New Product Features
🔹 Best Practices for AI Prompt Engineering: How to Get the Best Results
Mastering AI Prompt Engineering for Better Results
AI is only as good as the prompts you provide. The right approach to AI prompt engineering can enhance efficiency, improve decision-making, and refine automation in business processes. This article explores best practices for crafting AI prompts, ensuring clarity, accuracy, and effectiveness in AI-generated outputs. Learn how to specify your audience, chain prompts for deeper insights, and tailor requests for optimal performance.
What is Prompt Engineering?
At its core, prompt engineering is the process of creating structured inputs for AI models. AI tools use these prompts to generate responses, whether for:
- Writing content
- Automating tasks
- Organising data
- Enhancing decision-making
The quality of the prompt directly influences the output. A poorly worded prompt can lead to confusion, while a precisely crafted one ensures accuracy.
Simplicity Consulting Tip: Think of AI as an intern, not an expert. Provide clear, structured guidance to get the best results.
Be Specific About Your Audience
AI-generated content should resonate with your intended audience. Whether crafting an email, report, or product description, the more context you provide, the better the AI response.
Example of a vague prompt:
Write a blog about Agile project management.
Example of an optimised prompt:
Generate an article explaining Agile project management for startup founders in the SaaS industry. Focus on how Agile methodologies can improve software delivery speed and collaboration.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: Use audience-specific keywords such as industry, role, and use case to refine AI responses.
Use Step-by-Step Chaining (Prompt Chaining)
One of the most powerful techniques in AI prompt engineering is chaining prompts together for refined, logical responses. Instead of requesting everything at once, break the request into steps.
Example of prompt chaining in action:
User: List three strategies for improving Agile team collaboration.
AI: 1. Daily stand-ups 2. Retrospectives 3. Cross-functional training.
User: Expand on how retrospectives improve collaboration.
AI: Retrospectives allow teams to reflect on past work, discuss challenges, and align on improvements for future sprints.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: Build conversations with AI by using previous responses as a starting point for deeper exploration.
Provide Context & Examples
The more background information you provide, the more accurate and useful AI’s responses will be.
Example of a weak prompt:
Create a case study on digital transformation.
Example of a strong prompt:
Write a case study on how a mid-sized retail company used Atlassian tools to implement Agile digital transformation, reducing delivery time by 30%.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: AI performs best when given real-world examples or company-specific details to emulate.
Include What NOT to Do
Just as important as telling AI what to do, specifying what it should avoid improves clarity.
Example prompt:
Write a summary of our ITSM implementation, avoiding technical jargon and keeping it understandable for non-technical stakeholders.
Why it works: This ensures AI generates content appropriate for the audience, reducing unnecessary complexity.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: Define exclusions clearly—this is especially useful in executive-level reporting where simplicity is key.
Keep Prompts Clear & Concise
AI interprets words literally, so long, overly complex prompts may lead to misinterpretation.
Poor example:
Can you generate a proposal for implementing Agile methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, and hybrid frameworks, while considering company-wide adoption strategies?
Better example:
Write a proposal outlining Agile implementation strategies, focusing on Scrum and Kanban.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: Shorter prompts reduce AI confusion and lead to quicker, more refined responses.
Add Output Limits to Improve Focus
AI can generate long, unfocused responses if left unrestricted. Adding limits ensures clarity and efficiency.
Example prompt with limits:
Summarise the benefits of Jira Product Discovery in 100 words.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: If AI produces lengthy responses, refine the prompt by specifying word count, format, or structure.
Leverage AI for Decision Support, Not Just Automation
AI isn’t just for generating content—it can help make strategic decisions.
Example prompt for decision-making:
Compare the benefits of Jira Service Management vs. Zendesk for ITSM in an enterprise environment.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: Use AI to analyse options and generate insights, not just automate text-based tasks.
Maximising AI Efficiency with Smart Prompting
AI isn’t perfect, but effective prompt engineering can drastically improve output quality. By refining how we interact with AI, businesses can achieve:
- Higher efficiency in automation
- Better decision-making with data-driven insights
- Clearer, more actionable AI-generated content
Explore AI-driven workflows with Simplicity Consulting!
Updates in Atlassian Products
🔹 Prevent your team from using new Bitbucket workspaces without your approval
You will soon be able to proactively manage product requests for Bitbucket from admin.atlassian.com. This feature provides you with more oversight to control Shadow IT and billing.
After you select admin review required, you can approve or deny new Bitbucket requests from your managed accounts. This gives you greater control over where your team does their work.
This is available for Bitbucket as part of a beta program. It’s also available for Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, and Trello with an Enterprise subscription.
Role: Organisation admin
Atlassian Cloud: Enterprise plan for Jira, Jira Service Management, and Confluence
Atlassian Government Cloud: Not available
To manage product requests for Bitbucket:
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Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.
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Select Security > Product requests.
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Select Request settings. If this is your first time updating these settings, you may need to select Update request settings.
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Next to Bitbucket, select Require admin review under the Request setting dropdown.
The next time one of your managed accounts tries to sign up for a product, they’ll receive a prompt to enter a reason for their request. After they create the request, all organization admins receive an email, letting them know someone created a request.
🔹 Announcing ARM builds in cloud for Bitbucket Pipelines
The release of Linux based ARM runners in cloud allows you to build and deploy software for ARM-based systems with all the benefits of our fully managed CI/CD platform.
To use the new cloud ARM runners in your pipeline, make the following modifications to your bitbucket-pipelines.yml file:
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Set the ARM runtime in your pipeline’s YAML file, available as a global option or can be set as a step-level option. Declaring it as a global option will result in all steps in the file running on ARM.
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ARM builds require you to use an image that is ARM compatible, meaning you must explicitly declare an image for your build, and that image must support ARM.
NOTE:
The Atlassian provided default-image supports arm from version 4 onwards:atlassian/default-image:4
Example step-level configuration:
pipelines: default: - step: image: atlassian/default-image:4 runtime: cloud: arch: arm script: - echo "aarch64" - step: runtime: cloud: arch: x86 # This is the default if not configured script: - echo "x86" - step: script: - echo "x86"
Example step-level configuration:
pipelines: default: - step: image: atlassian/default-image:4 runtime: cloud: arch: arm script: - echo "aarch64" - step: runtime: cloud: arch: x86 # This is the default if not configured script: - echo "x86" - step: script: - echo "x86"
ARM on Linux is powered by our new runtime and has been in-use internally within Atlassian for over six months in order to ensure it is ready to be shared with customers.
We’d love to hear your feedback & suggestions via the Pipelines community, please contact support if you experience any issues.
🔹 Defer the rollout of specific changes
There may be times when your organisation needs more time to prepare for a change Atlassian is rolling out to your products.
Defer a specific change for at least 30 days, and prepare your teams for the rollout.
First, you’ll need to allow all org admins to defer individual changes. Then, all org admins can defer a specific change. If you need help on understanding how to defer changes, get in touch with us.
To allow admins to defer changes:
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Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.
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Select Products> Product updates.
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From the section message at the top of the page, select Allow admins to defer changes.
To defer a change:
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Go to admin.atlassian.com. Select your organization if you have more than one.
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Select Products> Product updates.
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Select the Defer rollout filter.
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Select Can defer.
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Select the release note for the change you want to defer.
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Select Defer rollout.
Business Improvements
Enhancing your processes
4 Essential Views in Jira Product Discovery for Engineering Leaders
Maximising Engineering Strategy with Jira Product Discovery
🚀 Engineering leaders face the challenge of aligning technical initiatives with business priorities while maintaining system reliability and fostering innovation.
Jira Product Discovery helps bridge this gap, offering structured views to manage priorities, capacity planning, and stakeholder communication effectively. Discover four essential views that can transform your strategic approach—from high-level portfolio planning to real-time delivery tracking.
1. The Helicopter View: Aligning Strategy with Business Goals
🔍 Gain a high-level perspective of engineering initiatives and their impact on business objectives.
Engineering investments, particularly in infrastructure and technical debt reduction, often struggle for prioritisation against new feature development. Without clear visibility into how these investments contribute to business success, they risk being sidelined.
A helicopter view offers an overarching perspective of engineering priorities, demonstrating how they align with company goals. This helps justify technical investments to stakeholders while fostering collaboration between product and engineering teams.
✅ Key Benefits
- Provides leadership with visibility into engineering contributions to business success.
- Justifies technical investments to non-technical stakeholders.
- Strengthens alignment between product and engineering priorities.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: Build a direct connection between technical investments and customer outcomes. The more clearly you articulate value in business terms, the easier it is to gain buy-in from leadership.
📷 Insert Image: Helicopter View in Jira Product Discovery
➡️ Upload an image with the filename: helicopter-view.jpg
2. High-Level Capacity Planning: Avoiding Overcommitment
🛠 Plan resources strategically before work enters the backlog.
Effective resource planning is a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of engineering leadership. Without a structured approach, teams risk being overcommitted or lacking the necessary expertise for high-priority initiatives.
A high-level capacity planning view provides insight into team availability and resource constraints before work is committed. It helps initiate discussions around potential bottlenecks and ensures informed decision-making when sequencing tasks.
✅ Key Benefits
- Prevents overcommitting engineering teams.
- Encourages realistic delivery planning.
- Enables better hiring and resource allocation decisions.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: Avoid last-minute fire drills by setting clear capacity thresholds early. A well-structured capacity model allows for proactive decision-making rather than reactive firefighting.
📷 Insert Image: Capacity Planning in Jira Product Discovery
➡️ Upload an image with the filename: capacity-planning.jpg
3. Backlog Prioritisation: Balancing Tech Debt & Features
📊 Ensure a healthy mix of technical improvements and new features.
One of the biggest challenges for engineering managers is balancing feature development with the need to address technical debt. The pressure from product, sales, and marketing teams to continuously ship new features can sometimes overshadow essential performance and security enhancements.
A backlog prioritisation view enables structured discussions around investment trade-offs. Instead of pushing back on new features, engineering teams can use this view to highlight the long-term benefits of improving system performance, reliability, and security.
✅ Key Benefits
- Helps manage tech debt proactively.
- Facilitates balanced discussions between product and engineering.
- Enables data-driven decision-making on prioritisation.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: Prioritisation should always be tied to measurable impact. Use Jira Product Discovery to establish clear criteria that align with strategic business outcomes.
📷 Insert Image: Backlog Prioritisation in Jira Product Discovery
➡️ Upload an image with the filename: backlog-prioritisation.jpg
4. Delivery Dashboard: Real-Time Progress Tracking
🚀 Keep stakeholders informed with an up-to-date view of ongoing work.
Stakeholder communication is often one of the biggest pain points in engineering leadership. While product teams can present clean high-level roadmaps, engineering updates often get bogged down in technical details.
A delivery dashboard consolidates progress updates in a visually intuitive format, reducing the need for frequent status meetings. By linking initiatives in Jira Product Discovery with related epics and tasks in Jira Software, updates happen automatically, eliminating the need for manual tracking.
✅ Key Benefits
- Keeps leadership informed with real-time progress updates.
- Reduces time spent on reporting and status meetings.
- Connects strategic planning with execution for a unified view.
📌 Simplicity Consulting Tip: Shift the focus from reporting to action. Your dashboard should not just track work but also highlight decision points that require executive attention.
📷 Insert Image: Delivery Dashboard in Jira Product Discovery
➡️ Upload an image with the filename: delivery-dashboard.jpg
Transform Your Engineering Strategy with Jira Product Discovery
By incorporating these four essential views, engineering leaders can:
✅ Improve strategic alignment
✅ Enhance resource planning
✅ Maintain transparency across teams
Jira Product Discovery enables a proactive, data-driven approach to decision-making, ensuring engineering efforts contribute effectively to business goals.
Talk to us to try Jira Product Discovery!