Erste: From Azure Boards and CA PPM to a Single Jira Cloud Platform
Atlassian
Finance
Project Management
- Migration from Azure Boards and CA PPM to Atlassian Cloud
- Jira, Confluence and Atlassian Guard Implementation
- Idea and Portfolio Management Process Design
- Entra ID and Active Directory Identity Integration
- DWH and Power BI Reporting Integration
4 months
implementation, 4 consultants at ~2.5 FTE
35,000+
entities migrated with comments and attachments
~800 users
migrated, of ~1,000 Jira users in total
Erste banka had managed its work and projects for years through a combination of Azure Boards and CA PPM, used across different departments and teams. Koios migrated both systems to Atlassian Cloud — Jira, Confluence and Atlassian Guard — over four months, alongside a redesign of how work and portfolios are run, enterprise identity and access, and reporting integrations to the bank’s data warehouse and Power BI.
The objective was a single cloud environment uniting work, portfolio and reporting, with standardised time tracking and a more modern approach to managing users.
Over time the dual setup showed its typical limitations. Visibility was fragmented, collaboration between teams was harder than it needed to be, and changes to processes or reporting were slow and expensive to maintain. The tools in use simply did not support portfolio oversight, standardised reporting and collaboration across multiple organisational units equally well. As the number of teams and external partners grew, the need for a more flexible system — one that could be standardised and also scaled — became more pressing.
Erste needed a solution that addressed all of it at once: fewer tools and less context switching, greater portfolio visibility for the PMO and the teams, standardised time tracking and reporting, and a modernised approach to identity and access management across Entra ID and the local Active Directory.
Three things carried the most risk after go-live. Data consistency and integrity had to hold while migrating out of multiple systems. Standards had to be accepted across teams with different established habits. And identity management, access control and consistent reporting all had to work together across Entra ID, the data warehouse and Power BI.
This was never a pure lift and shift. Koios ran the project as a combination of technological transition and redesign of the way of working, and sequenced it deliberately rather than tackling everything at once: first the prerequisites for an enterprise environment, then a unified structure and set of processes, and only then a controlled data migration with the work needed to make users actually adopt the new system.
The foundations came first, starting with identity and access — the thing that is felt fastest in large systems when it is not set up properly. Integrating with Entra ID and the local Active Directory allowed users, groups and permissions to be managed centrally and scalably, with fewer manual administrative steps. That set up the Atlassian Cloud environment as a stable, manageable platform from the outset, ready for growth in both teams and users.
With the foundations in place, attention moved to how the system would be used day to day. Koios introduced a single work hierarchy in Jira — Project, Deliverable, Epic, Story, Sub-task — so that tracking is comparable between teams and the PMO and stakeholders get a consistent view of progress. Processes for idea and portfolio management were built on top: idea capture through forms, clear flows for turning an idea into deliverable work, stage-gate logic, and portfolio tracking through Jira Plans.
Defining the standards first meant the migration itself could be done faster and more safely, without moving the existing mess into the new environment. The process ran in controlled phases with a focus on data quality and minimal disruption to the business, moving more than 35,000 entities out of Azure Boards and CA PPM into Jira, comments and attachments included. Koios carried out the migration without additional migration Marketplace applications, which gave more control and reduced dependency on external solutions.
In parallel, integrations to the data warehouse and Power BI were set up through the Jira and Tempo REST APIs so that reporting was stable and usable from day one. Template projects standardised onboarding, and more than 40 automations were built for the new processes. Adoption was supported by continuous education rather than a single training event: over 150 Loom videos and accompanying documentation gave users support exactly when they needed it, while the change was still happening.
- A single platform for work and portfolio management Jira Cloud now connects teams, portfolio and reporting in one environment, replacing the Azure Boards and CA PPM combination.
- Better portfolio visibility The PMO and stakeholders get consistent insight into the status of initiatives, rather than a picture assembled from separate tools.
- Standardised time tracking and reporting Both are now part of everyday work, with reporting automated through the data warehouse and Power BI integrations.
- Enterprise-ready identity and access Users, groups and permissions are managed centrally through Entra ID and Active Directory, with less manual administration.
- Faster collaboration and clearer handovers Jira and Confluence together support quicker collaboration and cleaner handover between teams, backed by a stronger documentation base.
- Less technical debt Standards, automations and template spaces reduce the maintenance burden and give a better basis for future change.
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