As a long time fan of Atlassian products, a role working for an Atlassian solution partner was a fantastic fit for me and my career. In any new role, a learning curve is expected - but nothing prepared me for the number of courses I have completed within my first year at TechTime all while being the customer account manager, delivery lead, and scrum master.
Read on if you are interested in learning more about working for an Atlassian solution partner (and marketplace vendor, reseller, and training partner).
Accreditation learning paths
There are three program levels to recognise each Partner’s individual depth of expertise and experience with Atlassian products - Silver, Gold, and Platinum. One of the criteria to move up a level is based on the number of accredited individuals in the Partner's organisation. Accreditation is the first type of study I did in the last year.
- Atlassian Operations Professional provides an overview and understanding of Atlassian project pricing and packaging and creating clean quotes and orders within Atlassian’s ordering systems. This takes around 3 hours to complete.
- Atlassian Sales Professional is where everyone who needs accreditation learns about selling Atlassian products. Each Atlassian product is covered with information about their appeal and suitability to different personas and comparisons with tools often considered alongside the Atlassian range. This is more in-depth than the Operations Professional course and takes an additional 12 hours to complete.
- Atlassian Technical Sales Professional is not for the faint-hearted. Completing this course is a significant achievement as not only is there another 10 and a half hours of an online course to watch (and interact with), the course is not considered complete until you also have earned two certifications through Atlassian University.
- Atlassian Marketing Professional is a short introduction to the marketing portal provided by Atlassian to Partners - pre-filled with a range of campaigns that can be used as-is or customised.
Every six months your accreditation is reviewed. Often no action is needed for your accreditation to renew, however you may need to complete any new or updated modules that have been added since the last review and you need to maintain at least two certifications for the Atlassian Technical Sales Professional to renew.
Atlassian University certifications
While accreditation is largely only known about by Atlassian and their solution partners, certifications are widely recognised. These courses allow you to learn more so your team and organisation can get more out of their Atlassian products, can help you advance in or find your career path, and allows you to stand out as a validated Atlassian product expert. There are six certifications available at the time this article was written:
Completing one of these certifications and passing the 3-hour multiple-choice proctored exam entitles you to call yourself an Atlassian Certified Professional. Like many professional qualifications the learning does not end there. At least once every 18 months you need to extend the validity of your certification by earning an Atlassian Certified Badge, an Atlassian Skills Badge, or a third-party Agile or Scrum Certification. Some badges can extend more than one certification if you plan well.
I completed the accreditation learning paths in 6 months including Atlassian Certified in Jira Project Administration and Atlassian Certified in Agile Development with Jira Software. For some people this may have been enough study for a while but for me the study continued.
Atlassian training courses
A perk of working for an Atlassian solution partner is getting access to all of the training courses Atlassian offers. Planning with Portfolio for Jira, for example, was a helpful way to learn about a tool used by customers which I had not had worked with in previous roles. In October 2018, most of our organisation completed Getting Started with Jira Software Server and Getting More from Jira Software Server with the help of our own in-house Atlassian Authorised Instructor, Irina Mosina.
Earlier this year, Atlassian released self-paced, short, in-product tutorials available in Jira through a Marketplace app 'Training for Jira' for Cloud and Server.
Atlassian training courses are available in a range of formats for topics covering Jira and Confluence. Whether you want on-demand self-paced training over 30 days, public or team live online training, or in-person public or team training there is a course option for you. Atlassian even helps simplify the procurement process and provides volume discounts by offering training credits for purchase.
These courses lead to my next challenge - becoming an Atlassian Authorised Instructor so I could provide in-person training of the Atlassian training courses. Becoming an instructor involves more training (including how to navigate around the three applications used to purchase and run the courses) and providing a recording of myself presenting the first few slides of one of the courses. Atlassian only authorises instructors and training partners for 6 months at a time. After every course taught, all students are sent a survey which includes quality control questions and is used by Atlassian to decide whether they will renew the authorisation for each instructor and training partner. Hence, getting trained by Atlassian authorised instructor ensures quality delivery of these courses along with industry-relevant examples.
You can build your Atlassian knowledge with our most popular Jira courses, check out our schedule for the upcoming sessions.