The coronavirus crisis has affected the way people all around the world get their work done.
For example, it seems to be slowing down the pace that IT people respond to tech issues, according to a survey by cloud software company Atlassian, which makes the incredibly popular Jira software ticketing tool.
More than half of the 500 developers and IT professionals that Atlassian surveyed in early April said they're responding to IT incidents slower than they normally would.
Why?
The shift to working from home may mean that other responsibilities — like family care or laundry — may disrupt IT employees' routines while they're working on a ticket, theorizes Patrick Hill, Atlassian's head of reliability processes.
He suggests that IT employees form a "buddy system" when they're on call to help keep up with incidents while working remotely. That way, if one employee has to take care of children or virtually conference with a doctor, the other employee can temporarily cover that shift.
"Everyone is now in a compressed environment in their homes," Hill told Business Insider. "They don't have the ability to go and take kids to school. We've had to adapt and change our work practices as well."
Meanwhile, two-thirds of respondents in Atlassian's survey said they've slowed down how frequently they deliver software updates and new features, too.
"They're now focusing on keeping the lights on," Hill said.
Hill suggests that teams should automate as many repetitive tasks as they can in order to continue releasing code at their typical frequency.
At the same time, 73% of organizations that responded to the survey are seeing an increased demand for their internet services.
"Not only are they diving into a new work situation, they're diving into more demand for their services," Hill said.
Atlassian, which builds developer software, has seen increased demand as well. The company saw a 125% growth in signups for trials of its cloud products in March. It's too early to say how many of these trial users will convert to paid accounts, but this has long been the model Atlassian used to land new customers.
Unsurprisingly, Atlassian's survey also found that people were relying more often on technology from Jira, Zoom, Slack, and others to stay connected.
"A few of my colleagues can't use the whiteboard anymore," Hill said. "They have to slow down. They have to trust their build pipelines. They have to move forward and look at improving those automated tools and automated signals to make sure they're doing the right things at the right time."
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