Situation:

TriMet’s journey toward transformation began with the desire to improve IT responsiveness, visibility, and customer experience. As demand grew, so did the need to extend service management beyond IT to other departments like Bus, Rail, Maintenance of Way, and Facilities—teams previously relying on legacy tools like Footprints, spreadsheets, or even handwritten tickets.

This expansion required not just technology upgrades, but strategic planning, training, and cultural change to drive sustainable adoption across the organization.

Challenges:

TriMet faced several interrelated challenges across its IT and business operations:

  • Disjointed service delivery: Many departments used inconsistent or manual processes to manage service requests. Some teams handled tickets by phone or paper, leaving no record or visibility into work.
  • Fragmented incident response: IT lacked standardized workflows for classifying major incidents, coordinating response, and keeping stakeholders informed.
  • No centralized asset tracking: Without a unified asset management system, TriMet couldn’t easily connect assets to service history, manage hardware lifecycle, or meet cybersecurity standards. This was a critical gap for the cybersecurity team, which needed visibility to fulfill CIS Controls 1 and 2, including vulnerability management and endpoint scanning.
  • Resistance to change: Teams varied in digital maturity, and some were hesitant to adopt new systems.
  • Service Desk integration: TriMet was already planning to establish a dedicated Service Desk. What they needed was a way to thoughtfully integrate this team into existing processes and governance structures.
  • Limited admin capacity: Internal Jira administrators needed guidance, mentorship, and scalable templates to support further departmental adoption of JSM.

Solutions:

Oxalis supported TriMet through a multi-year series of engagements, each focused on delivering measurable value while building long-term internal capacity.

1. ITSM Transformation: Standardizing Processes and Visibility

To improve IT responsiveness and consistency, Oxalis:

  • Redesigned the IT service portal to simplify intake and improve user experience
  • Defined SLAs and reporting standards to improve transparency and accountability
  • Helped integrate TriMet’s newly formed Service Desk team into IT service workflows
  • Provided hands-on training to IT staff, aligned with ITIL best practices

Results:

  • 55% reduction in average time to resolution
  • 8% increase in customer satisfaction
  • 18% improvement in customer experience ratings

2. Modernizing Incident Management

In 2025, Oxalis led a targeted effort to overhaul TriMet’s major incident response process:

  • Consolidated alerts into Jira Service Management
  • Enabled classification of major incidents and automated responder notifications
  • Integrated Microsoft Teams for real-time collaboration directly from Jira
  • Created standardized, automated post-incident review workflows
  • Improved visibility for stakeholders through real-time updates

3. Enterprise Service Management (ESM) Rollout Across Departments

Oxalis led a 16-week implementation for the Bus, Rail, Maintenance of Way, and Facilities teams, including:

  • Stakeholder interviews, requirements documentation, and future-state design
  • Tailored project configurations and baseline template development for Jira Admins
  • Hands-on training, UAT, and change management workshops
  • Expanded adoption to new departments like HR, through internal enablement

Change Management Success:
A hesitant team requesting a delay just two weeks before go-live ended up asking to launch early after Oxalis delivered focused workshops and coaching.

4. Integration of Asset Systems for Cybersecurity and Lifecycle Management

To support hardware lifecycle tracking and fulfill CIS Controls 1 and 2, Oxalis:

  • Integrated CrowdStrike, Tenable, AirWatch, and Active Directory with Jira Assets
  • Built custom ETL pipelines and scripts for ingestion, normalization, and deduplication
  • Created a unified asset inventory supporting both operations and vulnerability management

Trimet ITSM transformation with Oxalis

This engagement exemplifies Oxalis’s strength in delivering cross-functional service management solutions in complex public sector environments, where outcomes like efficiency, transparency, and trust aren’t just metrics, but mission-critical mandates.

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Overview

As Portland’s regional public transportation provider, TriMet depends on reliable IT and operations systems to serve thousands of daily riders. From service outages and hardware tracking to facilities maintenance and HR requests, every part of the organization requires fast, accountable, and efficient service delivery.

Between 2023 and 2025, Oxalis partnered with TriMet on a multi-phase transformation effort, modernizing both IT Service Management (ITSM) and Enterprise Service Management (ESM) using Jira Service Management (JSM). Together, we redefined how TriMet delivers services across teams, technologies, and touch points.

Results

Across all phases of engagement, Oxalis delivered:

  • Unified, modern service management for both IT and non-IT teams
  • Improved incident response and post-incident transparency
  • Integrated asset tracking and cybersecurity alignment to meet CIS Controls
  • Scalable frameworks for continued Jira Service Management adoption
  • Empowered Jira Administrators with templates and best practices for future rollouts
  • Increased efficiency, accountability, and leadership visibility across the organization

Conclusion

Through a combination of strategic consulting, technical expertise, and organizational change leadership, Oxalis guided TriMet through a comprehensive transformation of both IT and enterprise service management.

By architecting and implementing Jira Service Management across IT and non-IT teams, Oxalis helped TriMet transition from fragmented, manual processes to a centralized, scalable platform that supports everything from incident response and asset management to facilities requests and HR services. TriMet staff now benefit from automated workflows, standardized SLAs, improved visibility, and consistent governance delivered through systems that are easy to adopt and built to grow.

More than just implementing tools, Oxalis equipped TriMet with the training, templates, and internal capacity to continue expanding JSM organization-wide, ensuring sustainable value far beyond go-live.