The archive · Work & Ways of Doing · Operational decision · 2005–2021
Atlassian's ShipIt: 24-hour quarterly hackathons since 2005 birthed Jira Service Desk
A 24-hour quarterly hackathon started by 14 developers in 2005 grew into a ~4,000-person global ritual — and produced Jira Service Desk.
Atlassian
What it had to solve
Atlassian's ShipIt, originally 'FedEx Day,' began in 2005: 14 developers in a cramped Sydney office wanted a block of time to fix the things that bugged them. The company formalized it as a quarterly 24-hour hackathon where any employee can work on any project, technical or not.
How it works
In 2005, 14 developers in Atlassian's cramped Sydney office were arguing over bug fixes they never had time to make properly. The company's answer became one of the most durable rituals in software: ShipIt — originally 'FedEx Day' — a quarterly 24-hour hackathon where everyone drops their day job and builds anything they want.
The rules are simple and fixed: small teams form, often from people who never usually work together, and spend 24 hours on any project — a feature, a nemesis bug, or even a better way to use the office. At the end, every team presents for three minutes, and finalists compete for awards including the Founders Prize and People's Choice Award.
ShipIt turned out to be more than culture. One team once spent its 24 hours hacking a simpler portal for creating Jira issues — Andreas, Nick, Mike, Ross and Scott's prototype became Jira Service Desk, one of the fastest-growing products in Atlassian's history. Other winning projects regularly land on technical roadmaps, which is why Atlassian's ShipIt lead calls it a cultural strength and a business strength.
By the 50th ShipIt, in late 2021, the contest spanned nearly 4,000 Atlassians in more than 20 cities across 11 countries. When COVID forced everyone home, Atlassian re-engineered the ritual for remote work — pre-recorded demos, cross-continent teams — and the recordings became a searchable repository of ideas. The innovation was not a tool or a process; it was giving the company's own employees a fixed, recurring day to invent.
Why it lands
- A fixed date and a hard 24-hour deadline force completion — demos, not promises.
- Anyone can enter, technical or not, so improvement ideas come from every corner of the company.
- The three-minute demo creates a public record; winning projects get funded and land on roadmaps.
- Mixing people who never usually work together produces the collisions routine teams miss.
- It scales with the company: the same ritual that worked for 14 people now runs for ~4,000.
What it did
Jira Service Desk — one of the fastest-growing products in Atlassian's history — began as a 24-hour ShipIt prototype by five people. By the 50th ShipIt (late 2021) the ritual drew nearly 4,000 participants across 20+ cities in 11 countries, and winning projects routinely land on team roadmaps, making the hackathon a pipeline for real product and process ideas.
What you can take
Innovation needs no department, just a deadline and a stage: a fixed 24 hours with a mandatory demo turns 'do something different' into a habit and an ideas repository.
Since then
ShipIt became a defining piece of Atlassian's culture and a source of real products: Jira Service Desk grew out of a single hack day, and other ShipIt projects included ethically sourced clothing for the Atlassian Foundation and a Chrome extension for workplace answers. During the pandemic the event went fully remote, which Atlassian said made it stronger — teams could join across offices, and pre-recorded presentations built a permanent ideas repository. By late 2021 the company had run 50 ShipIts, and the ritual remains a quarterly fixture.
Sources
- How our tiny hackathon turned into a quarterly creativity fest
- 5 ways your company can think like Atlassian
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