Q3 2026 in Review: Jira, Platform Decisions, and Scaling Advisory

Key Takeaways

• Strategy and hands-on work belong together. The most value comes from pairing systems work with a strategic plan.
• Simple setups get used. Stripping an inherited Jira Service Management setup back to the basics let a clinic’s help desk team jump in and move toward bringing IT support in-house.
• Platform decisions follow people. Clients chose between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 based on team comfort and where their own clients and partners work.
• Scaling starts with a roadmap. A construction consulting business ready to add people needed a plan for better systems, organized data, and aligned processes first.

As we head into the end of the year, I’ve taken a moment to reflect on Q3 2026 and the work I’ve been doing with teams of all sizes. As I continue to build out the scope of work for Valdivya and elevate my skill set, I find it helpful to highlight some key projects for the quarter.

This last quarter had a lot going on. My work was more focused, and the new connections made centered more on industries and groups that fit where my operational and technology skills work best. I’ve been doing a lot of systems-based work, but the layer that creates the most value is in coming into that work with a strategic mind and a plan. My engagements get both the hands-on work and the senior leadership strategy. It’s a satisfying balance of my skill set. I spent a lot of time in Jira, Confluence, and the Atlassian platform. The pace of change in the capabilities of the tools, my Atlassian Champion role, and the built-in mix of operations and technology focus of the platform continue to be a sweet spot to focus on. I’ve also engaged in security, configuration, and AI enablement for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. All of this mixed in with advisory and consulting for teams of 1 to 100 made for a great Q3.

There are a few engagements worth highlighting from these past few months.

Jira Service Management Implementation

This quarter’s Jira focus was helping a healthcare clinic put together a simplified IT help desk portal. They are in the middle of a transition away from a service provider that uses an overly complicated implementation of ServiceNow. The goal was to get it up and running quickly, get the team oriented, and keep it as simple as possible. There were some added complexities of a previous internal employee beginning the implementation, so the project began with unwinding a complicated setup built by someone who didn’t know the Atlassian platform. I stripped everything back to the basics to give a simplified out-of-the-box implementation for us to iterate on. Because Jira can be really simple at its core, it allowed the help desk team and their customers to jump right in without significant hurdles. Their goal is to fully roll out the implementation in Q4. The setup will allow them to pull their IT help desk fully in-house and save them thousands of dollars in outsourced IT costs. We’re now moving on to more customizations to fit their change management, root cause analysis, and day-to-day project workflows to bring their process into the system.

Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365

One surprising area I’ve spent time on this quarter has been assisting organizations in their decision-making on Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365. In Q3, I helped one client move from Google to Microsoft and another move from Microsoft to Google. There were certainly AI considerations made, but in both cases, the decision came down to where their team was most comfortable and where their clients typically work. The strongest pull was actually on where their clients’ and partners’ environments also lived. For example, if their clients were more comfortable in Microsoft Word, then it drove their decision to be on Microsoft too. Google’s Gemini vs Microsoft’s Copilot didn’t play much into the equation. In both cases, the organizations were already settled into Claude or ChatGPT.

Operational Roadmap and Scaling Advisory

This quarter also had me evaluating and providing advisory services on technical setup and operational scaling. This client has a small business that has been running well for years in the construction consulting space. They were looking to advance from their current size to start adding more people to the team. I was brought in to assess the current systems, review the current operational approach, and provide a roadmap for scaling the business. The roadmap produced ideas for optimizations to systems, organization of data and information, and alignment of processes to bring more people on but keep the work consistent.

Looking Ahead to QA

Alongside the work that stood out, I worked through other Jira consulting projects, build-vs-buy analysis, and system configuration to round out the quarter.

Looking ahead to Q4, I’ve got some additional SharePoint advisory work, marketing automation system configuration, Jira consulting, and fractional COO/CIO work on my plate. Every quarter has brought new and unexpected work with awesome people and interesting industries, so I’m looking forward to seeing what I get into next.

Whether you’re simplifying a platform you inherited, weighing Google against Microsoft, or planning how to scale, I bring hands-on work and senior strategy to the same engagement. I’d enjoy hearing what you’re working on.