It can be customer-facing or internal-facing, and anything is fair game.
“The basic premise is that you can fix any problem related to the company. “It’s a quarterly event, and we’ve just completed our 50 th contest,” says Philip Braddock, Atlassian’s Global Lead for ShipIt.
#ATLASSIAN SHIPIT HACKATHON UPGRADE#
Or, maybe just upgrade racks in the bike room.”Īt the end of the 24 hours, each team creates a three-minute presentation for their project, and finalists are chosen to compete for a selection of awards including the coveted Founders Prize and People’s Choice Award. “Find what inspires you,” say the official instructions. Small teams are formed, often consisting of colleagues who don’t usually collaborate, and a specific problem is tackled. The core ShipIt principle remains the same, though. ShipIt began in 2005 as a standard hackathon: a dedicated 24-hour period where staff could put down their day jobs and tackle a fun side-project of their choosing, like a condensed version of Google’s famous “20% time.”īut what started as 14 developers arguing over bug fixes in a cramped Sydney office has now evolved into a bona fide global innovation contest, with nearly 4,000 Atlassians participating across more than 20 cities in 11 countries. “They said: ‘We were doing A, B and C before, so how do we do A, B and C remotely?’ Atlassian realized pretty quickly that wasn’t necessarily going to work, so we started looking at making appropriate changes to our habits and rituals in order to get to the same results, even if it involved going via D, E, and F.” How we got innovative about innovation “When everyone started working from home, a lot of companies simply adopted the ‘lift and shift’ model,” says Christine Dela Rosa, Atlassian’s Brand Lead for Ways of Working. But the pandemic has forced some changes. In this context, Atlassian’s very own ShipIt – a popular, company-wide creativity contest for teams – has taken on even more significance in a remote workplace. And innovation is key if you want your business to progress. Get stories about teams and tech in your inbox SubscribeĬollaboration is key if you want to innovate.