Get cheered on when you complete JIRA tickets

In 2015, a peculiar piece of news circulated on the internet. According to the British newspaper The Independent, tech firms in China are raising eyebrows by reportedly hiring “pretty girls” to motivate programmers who are “mostly male and terrible at socialising. The idea is that these girls can help create a fun work environment (side note: A few years later The New York Times also published an article about this curious phenomenon.) by buying programmers breakfast, chitchatting and playing ping-pong with them.

That kind of sounds like my worst nightmare, but I’ll have to admit that it would be nice to have something that cheers you on throughout your work day

This is why I built Jirleader, a Chrome extension that acts as your personal (ungendered) cheerleader on JIRA agile boards. When installed, any JIRA ticket (side note: Actually, I should say “most JIRA tickets”; it’s a little bit buggy.) that you move to a different column will trigger an animated emoji that’s accompanied by a stupid sound effect.

I might add more features in the future, but I currently lack the motivation to do so. For now, you can download the latest build of Jirleader from the Chrome Web Store. It’s completely free (as in beer, and from tracking).