a competent candidate with relevant experience in their language of choice so he can become productive as soon as possible.

Re:Read the article

[Junta]

Not if they want new employees to hit the ground running.

The ramp-up contributed by lack of familiarity with your selected tools should be so small as to not be noticeable in the presumably much larger ramp-up associated with them familiarizing themselves with your specific team and work. If you are actually needing sophisticated project management tools, then your work is not trivial and there is *no* way to hit the ground running, and the *least* of your worries should be whether or not they are able to figure out your selected tools. If it *is* a significant challenge and that is expected, then there's something wrong with your selection of tooling or how you've approached customizing it.

What if it isn't? What if they don't want to pay you to figure it out?

If the candidate has a noticeable challenge with code management/review/continuous integration/issue tracking against the backdrop of ramping up with the tools, then they won't be very good at doing the actual work. If the work is simple, then the infrastructure should be simple. If the infrastructure must be complex than the work must be appropriately more complex and everyone should know what the right ramp up time is for their projects. If a company is unwilling to pay for an employees to go through an appropriate ramp up period, then they won't be able to find any employee.

And they just sold out for $425 million.

I don't understand how that makes any sense whatsoever in context. I was not disparaging either company in my commentary or use of their products, just that if an employer does choose a particular tool-set for managing their work, they shouldn't be terribly afraid of a candidate that didn't do it the exact same way in their previous experience.

they succeeded so their method is definitely workable.

Again, I never said Trello was bad, just that an employer fixating on specific software experience rather than broader experience and problem solving skills is going to have worse candidates. A candidate that has not used Atlassian or Trello is not necessarily bad if your company rolls that way. A candidate that would be scared to use Atlassian or Trello would similarly be bad.

The simplest counterargument to your entire line of reasoning is this: If they have access to a pool containing hundreds of competent candidates

As someone currently trying to fill positions, there simply isn't at a given time *that* many relevant candidates at a given time, at least for complex software development if you've filtered the pool based on more critical criteria. It's a waste of time to be doing resume filtering based on your specific code and project management software, when there are always *so* much better criteria to use.

Re:Read the article

[fiannaFailMan]

You get an email for *every* *single* *change* made to your tickets. Typical day:

mail 1: Your boss changed the delivery date of your task
1 minute later: Your boss changed the sprint.
30 seconds later: your boss changes the sprint back to its original
1 minute later: your boss attaches revised requirements document
30 seconds after that: revised unit testing spreadsheet.
1 minute later: email chain in which you discussed the change of scope w/boss pasted into comments.
2 minutes later: QA pastes the same email chain with an explanatory note regarding scheduling
1 minute later: boss changes the due date again.
30 seconds later: boss changes the sprint again.
30 seconds later: boss posts a question in the comments.
30 seconds later: boss changes the state of a ticket.
2 minutes later: you've been assigned a new task because X just went on vacation.
30 seconds later: Comment added to said task asking if you have bandwidth for this.
2 minutes after that: Said new task assigned to developer Y.

Dude. Fix your settings. Don't blame the tool.

Re:Read the article

[Junta]

I didn't say reject processes, I said they shouldn't dominate the thinking of those adhering to them.

The problem is that in practice, many Agile teams I've encountered experience scenarios where they *will not* proceed even if they overwhelmingly know it's the right thing to do because it hasn't worked out in their processess and tooling.

Re:Read the article

[mlts]

Makes me wonder if in a few years, Agile and SCRUM will be like how TQM was in the 1990s.

Re:Read the article

[mlts]

You would be surprised. When I was looking for work a few months ago, knowing the exact tool was a deal breaker. If you didn't know Bamboo, the interview was over, for example. Or, if you GitLab and GHE, but not BitBucket, you were shown the door.

Re:Read the article

[Junta]

I suppose my *hope* is that I influence fellow people to not get that hung up. I occasionally am in the position of hiring, and I give nearly no weight to whether or not they have used our chosen tools before versus understand the general idea. Now if someone acts overly intimidated with working with unfamiliar technology, or claims they do know the tooling when they clearly don't, that is something I consider a warning sign.

Re:Read the article

[prezkennedy.org]

"It’s easy to see how Trello fits into Atlassian’s overall suite of productivity tools, which have increasingly targeted non-developers, too. At its core, Atlassian’s own JIRA project management service already features a Trello-like Kanban board, for example. That’s only a small part of what JIRA does, however, and for many potential users, a board is really all they need to keep track of their projects. JIRA also features a full-blown issue-tracking service, reports, and an on-premise version that enterprises can run on their own servers."

FTFA.

I guess you didn't read it very well?

Re:Read the article

[0100010001010011]

The comment I replied to said "still have no idea what these companies produce".

There's a difference between "I've never used Atlassian's Git server however I've setup my own GitLab/Hub/Gogs server. And I have not use Trello specifically but I am familiar with use of Kanban boards in the development process".

The comment I replied to showed complete ignorance to both companies listed and the "why I should care" tells me that they have no interest in learning.

I could see getting a bit nervous if they have not used git, but even then if they'd used any version control software, I wouldn't be too bothered.

That's just asking for trouble. Especially for an apparent 'software' developer.

Oh well...

[null etc.]

I bet the layer of product managers at Atlassian became top-heavy, with number of managers outpacing the number of sub-par software products they release (like JIRA.) So, the natural next step in the evolution of the company is to buy a non-sub-par software product company, and let the product managers have their way with turning the purchased software products into sub-par products. That way, every product manager gets a fair share of practice at screwing up perfectly fine software that probably doesn't really need to be modified in the ways they are intending.

Trello + Jira = Awesome

[Murdoch5]

If they could build Trello into Jira, they would improve the best project management platform on the market.

Re:Trello + Jira = Awesome

[trybywrench]

JIRA has a kanban board and it's pretty awesome. It's been a little while since i've used it but I remember the columns had to be defined by issue filters instead of just an arbitrary name like in Trello and having to use filters to define columns was a bit of a PITA. If you take the time to really master JIRA it's an incredible tool where Trello lets you get all the advantages of kanban with the least amount of effort. I suspect you'll be able to create issues in JIRA and have them show up in Trello pretty soon (if not already) long term I see Trello as a stepping stone to JIRA. I describe them to non-technical folks as Trello when you need a good pickup truck and JIRA when you need an 18 wheeler.

Re:Trello + Jira = Awesome

[Murdoch5]

You're exactly right, with why I think Trello + Jira would just be near prefect. I like the boards in Jira, but the setup is a little annoying. Even though it's annoying it still is the best tool almost full stop for project management that I've used.

Re:Trello + Jira = Awesome

[jezwel]

This is about where we are also - IT uses JIRA and business uses something else. Would be nice if the products could converge and still meet all those use cases.

Makes perfect sense

[volodymyrbiryuk]

Atlassian guys probably bought it because they were sick and tired using their own crap.

Re:These companies have real value though...

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been ten years, and had there been a bubble, it would have popped by now. Nobody is quitting FB, and advertisers pay them handsomely for ads. None of these companies are going anywhere, and it is well nigh impossible for them to actually lose value.

Those are exactly the sorts of things that people say and believe just before a bubble bursts!

Thank you for expressing them. You've given the rest of us hope that the end of all of this "Web 2.0" nonsense is closer than ever.

Video - You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky

[Anonymous Coward]

Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Trello, has this fantastic Excel training video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c

Re:These companies have real value though...

[sexconker]

It has been ten years, and had there been a bubble, it would have popped by now.

The bubble popped a while ago, but no one wants to admit it.

Online advertising doesn't work, and people are increasingly going out of their way to block ads. All that user data is essentially worthless to anyone but scammers and spying governments. But we're Wile E. Coyoteing the situation - we've run off the cliff but we won't fall until we look down. We're pretending there's more cliff to run on with everyone resorting to clickbait bullshit to maintain view counts (and not have to hire journalists) and everyone moving their shit onto the cheapest "cloud" provider and laziest framework to lower operating costs and the big boys are doing nothing but buying out the groups actually doing shit, to the tune of $$$$$$$$$.

It's been a race to the bottom, but we bottomed out ages ago. Every time advertising rates (from lord Google) drop people do a quick glance down, see they're doomed, but find a way to keep on running as if everything is okay as the industry burns around them. Eventually the big boys will either get burned on a ridiculous overvalued buyout of some small company (remember Zynga? Oculus?) or simply run out of other companies to buy out while investors demand continued growth. It's unsustainable, fundamentally because there is little core value behind the true business of Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Twitter, etc. and no real room to grow.

Re:These companies have real value though...

[EndlessNameless]

They are advertising to worthless idiots; well, at least, I never use their services...

Aren't you the clever one? Or not.

To an advertiser, an idiot is worth whatever he has in his wallet, plus anything he can beg, borrow, or steal.

It doesn't matter if you or the average Facebook user happens to be a loudmouthed, judgmental ass. If you have money and a passing interest in their product, you are worth something to advertisers.

Run away! Run away!

[swm]

I don't know what Atlassian will do with Trello, but their existing products are horrid.
We use JIRA (a bug tracker) and Confluence (a wiki). These suffer from
- poor use of screen space
- useless search
- crude and inconsistent text editing
- verbose, non-standard, and broken markdown

Atlassian products are built for shelf-appeal: they are designed to look good in sales demos, and to appeal the people who sign POs and checks: CEOs, VPs, and directors. But they don't actually work for the people who have to use them: programmers and first-line managers.

Atlassian puts their own bug database online. When you find a problem with Atlassian software you can search for it there. You will likely find that other people have found this problem before you, and opened tickets on it, which Atlassian has since closed, explaining either
- yes, it is broken, but fixing it would be hard, so we're not going to
OR
- no, that's the way it is supposed to work, and we're not going to change it

Re:Run away! Run away!

[labnet]

We use a scrum plugin for redmine which our software guys seem to like and actually use... plus it is open source!

Re:Run away! Run away!

[prezkennedy.org]

Atlassian puts their own bug database online. When you find a problem with Atlassian software you can search for it there. You will likely find that other people have found this problem before you, and opened tickets on it, which Atlassian has since closed, explaining either - yes, it is broken, but fixing it would be hard, so we're not going to OR - no, that's the way it is supposed to work, and we're not going to change it

Agree. There are so many feature requests that would make the tool more useful that they flat out reject because... I guess they don't feel like doing work?