Challenge
Planning and coordinating public programs and exhibitions across three venues requires the collaboration of a great number of teams within the museum. Because the Powerhouse Museum is a government institution, resources are closely managed. Prior to using Atlassian, MAAS managed projects through email and Google or Word docs, which were cumbersome to manage and track.
Solution
With priceless artifacts in play, MAAS now relies on Atlassian to manage exhibits, respond to questions from the public, and allow the entire museum — from its curators to the marketing team — to collaborate effectively.
The museum depends on Confluence as its company intranet and collaboration tool. Teams create project briefs in Confluence, where other team members will review and comment on the viability of a potential exhibition or program. “Confluence is the best tool that we have to collaborate,” says Dan Collins, CTO & Head of Digital and Media.
Once the project has the go-ahead, the museum uses Jira for all aspects of the project — security, facilities, staffing, PR, and marketing, as well as digital education. Jira enables MAAS to track collections around the museum to make sure valuable objects are safeguarded and to manage the risk associated with each exhibition. The museum staff also use Jira to manage interactive exhibits in the gallery, enabling them to quickly run reports to see which are online and which need to be fixed. Hipchat is used across the museum to report any issues with exhibits or to have more conversational discussions from a Jira ticket when needed.
Finally, Atlassian’s use is not limited to the museum’s internal staff. Jira Service Desk allows visitors to submit questions and inquiries about exhibits that can be routed to the correct internal team for response.
Benefits
With Atlassian, MAAS has a holistic solution for exhibitions. “We definitely see the benefit of Atlassian,” says Collins. “Atlassian helps us run the museum more effectively, and that means we can do more.”