From iconic cars to intelligent experiences: How Mercedes-Benz is creating the software-defined vehicle with Atlassian

Challenge: Mercedes-Benz Operating System (MB.OS), is helping the organization move from a traditional auto manufacturer into a software-defined vehicle innovator, However, legacy infrastructure and silos were holding its RD and IT teams back from collaborating at scale, innovating with AI, and bringing new vehicles to market quickly.

Solution: The company is centralizing its people, work, and context on one AI-powered platform. With Atlassian Cloud Enterprise and Rovo as the engine of Mercedes-Benz’s unified System of Work, 50,000+ technical and business employees are coming together to accelerate delivery, innovation, and value.

Impact: Mercedes-Benz builds on a strong foundation and has taken its performance to the next level. Productivity, efficiency, quality, cost control, and compliance have all been further strengthened. Across the organization, teams collaborate seamlessly on a shared platform and leverage AI to bring the next generation of high-quality software-defined vehicles to market even faster.

A historic automotive brand reinvents at high speed

More than 140 years after inventing the first automobile, Mercedes-Benz is reinventing what a car can be, with support from Atlassian. With the introduction of MB.OS, the company no longer just engineers world-class cars, but also delivers software-defined vehicles (SDVs): intelligent, constantly evolving driving experiences that feel like a natural extension of customers’ digital lives.

To regularly deliver new features over the air and quickly respond to ever-evolving customer feedback, Mercedes-Benz software teams had to change the way they collaborate at scale…and fast.

A massive transformation like this is impossible alone. The teams collaborating on MB.OS turned to Atlassian for help building a System of Work that connects people, work, and context so teams could accelerate planning, delivery, and innovation. Since making the pivotal decision to centralize on Atlassian as the core platform powering this System of Work, Mercedes-Benz has:

• Connected 50,000+ colleagues across 260+ locations to collaborate and move their work forward faster

• Accelerated software delivery by 10x

• Shifted 80% of platform team capacity from maintenance to service and innovation

• Equipped product managers, test engineers, and frontline service staff with Rovo AI Agents to deliver higher-quality work faster

VP of IT for R&D and Procurement Matthias Schneider says, “It's all about innovation and product development time. We have to get significantly faster, and the Atlassian platform is a big help for us.”

Complexity and competition expedite the need for evolution

Teams across Mercedes-Benz organically adopted Jira and Confluence for product and knowledge management within IT and R&D . Like many fast-moving, forward-thinking organizations, the company’s teams had the freedom to set up their own instances and optimize for what they needed. Over time, this autonomy and rapid growth led to complexities and challenges.

“We didn’t have much governance or standardization when teams were small. But with an ever-growing number of users and projects, that doesn’t work anymore,” Matthias recalls. “We needed standardization to keep pace.”

To standardize, simplify, scale, and speed up – all at the same time – Mercedes-Benz technology teams made a momentous decision: Double down on Atlassian cloud and take advantage of more capabilities within the platform, like Rovo for AI.

Consolidating and upgrading to a trusted, enterprise-ready platform

The choice to go all-in on the Atlassian platform was not made lightly. Leadership raised tough questions about whether Atlassian could handle Mercedes-Benz’s scale. Ultimately, the company’s security and compliance experts gave their stamp of approval after extensive due diligence. Leaders saw the future potential with Atlassian as the hub of their System of Work. Matthias says, “We made the conscious decision to work with Atlassian because we saw the benefits and possibilities of having one platform: much faster innovation, new features, cost efficiency, security, and governance.”

Within about two years, the team consolidated and upgraded thousands of projects and users to Atlassian Cloud Enterprise. With a centralized, modern platform, employees in RD and IT are not only enjoying an easier experience, but also access to more apps that help them work faster and smarter. 

Mercedes-Benz’s Atlassian platform now includes:

• Jira to plan and deliver work across software, hardware, and business teams

• Confluence as the hub for documenting and sharing knowledge

• Jira Service Management for enterprise service management across IT, R&D, and other domains

• Forge for deep customization and domain‑specific apps

• Rovo AI to help employees find answers faster, make more informed decisions, and automate work compliantly

• A unified data layer (Teamwork Graph) that serves as “organizational memory,” connecting people, work, and context across the enterprise for better AI and business results

After working in technology for more than 25 years – 20+ of which have been at Mercedes‑Benz – Matthias was impressed by the smooth migration and subsequent success. “Initially, we weren’t sure if Atlassian cloud was enterprise‑ready, but Atlassian rose to the challenge and proved it can handle our  users, complex needs, and high standards.”

Rolling out Rovo for higher quality, speed, and savings

Gaining access to Atlassian cloud’s AI capabilities and agentic workflows in Rovo is proving to be a game-changer for solving challenges across the company. 

Take defect management. Quality is a cornerstone of Mercedes-Benz, but maintaining such high standards became exponentially more difficult as complexity increased. For example, a single car line can generate thousands of defects during testing. Multiple care lines go through testing at once, leading to duplicate defects. “Test drives result in an unmanageable number of defects, which takes an immense amount of resources to solve,” says Product Manager Tobias Langjahr. “Now that we’re on Atlassian cloud, we found a solution in Rovo.”

Tobias’ team built a Rovo Agent to automate defect intake and triage. As soon as someone reports a defect, the agent analyzes the content, checks for duplicates, verifies traces and logs are attached for context, queries another system for similar anomalies, and points engineers to what they should look at next.

With this single Rovo Agent, Mercedes-Benz has improved the quality of defect reports by 90%, sped up the process by 85%, and significantly reduced waste – making defect and test management much easier and more efficient for everyone involved. 

Moving forward faster with agentic workflows

As Mercedes-Benz continued rolling out Rovo, teams applied it to their work in a variety of ways. For instance, product managers use a Rovo Agent to turn notes from customer conversations into high‑quality, precise work item descriptions. When submitting service requests, employees can also use a Rovo Agent to ensure they’ve added enough detail to the request, which reduces response times and elevates the overall experience.

These improvements are enabling employees throughout the business to deliver higher quality work in less time. “By adding Rovo, we’re unifying our data, automating repetitive tasks, and reducing risk. It’s transforming how we work by enabling our teams to accelerate performance and innovation,” Tobias says. 

Chief Software Officer Magnus Östberg adds, “Rovo is providing our team members with the right data exactly when they need it. Having agents find, connect, and act on information from across our Atlassian platform is a great enabler, so we can achieve the speed we're searching for.”

Better, faster delivery and service

Delivering better software faster is only one piece of the puzzle. Mercedes-Benz is also working on providing employees with better service faster by standardizing request intake, routing, and service-level agreements with Jira Service Management. 

Since the app works hand‑in‑hand with Jira and Confluence and is augmented by Rovo, users can self-serve in many cases, which has reduced ticket volume and resolution times. Unlocking access to Assets within Jira Service Management Cloud enabled the team to create a single source of truth for the most updated metadata related to car models, variants, and components – significantly streamlining impact analysis and change coordination whenever something changes. 

Tobias says, "Jira Service Management is the backbone of all our support units, helping our customers get the right support. And now with AI built in, they can get that support even faster.”

Accelerating software delivery and innovation – together

As the team continues centralizing teamwork on Atlassian and getting closer to its transformation destination, the business is already seeing encouraging results.

Faster delivery
“There are real examples where we have achieved 10X performance improvement – substantial gains in performance and speed, with no downtime,” Tobias says.

More time to improve service and innovation
“We shifted 80% of our load capacity from maintaining, fixing, and updating things. If you’re saving 80% of your work time, you can focus on talking to your customers and moving everything forward,” Tobias explains.

Better cost control and compliance
“With Atlassian,  we have much better cost control, security and compliance,” Matthias explains.

More cross‑discipline collaboration
“Collaboration is much easier between the different organizations and also within R&D. You need a collaboration platform across the organization. Our Atlassian platform is a great tool on that journey,” Matthias says.

The organization plans to continue partnering with Atlassian to help teams move even faster with more confidence using Rovo, and to deepen their use of advanced capabilities like Compass and Teamwork Graph to manage complex dependencies across hardware and software systems.

These improvements will be key to quickly bringing dozens of SDVs to market and staying ahead in a fast‑paced, fiercely competitive industry. Magnus says, “We can only achieve our goals for speed and deliver on our software-defined vehicle promise when we have a great platform. That’s why we rely on Atlassian.”