Atlassian’s Four-Year Struggle to Escape Its Own Dependency Hell

Atlassian Unveils Lessons from a Long Disaster Recovery Simulation

Australian collaboration software maker Atlassian has disclosed that it spent the last four years working to minimize risky internal software dependencies. The company’s efforts began after a tabletop disaster recovery (DR) simulation revealed how deeply its systems relied on one another, creating what executives called a state of “dependency hell.”

The Discovery During Simulation

During the DR exercise, Atlassian attempted to model what would happen if key internal systems failed. The simulation quickly showed that restoring one service often required several others to be functioning first. This circular dependency exposed a serious vulnerability across its infrastructure.

An Atlassian executive reportedly said during the review:

“We found that our recovery processes worked only in theory. In practice, too many services depended on each other to start up cleanly.”

Rebuilding and Re-architecting

In the years following the simulation, Atlassian engineers undertook an extensive architecture overhaul. The company rebuilt core systems to be more independent and resilient, focusing on modularization, better API management, and clearer ownership boundaries between services. This work aimed to ensure that a single failure could not easily cascade across the organization.

Cultural and Operational Shifts

Beyond technical refactoring, Atlassian made internal changes to how teams approached deployment and inter-service collaboration. Teams were encouraged to document dependencies, automate recovery procedures, and test failure scenarios more rigorously. These cultural adjustments sought to make resilience a shared responsibility rather than a centralized function.

Broader Industry Reflection

Atlassian’s experience underscores a broader industry problem. As cloud-native companies grow, their internal systems often become tightly interwoven. What starts as efficient integration can eventually turn into fragility unless carefully managed.

“Every SaaS company should run its own dependency audit before a crisis forces them to,” one Atlassian architect advised.

Author’s Summary

Atlassian’s four-year dependency overhaul illustrates how modern software ecosystems can quietly evolve into fragile networks and the necessity of proactive resilience engineering.

The Register — 2025-11-25