StudioBoard for Jira

Inspiration

At AppLiger, we build Jira apps for teams who value clarity, speed, and good workflows. And we’re also musicians ourselves. While recording and producing music, we noticed how hard it was to clearly track where each song really stood. Progress was spread across DAWs, notes, and conversations.

Jira was already part of our workflow, but it didn’t reflect the way music production works. StudioBoard for Jira was inspired by this firsthand experience - a simple, visual way to track songs from writing to mastering, built for real studio workflows.

What it does

StudioBoard for Jira introduces a visual Song Progress Chart inside a Jira project.

Each song appears as a row, and each part (production stage or instrument) - writing, recording, editing, mixing, mastering - appears as a column. At a glance, producers and collaborators can see:

Which songs are in progress
Which stages are complete or blocked
Where the bottlenecks are

Just like a pit wall dashboard in racing, StudioBoard turns Jira into a studio-ready production dashboard, purpose-built for music teams, so decisions can be made quickly and confidently.

How we built it

StudioBoard is built entirely on Atlassian Forge, which allowed us to focus on product experience instead of infrastructure. Forge gave us secure, scalable access to Jira data while keeping the app lightweight and compliant by design. StudioBoard is built as a Forge app for Jira Cloud, fully integrated with Jira’s spaces and work model.

Songs and their parts are backed by Jira work items, which means teams can:

Assign owners to parts or stages
Leave comments and feedback
Attach files and references
Automate workflows using Jira rules

The UI is built with Forge UI, ensuring a native Jira look and feel while keeping the experience simple and focused for non-technical users.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was balancing creative flexibility with structured workflows. Music production doesn’t always follow strict rules - every project and artist works differently.

We also had to design a visualisation that was:

Intuitive for musicians
Useful for project tracking
Simple enough to understand in seconds

Making something powerful without making it complex was a constant design challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A clear, visual chart that instantly explains song progress
A workflow that feels natural to musicians, not like “project management”
Seamless Jira integration out of the box

Most importantly, we built something that helps creative teams maintain momentum - and finish tracks.

What we learned

Creative teams value speed and visibility just as much as software teams do. When progress is visible, collaboration improves, and decisions happen faster.

We also learned that the music industry has its own workflows and practices - yet lacks software tools tailored to them. As a result, teams rely on spreadsheets, whiteboards, notes, and chat messages to track complex recording projects. This gap creates real friction, but also a clear opportunity: the industry is open to new, purpose-built solutions that help manage creative complexity without slowing creativity.