Enterprise software company Atlassian Corp. Plc is trying to make itself more useful to its customers with the acquisition today of a startup called AgileCraft LLC that sells tools for tracking business projects.

Atlassian said the deal is valued at $166 million, with about $154 million paid in cash and the rest through restricted shares. The acquisition is set to close in April.

The deal is all part of Atlassian’s ongoing expansion from its original focus on selling software development tools to a company that sells a much wider array of workplace software. Atlassian’s main offerings are still its Jira software, used for tracking software development, and Bitbucket, which developers use to store and collaborate on software code.

Texas-based AgileCraft’s main product is used to track business projects, similarly to how developers create software following the agile development philosophy of small, fast updates. Companies in numerous industries have begun following this philosophy, which provides benefits such as more predictable delivery times and costs.

The two companies are actually a natural fit, since AgileCraft’s software was designed to work with and add value to Atlassian’s Jira tools. In a blog post, Atlassian Chief Executive Scott Farquhar noted that the two firms have a number of shared customers that use both tools, including AT&T Inc. and Fidelity Investments Inc.

Those customers generally use Jira to plan and execute their software development efforts. AgileCraft is used to help connect those teams and provide business leaders with a wider view of the various projects going on within their organizations.

“AgileCraft brings together the teamwork happening across an organization into an all-encompassing view that connects strategy, work, and outcomes,” Farquhar said. “And because large-scale technology initiatives are increasingly complex, this visibility, context, and alignment are essential.”

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. described the acquisition as a “good strategy play” for Atlassian because it lowers the hurdle for companies building new applications, and that means more business for the company overall.

“With the AgileCraft acquisition, Atlassian makes agile development easier for enterprises,” Mueller said. “Enterprises want to see good software integration, so sales and support models need to be aligned. But first and foremost, Atlassian needs to solve the cross-sell and upsell scenarios in the field.”

The acquisition comes at a time when Atlassian is increasingly feeling the heat from rivals such as Microsoft Corp. and Salesforce.com Inc. Both those companies have increased their product portfolios in recent months. For example, Microsoft acquired Bitbucket rival GitHub Inc. for $7.5 billion last year, while Salesforce has expanded its sales software with the addition of more document and spreadsheet tools to help users track projects.

Atlassian has fought back at those rivals, though, expanding its own portfolio with more support and services for large enterprises. It also partnered with Microsoft rival Slack Technologies Inc. last year in an effort to foster greater collaboration among its users.

Image: Atlassian