SprintEd: Making sprint names delightful — my Codegeist 2022 app

A small app with a big quality‑of‑life boost

In October 2022 I built SprintEd for Atlassian’s Codegeist hackathon — a lightweight app that helps teams view and manage sprints in one place and automatically assign fun, themed names (animals, cities, anime characters, and more). It ended up placing third overall — you can read the project write‑up and see screenshots on Devpost: SprintEd on Devpost.

Why I built it

Our team ran two‑week scrum sprints, and we kept bumping into two frictions:

Seeing historic, active, and future sprints at a glance required jumping between places in Jira
Naming sprints sequentially (Sprint 14, 15, 16…) was functional but forgettable

We started giving sprints themed names and found it boosted clarity and added a bit of fun — but doing it consistently was tedious. SprintEd made it effortless.

What SprintEd does

View, sort, and update sprints for the active board from one table
Auto‑name future sprints from a chosen theme (sequential or random)
Inline edit sprint details without bouncing between screens
Quickly inspect and adjust issues in a sprint
Export sprint data for use elsewhere

It lives in Jira Software projects using scrum and is accessible from the project sidebar.

How I built it

Platform: Atlassian Forge
UI: Custom UI with React using Atlassian’s design system components
Project setup: started with a monorepo template and iterated quickly via the Forge CLI

I validated feasibility up front (timeframe, Forge modules, Atlassian Cloud REST APIs) and shipped an MVP that was useful beyond my team.

Challenges and trade‑offs

Designing an auto‑name flow that’s powerful but simple
Making inline edits feel stable without reflowing the table
Onboarding new users so features are discoverable on first launch
Automating renames via events: sprint events weren’t available as Forge triggers at the time, so fully automatic renaming required workarounds (e.g., web triggers + Jira webhooks) and was out of scope for the hackathon window

What I’m proud of

The Auto‑Name experience — fast, clear, and honestly fun
Subtle animated transitions that make changes obvious
A quick onboarding walkthrough that improved first‑run success

What I learned

You can build surprisingly capable apps with Forge in a short time. The CLI and docs smoothed the curve, and the Custom UI option let me move quickly with React while staying well‑integrated with Jira.

Recognition

SprintEd earned Third Place at Codegeist 2022 — details and screenshots here: SprintEd on Devpost.

If you’re interested in this concept or want to see it evolve, drop me a note.