May 12 / 41 min
Atlassian’s Stephen Deasy: How designers and engineers unite the possible with the probable
Listen to PodcastFeaturing

Stephen Deasy
Head of Cloud Engineering, Atlassian
About The Episode
“Designers are about possibilities. Engineers are about probabilities.” This quote, from Stephen Deasy, Head of Cloud Engineering at Atlassian, is just one example of how concisely he can describe the relationship between designers and engineers.
Our interview with him was our first chance to learn from a leader on the engineering side, and he shared a wealth of knowledge that will help designers work more effectively with their engineering counterparts.
Stephen gave us insights about running regular retrospectives and health monitors with your team, and “plays” like Roles and Responsibilities. He also spoke to the mindset and process shift that occurs when teams scale from 15, to 50, to 150 people. Stephen also relayed some great insights on design and agile.
Takeaways:
- How to look across a company to get a pulse on the health of teams
- Understanding the mindset shift as teams scale
- What it looks like when teams are efficient and productive in an agile environment
Bio
Stephen Deasy is an experienced engineering leader helping teams, systems, and companies scale. He’s built and led teams all over the world build products that users love, from his current role at Atlassian to Groupon and VMWare.
He’s spoken at events like Atlassian Summit, VMware’s VMworld, OpenView’s Product Led Growth event, as well as published papers and filed seven patents.
Podcast
Uncover insights from the world’s top designers and creatives
In our sixth season, we’re looking beyond the design team to explore the far reaches of collaboration, and we’ll surface a cross-disciplinary approach to doing complex work with diverse teams.