Agile Journeys is an ongoing series of candid conversations with Agile professionals from across the spectrum – from technical leads and enterprise architects to Scrum Masters, Agile coaches, and transformation leaders. Each conversation dives into the realities of Agile transformations, adoption, and scaling: the frameworks that work (and the ones that don’t), the processes and tools that enable change, the techniques and tips that make a difference, and the challenges teams face along the way.
Our goal is simple: share unfiltered, practical insights from the people living Agile every day – so you can learn, adapt, and make your own teams thrive.
In this installment, we spoke with Emre Toptancı (LinkedIn), responsible for the development, operation, and support of multiple Atlassian Marketplace cloud products at OBSS, a leading software and consultancy company based in Turkey. With over 20 years of IT experience spanning software development, product management, process design, ITSM, and governance, Emre brings a rare perspective that blends technical depth with enterprise-scale operational leadership.
Emre’s career started with hands-on development.
“I started as a software developer in .NET. After seven or eight years, I moved into governance — ISO 20000, ISO 27001, ITIL. But I was bored of hearing ‘this can’t be done.’ As an engineer, I knew it could. That’s when I joined OBSS, and for years I did Atlassian consultancy, mainly Jira implementations. Eventually, I went back to the ‘kitchen’ to lead product development — and now, all the things people said couldn’t be done, we are doing.”
Today, Emre leads a team of 10 developers and works on Atlassian Marketplace products like Timepiece - time in Status for Jira, one of OBSS’s most successful apps, often used alongside tools like our own Agile Retrospectives for Jira.
Unlike enterprise software sold with direct customer contact, Atlassian Marketplace apps live “in the wild.”
“You put your app in the marketplace, people install it, use it, and often never talk to you. Getting feedback is very hard. At the same time, you’re getting thousands of requests and logs from all over the world. Visibility is the hardest challenge — filtering the signal from the noise to really understand customer experience.”
This demand for continuous visibility has shaped Emre’s philosophy around building systems that scale.
With global customers and high expectations, speed of delivery is a constant challenge.
“You are never fast enough. That’s why we don’t rely on old-style quarterly plans. Every morning is a new plan. If something urgent comes from a customer, that breaks everything — it’s handled first. The answer is planning often, not sticking to rigid long-term plans.”
As an ITIL v3 Expert with deep experience in ISO standards, Emre brings a governance lens to Agile.
“ISO and ITIL are often seen as creating overhead. But they’re not cost drivers — they’re pure knowledge, distilled from experience. If implemented correctly, they reduce cost, pain, and risk in the long term. Agile and ISO are chasing the same goal: better systems, fewer fires, more sustainable work.”
Having worked with Atlassian for over a decade, Emre has seen massive changes.
“I started with Jira Server 6.0. The ecosystem was small, and partners had close ties with Atlassian. Now, Atlassian is a public company, the marketplace is bigger, and competition is fierce. Low-hanging fruit is gone. To succeed now, you have to solve big problems. And while the ecosystem is still friendly, Atlassian increasingly focuses on large partners. The requirements for Marketplace and Solution Partners keep getting higher.”
Despite the challenges, Emre sees opportunity — especially in ITSM.
“ITSM is rich. Atlassian has only scratched the surface. There’s still huge opportunity for partners.”
Emre is clear that the biggest pain point in Agile adoption isn’t Jira — it’s complexity.
“People don’t hate Jira, they hate their process. Any process you can’t run on a whiteboard or a Google Sheet, you can’t run on Jira. Keep it simple: to-do, in-progress, done. Visibility is everything. That’s why dashboards, Kanban boards, and reporting apps like Timepiece - time in Status for Jira matter. They make performance visible across teams and projects.”
Alongside OBSS’s own tools, his team relies on Tempo Gadgets, K15T Scroll Documents and Scroll Viewport, and Jira boards to maintain clarity and speed.
Emre is both excited and cautious about AI.
“AI is the new nuclear power. Whoever controls data, GPUs, energy, and models will dominate. For teams, I see two paths: either we’ll work with a sea of different specialized agents, or we’ll have one companion AI that orchestrates them all. But responsibility won’t disappear — people will still be accountable for their output, even when working with AI.”
On remote work, his prediction is more balanced:
“Before the pandemic, customers resisted remote work. After, they became champions of it. I see the pendulum balancing in the middle, slightly favoring remote work. But it requires managers to learn to manage work, not people — and that’s a painful shift.”
Emre closed with advice for today’s IT and product leaders:
“Stop micromanaging. Start building systems. Your job as a leader is not to manage every task — it’s to create a system of people and tools that keeps working after you leave. Build transparency, reporting, and processes that sustain themselves. That’s leadership.”
Emre’s journey — from developer to governance, to Atlassian consultant, and now leading product development at OBSS — reflects the evolving challenges of the Atlassian ecosystem and the wider Agile movement. His insights on visibility, governance, simplicity, and leadership resonate far beyond tools.
Follow Emre on LinkedIn to stay connected, and explore OBSS’s work (including Timepiece - Time in Status for Jira) to see how they’re helping teams measure and improve.
And as always, find more conversations with leaders like Emre in the Agile Journeys series on the Catapult Labs blog.