WorkStar

The bragging rights app for your Jira rock stars.

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Inspiration

As long time Jira users, we all know many people update or advance work on a 'minimum information required' basis. We naturally do just enough to complete issues and inform teammates regarding statuses, comments, subtasks etc. So, we thought there should be something that rewards the teammates who spend time to keep their peers up to date and drive Jira as a collaboration tool used to its fullest (a single source of truth). That's how WorkStar was born.

What it does

The idea behind WorkStar is to gamify the whole task management process. It provides scoring incentives to users when specific Jira events are fired. These events and their associated scores can be configured by the instance/project admins. A scoring leaderboard shows everyone where they stand. WorkStar also periodically brings fun pop-up messages when the user crosses certain milestones. The idea is to keep them engaged and encouraged, but still allowing them to keep focused on their work.

How we built it

Trundl used Forge for building the WorkStar app. The team comprised of Architects, Developers, UI designers and Project Managers who brainstormed on the idea of gamification and build an app which listens to Jira events and does calculations in the backend, depending on administrative configuration. The result is a fun Leaderboard with a true representation of the most active and engaged Jira users within your company.

Challenges we ran into

Honestly, Forge isn't as open as Atlassian Connect, so we had to find workarounds for some things while building the app. Example; Enabling the app issue panel module for each issue by default is not possible in Forge right now. Still, we realize how powerful Forge can be and might just be the future of app development in the Atlassian Ecosystem.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First and foremost, to work with a tight deadline of 20 working days was challenging (especially during "the Holidays"). With just a 4-6 member team, we had to ideate, design, build and test and release the app. In terms of difficult features, we had to allow for both point-scoring configuration at the project level, as well as the instance level. Not all projects and project leaders work in the same manner, so we had to allow the app to serve various scoring preferences. We also love the funny messages and animations that show up once you cross specific milestones in terms of points.

What we learned

We learned that each team works differently. We could not just build ‘one size, fits all’ app when it comes to gamification. We spoke to multiple users and understood their ways of working while configuring the settings for the app. We took in a long list of backlog items and took in an MVP for DevUnleashed. Our team also learned many new APIs in Forge during the building phase. Additionally, we learned how to store values inside Forge and how to test & deploy the app using the Atlassian platform.

What's next for WorkStar team

We plan to refine this App and put it on the Marketplace for everyone to try and use. As of now, Workstar only goes well with Jira Software/Work Mgmt, but we can surely see it making its way into JSM projects. Imagine a fun way to track who is resolving and engaging the most in terms of customer support tickets! The long-term plan also includes building themes into the gamification (ex, Christmas, Easter, Nature etc). and building additional features like extra points for logging work, options to gift ‘points’ to team members for good work, building in an automated once-a-month newsletter for the people who opt in to that feature, and others. The team believes gamification is the morale booster that can make work fun for people, especially those in distributed teams.

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