Quarterly in-person sprints that keep distributed teams connected

Executive overview

Proximity doesn't create connection — purpose does. Atlassian's Chief People Officer Avani Prugapha found that sporadic office attendance builds almost no lasting bond.

The fix: bring cross-functional teams together once a quarter, for a focused 2–3 day sprint on a real problem. That shared effort creates connection that sustains the team for months until the next gathering.

Intentional togetherness beats mandatory office attendance every time.

Distributed-first vs remote-first

• Remote means not in the office. Distributed means work happens wherever it works best.
• Distributed-first means optimising for the person who isn't in the room — even if that means the three people in the office each dial in separately.
• Atlassian committed to this as a one-way door decision: no return path, which made it easier to solve problems as they emerged rather than waiting for certainty.

How Atlassian solved for connection

• Connection was not built by water-cooler moments or random office days.
• The framework is called ITG (Intentional Togetherness): cross-functional teams gather once per quarter.
• Teams come together around a specific problem — ideation sprint, strategic brainstorm, or similar.
• Gatherings last 2–3 days and include some team-building alongside the work.
• The bond from that shared effort lasts 2–3 months — long enough to reach the next ITG.
• Teams choose their own format based on the nature of their work.

What this means in practice

• Drop the logic that office time equals connection time.
• Design purposeful moments around real work, not social events.
• Cross-functional groupings matter more than hierarchical ones for building connection.
• People most remember teammates they struggled alongside — shared difficulty creates stronger bonds than shared comfort.