What are Self Organizing Teams?
Self-organizing teams are groups of people who work together to manage their own tasks, without needing a boss to call all the shots. Instead of following a strict hierarchy, they make decisions as a team, figuring out the best way to tackle challenges and get things done. This approach builds a real sense of shared ownership and keeps everyone accountable.
A key aspect of their effectiveness is their ability to continuously adapt and learn, adjusting their methods and priorities in response to feedback and change. However, working without constant and looming oversight presents different challenges. For example, coordinating efforts without micromanagement, maintaining a balance between visibility and autonomy, and streamlining knowledge sharing across the team.
Our world has went through a work revolution in the past five years. By having your finger on the pulse on emerging tools that can make life for self-organizing teams easier and more dynamic, you can drive innovation to new heights.
In this article, I’ll present five different apps that can empower any self-organizing team’s work process.
Our Collection of 5 Different Atlassian Apps that Can Help Self-Organizing Teams:
1. Templating.app for Jira
Templating.app allows for quick Jira Cloud project setup by enabling teams to copy, clone, and standardize projects, boards, issues, and subtasks through customizable templates.
How Templating.app works directly supports self-organizing teams by reducing repetitive configuration work and empowers members to autonomously initiate workflows aligned with agreed standards. This app allows teams to focus on collaboratively deciding how to approach tasks and solve problems without administrative delays.
For example, you can quickly create consistent project structures for recurring workflows, cloning complex issue hierarchies with subtasks to maintain process uniformity, and standardizing agile boards to streamline sprint planning and execution.
A great tip to keep in mind is that Templating.app allows non-admin team members to whip up projects using templates. This handy feature opens up access for everyone, making sure that those templated workflows fit right in with your team’s current processes. It’s all about promoting shared ownership and flexibility, which are key ingredients for successful self-organization.
Explore Templating.app by downloading it on the Atlassian Marketplace and start streamlining your projects →
2. Didit Checklists for Jira and Confluence
Didit is an app for Jira and Confluence that automates checklists for recurring processes such as ‘Definition of Done,’ ‘Acceptance Criteria,’ and ‘ToDo lists.’
Such checklists can enhance team accountability by making work processes explicit and fully auditable by the team itself. Didit can provide self-organizing teams a clear, shared structure to track task completion and quality standards, empowering team members to collectively manage workflows and identify bottlenecks without the feeling of someone constantly watching team progress from above.
You can easily use Didit as your best friend for complicated compliance processes, from audits to playbooks, where recurring and detailed checklists help embed consistency and clarity in team operations.
A helpful tip is that Didit integrates seamlessly with Jira boards and Confluence pages while also offering public links, QR codes, and a native mobile app, enabling easy access and collaboration for both Atlassian and non-Atlassian users anywhere, which is crucial for distributed or autonomous teams.
Schedule a personal Didit demo and start simplifying your workflows →
3. Awesome Custom Fields for Jira
Awesome Custom Fields enhances Jira by allowing teams to add customizable and unique fields for prioritization, estimation, progress tracking, and more directly within issues, enabling the creation of tailored metrics and processes that reflect any team’s unique workflow.
Unique metrics empower self-organizing teams to collectively define and measure their work using visual tools like t-shirt size labels, color labels, progress bars, traffic lights, and advanced formulas.
Backlogs can be prioritized with visual cues, tracking sprint progress, and linking related tasks through issue pickers, all of which promote shared understanding and agile collaboration.
A quick tip is to use Awesome Custom Fields’ cascading select and secure fields. This way, you can neatly organize complex data hierarchies while also managing visibility based on user roles.
Start customizing Jira today with Awesome Custom Fields – Try the app out on Atlassian Marketplace →
4. Report Builder for Jira
Report Builder is a versatile Jira reporting app that enables teams to create highly customizable, dynamic reports by combining any Jira fields and metrics through an intuitive no-code editor.
For self-organizing teams, this flexibility allows members to generate real-time insights tailored to their specific needs, whether tracking project progress or workload distribution. Thus, you can truly support collective decision-making and transparency without dependency on centralized reporting specialists.
For example, Report Builder can help to produce multi-perspective reports that serve different stakeholders simultaneously, such as project overviews for managers, detailed task lists for team members, and risk analyses for clients. All of these reports can be dynamically adjustable on the fly to reflect evolving priorities.
One last tip I can offer for this list is to leverage Report Builder’s modular pivoting engine and conditional formatting to highlight critical data points like overdue tasks or bottlenecks.
Start your free trial of Report Builder and build reports that work for your team →
5. Loom
Loom is a screen recording and video messaging tool by Atlassian that lets users to capture their screen, camera, and microphone in high quality and instantly share videos via a link. This way, you can instantly share your thoughts and prevent situations that make teammates say, “This meeting could have been email.”
Loom allows team members to visually explain ideas, provide feedback, and share progress in minutes, supporting collective task planning and problem-solving from any location or time zone. Communication gets contextualized while respecting individual autonomy.
You can use it to replace stand-up meetings, leading to not just saved time, but also appreciative teammates.
A quick tip is to leverage Loom’s AI features, such as auto-generated titles, summaries, and chapters, to enhance video clarity and make content review more efficient, as well as integrate Loom natively with tools like Confluence and Jira for effective workflow coordination and documentation.
How to Introduce New Apps to Self-Organizing Teams
Finding apps that can help your team get their stuff together is all fun and games until you actually have to get everyone on the same page. Even if your team is eager for mutual collaboration and progress, even across timezones and different outlooks of positions.
So how can you really change things, and introduce new apps forreal? Here’s a quick step-by-step path to getting your team on board:
- Start small. Try out apps through pilots. Select a manageable part of your workflow or a sub-team to experiment with the app, allowing real-world testing without overwhelming the entire group.
- Be open. Make it transparent and optional: clearly explain why the app matters and invite the team to try it out, building trust and real buy-in instead of forced adoption.
- Active listening. Regularly check in on the app during retros, let the team share feedback, talk through wins or issues, and decide together on next steps.
- Encourage adaptation. Let the team take the lead by customizing the app to match how they work best, boosting both ownership and ongoing improvement.
Bottom Line
Self-organizing teams thrive when they have the autonomy to manage their own work, the right tools to stay aligned, and the clarity to move forward without constant oversight.
If you’re already working within the Atlassian ecosystem, there are multiple app options that can streamline tasks and unlock a team’s ability to adapt, take ownership, and collaborate on their own terms. Apps like Loom, Didit Checklists, Templating.app, Awesome Custom Fields, and Report Builder are just a few options available to get teams aligned and moving forward.
If you want to find out more about incorporating the right apps to your workflows, get in touch with our experts at Seibert and schedule a demo today.