Atlassian Managed Teams 101

Atlassian’s new Managed Teams feature for Jira Cloud Premium and Enterprise has sparked excitement among organisations looking for better ways to define, govern, and track their teams across Atlassian tools.

‍

What are Managed Teams?

‍

According to Atlassian’s own update to the Atlassian Community:

“Managed Team are teams that have been connected to a group, which becomes the source of truth for membership in that team. You can connect either an externally managed group or a local Atlassian group."

‍

• Managed Teams can only be created and deleted by organisation admins in Atlassian Administration
• The connected group acts as the source of truth membership, meaning:
  • Any membership changes to the group will be automatically reflected in the connected team
  • Team name will change to match the group
• Since Managed Teams can only be changed by organisation admins, they are given a verified indicator when shown across apps.

‍

To simplify what this means, with this feature, admins can create a single, central definition of a team that syncs consistently throughout Jira. In theory, this unifies a once-scattered concept of teams, simplifying everything from permissions to project mapping.

‍

Who is Managed Teams for?

‍

If you’re an Atlassian Platform Owner or Jira Admin in a large organisation, you’ve likely encountered these challenges:

‍

• Having to manually create large Teams despite team structure existing in an external source already
• Having to manually update Teams, which is unsustainable at scale due to frequent reorganisations and employees constantly joining or leaving (which means there are frequent delays in both giving people access to the right projects/boards/spaces, as well as removing permissions when a team member moves to another team or leave the organisation)
• The risk of end users inadvertently connecting an ‘unofficial’ Team to work used in critical reporting workflows

‍

How does Managed Teams work?

‍

Organisation admins can create a managed team by connecting a group to an existing team or creating a new one to connect to. The group you connect a team to can either be a SCIM-synced group or a local group.

‍

To create a managed team:

‍

1. Find the group you want to connect in the Groups directory in Atlassian Admin
2. On the group’s profile page, find the Create team or Connect team button near the members list.
   • For teams connected to SCIM-synced groups, team membership will mirror the group’s membership that’s pulled from an external source
   • For teams connected to local groups, team membership mirrors the connected group’s

‍

What is a SCIM and how does it work with Managed Teams?

‍

A SCIM is a protocol that standardises how identify information is exchanged between one entity and another. It’s an open standard and is widely used to simplify the process of granting people or groups access to cloud-based applications (source: Microsoft).

‍

For Atlassian Managed Teams, TeamForm acts as the source-of-truth for cross-functional teams and structures, which then pushes cross-functional team memberships into Atlassian products.

‍

What are the benefits of Managed Teams?

‍

We’ve recently interviewed Jira Admins and Atlassian Owners to identify specific challenges that Managed Teams can address:

‍

• Central Directory of Teams: Rather than letting teams be defined ad hoc in every project or board, Jira admins can establish one authoritative definition per team.
• Consistent Naming and Access: Atlassian’s goal is to eliminate confusion (e.g., “Squad A” in one project, “Team A” in another) and ensure the right people have the right permissions.
• Improved Governance: With a single source of truth at the org level, it’s easier to monitor changes, remove inactive users, and keep tabs on cross-functional teams.
• Streamline Permissions: When you add or remove a user, you do it at the team level (not in each board or project).
• Simplify Org-Wide Reporting: The “team” dimension is now consistent, making it easier to slice and dice data across the portfolio.

‍

On paper, this is a massive leap toward bridging the who of team collaboration with the what of Jira issues and boards.

‍

However, as we’ve heard from our interviews with Jira Admins, large enterprises need even more robust solutions to keep pace with frequent org restructures, competing demands, and massive administrative overhead.

‍

What real-world problems does TeamForm for Managed Teams solve?  

‍

During recent interviews with customers, three broad challenges emerged:

‍

1. Overlapping and Inconsistent Jira Projects: Admins know the reality that a single “team” might have multiple Jira boards or projects—one for day-to-day tasks, another for leadership updates, and yet another for risk tracking. As a result, no single Jira project acts as a definitive home for any given team. This fragmentation creates confusion for stakeholders trying to quickly find the right board (or boards) representing a team’s actual work.

2. Lack of a Reliable “Team” Object in Jira: Historically, Jira never had a true concept of teams—people simply created them. Some customers end up with thousands of created “teams,” many of which are duplicates, outdated, or just plain inconsistent with the real org chart. And because there’s no enforced naming or governance, the “Team” field in Jira can differ drastically from what the company calls that group internally.

3. Frequent Org Restructures & High Admin Overhead: Organisations regularly merge squads and rename teams-of-teams, which triggers an avalanche of admin tickets to update memberships, remove inactive users, and fix broken permissions. Whenever someone leaves or joins, the Atlassian admins scramble to fulfill urgent requests, often under tight SLAs. This manual overhead saps time and resources better spent on value-added activities.

‍

Confluence suffers from similar issues—endless spaces created ad hoc, with no standard hierarchy matching the actual org structure. Teams rename themselves, content gets duplicated, and out-of-date spaces linger indefinitely.

‍

Why does our organisation need TeamForm for Managed Teams?

‍

‍

Given the depth of current challenges, Managed Teams alone only tackles part of the puzzle—it’s a start, but there’s a significant step that large organisations still crave: a single, dynamic source of truth for cross-functional teams that reflects the real, ever-changing org structure (complete with tribes, squads, and real-time membership).

‍

At TeamForm, we’re dedicated to enabling a System of Work that integrates people, processes, and technology—including Atlassian’s new Managed Teams.

‍

1. TeamForm as the Authoritative System: Instead of manually piecing together who’s on what squad every time someone moves, TeamForm becomes the source of truth. When your organisation’s structure changes—say, squads merge or a tribe gets rebranded—Jira and Confluence permissions update automatically.

2. Automated Linking & Permissions: After TeamForm is updated, all your Atlassian tools (Jira, Confluence, etc.) follow suit. Need to give a new hire access to specific boards or spaces? Done—no more raising a ticket or waiting for an admin to scramble.

3. Unified Org Visualisation: Picture an org chart that’s always current, so if a tribe rebrands, that new name appears instantly. Click a squad to see its Jira boards, Confluence spaces, or membership. No data duplication, no guesswork.

‍

What are the additional benefits of using TeamForm for Managed Teams?

‍

At TeamForm we put people and teams at the heart of our product and everything we do. We take Teams so seriously we put it in our name! We firmly that people and teams (not just your reporting line) should show up in your tools and be treated as first class data citizens to enrich and enable your organisation with a team shaped lens. When we heard that Atlassian was taking Teams seriously from a tooling perspective we were excited to say the least.

‍

Atlassian is creating a first class team object, we think the opportunities are there to truly put teams at the heart of your organisation works and collaborates. We frequently hear how challenging it is to manage a project or a team within work management tools. At TeamForm we offer a complete bi-directional integration with the Atlassian ecosystem, takes the Atlassian Team Object and turn it up to 11.

‍

The below is a quick look at where TeamForm fits into the equation and a quick exploration of what we think is key to enabling organisations not only to do their best work but also to effectively manage how they work and how they organise!

‍

Key capabilities include:

‍

• Secure and Auditable Team Management: Effortlessly track and document team structures, roles, responsibilities, and allocations, enhancing governance and regulatory compliance.
• Dynamic Resource Allocations: Efficiently allocate team members in real-time and plan future allocations based on skills, availability, and organisational priorities, driving productivity and strategic outcomes.
• Unified Multi-Modal Operations: Flexibly manage different operational models simultaneously, ensuring teams across the enterprise, including product and operational teams, work cohesively toward shared objectives.

‍

TeamForm adds critical functionality for managing teams at scale:

How can I get started?

‍

1. Evaluate Managed Teams: If you’re on Jira Cloud Premium or Enterprise, check out Atlassian’s new feature and experiment with it. Consolidate some teams and clean up duplicates to see how it simplifies user management.

2. Integrate with TeamForm: For large-scale transformations—where org changes happen monthly or quarterly—consider layering TeamForm on top. Manage your teams in one place, which then automatically syncs across Jira, Confluence, and beyond.

3. Roll Out in Phases: Start with a pilot group or tribe. Use that as proof-of-concept to show how TeamForm plus Managed Teams can drastically cut admin overhead and bring clarity to day-to-day tasks.

‍