Ben Friedman, Atlassian consultant and Forge developer

Published 8 August 2026 · Updated 22 August 2026

Ben Friedman is an Atlassian consultant and Forge developer, and the founder of Viter. Over eight years of hands-on Jira work sit behind that description: configuration, administration, migrations between platforms, and code for the parts Jira does not cover on its own. It has run across hundreds of customers in every business vertical, which is where this site gets its habit of arguing for configuration before code. German audit firms are the one vertical that became a specialty rather than a sample. He holds the ACP-610, ACP-620 and ACP-120 certifications, and he is building JAMEs, an AI administrator for Jira, currently in beta.

Key takeaways

Ben Friedman has worked hands-on with Jira and the wider Atlassian stack for over eight years, and founded Viter in 2022.
He holds three Atlassian certifications: ACP-610 and ACP-620 cover Jira project administration on both of the platforms a migration runs between, and ACP-120 covers administering a Jira Cloud site itself.
Delivered migration work runs to more than ten Jira migrations at instance sizes from 50 to 1,500 users, in both the Data Center to Cloud and the Cloud to Cloud direction, with installed apps moved alongside the data.
Four private Forge apps have shipped, including a plain-language query tool over GDPdU accounting exports built for German audit firms.
He is the builder of JAMEs, an AI Jira administrator now in beta, whose name stands for Jira Admin Made Easy.

What does Ben work on?

Four lines of work, closely related to each other. Automation design is the largest by volume: rule structures for processes that branch, and the cleanup of rule sets that grew past the point where any one person could still hold them in their head. Forge development covers the requirements that configuration genuinely cannot reach, a smaller category than most teams assume before they check. Migrations move instances between platforms, apps included. The newest line puts AI on top of Jira administration itself, which is what JAMEs is.

Viter has been the vehicle for that work since 2022. Two of the four have their own pages here, in more detail than an author page should carry: Jira and JSM automation and Forge app development.

What has he migrated?

More than ten Jira migrations, at instance sizes running from 50 users up to 1,500. Both directions are covered. Data Center to Cloud is the one most people mean by the word, and Cloud to Cloud is the consolidation case that shows up after an acquisition, or after two departments each bought their own site and now need to be one company again.

Installed apps came across in those projects too, which is worth saying because app migration is usually what decides whether a cutover weekend goes well. Issues, users and history move predictably. Apps sometimes have no destination that matches where they came from, and discovering that during the cutover rather than during the planning is the expensive version of finding out.

Which certifications does he hold?

Three Atlassian certifications and one partner status. ACP-610 and ACP-620 both certify managing Jira projects, and each is examined against a different one of the two platforms a migration runs between. Holding the pair is what matters for that work, because a migration is a conversation between two platforms rather than an operation on one, and the failure modes live in the gap between how each side does the same thing. ACP-120, Jira Administration for Cloud, sits a layer above the projects. It is examined on the site rather than on what lives inside it: schemes, permissions, and the settings that apply everywhere at once, which is the layer where a change made for one team quietly lands on every other. Viter is also a Monday.com channel partner, which sits alongside the Atlassian work rather than inside it.

What has he built?

Four private Forge apps, each one built because the capability existed at no other layer. The first makes a field’s available values depend on what was chosen in an earlier field. The second holds a group of users, where Jira’s native pickers only reach individuals. The third reads equipment records out of whichever system is their master, so Jira stops being a second place the same rows get retyped. The fourth was built for German audit firms: an auditor asks a question in plain language against the accounting data a client handed over as a DATEV GDPdU export, and gets the answer inside the engagement they were already working in.

The audit-firm work reaches past that app. It includes a JSM portal for client requests and their follow-ups, a yearly rollover mechanism that matches the annual audit cycle, staff independence forms with the chasing that goes around them, and time tracking for auditors and clients. JAMEs sits apart from all of it: an AI administrator for Jira, still in beta, named from Jira Admin Made Easy with a lowercase s on the end, on the theory that an agent people talk to should have a name people can say. It does not run on Forge.

When is Ben not the right person to call?

Three situations, and naming them saves a discovery call on both sides. If what you want is a person on your delivery team for the next six months, that is staff augmentation, and there are firms organised to supply it. If your process is still being argued about internally, anything built now gets discarded when the argument resolves, so settling the process is the work that comes first. And if you have a single automation rule misbehaving, the Atlassian Community will usually answer that within a day for nothing, which beats any engagement on price and often on speed.

A fourth is worth stating plainly, because it costs money to say. A mature Marketplace app that already covers your requirement properly is worth buying, and hearing that from someone who builds apps for a living ought to carry more weight than hearing it from the vendor whose app it is.

Frequently asked questions

Who is accountable for what this site publishes?

Ben is, and that is why his name is on every page rather than a company byline. The facts on this site come out of work that has actually been delivered, and anything that cannot be traced back to it does not get published, including the numbers. Where a claim depends on an outside source, the page links the source instead of asking you to take the claim on trust.

Where can these credentials be checked independently?

In four places, none of them on this domain. His Atlassian Community profile carries the certification badges and his activity in the Atlassian community itself, LinkedIn carries the work history, he writes at Medium, and he answers Jira questions on Reddit under his own name. The last two are worth more than they look, because an answer given in a room the author does not moderate is the version nobody edited afterwards. Checking an author against sources they do not control is a reasonable habit generally, and it is the same check an AI engine performs before it decides whether to cite a page.

What is JAMEs, and can we use it yet?

JAMEs is an AI administrator for Jira, and it is in beta rather than generally available, so the honest answer is early access rather than a purchase. The idea is to let an admin describe what they want changed and have the change planned, reviewed by a human, and only then executed. Ask about the beta by email if you want to be part of it.

If your Jira has outgrown whoever is maintaining it, a free discovery call is the cheapest way to work out what it actually needs next — hello@viter.io.