UK Developer Startup Wins Aussie Gold

Coding is fun, its also great if you make some profit!

UK developers lead by community expert Alan Parkinson recently formedHindsight Software, a start-up focused on bringing Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) to as wide an audience as possible. With their first product Behave for JIRA, they entered into the Atlassian Codegeist competition judged by Atlassian’s CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes. They scored a big win against a record number of entries in the annual competition.

Whilst there are some great tools BDD tools already out there, eg. Cucumber, EasyB, they suffer from usability issues when used by less technically oriented people. Behave for JIRA makes it easy to use Cucumber style acceptance tests (using the Gherkin language) within a familiar and easy to use surrounding of JIRA tickets.

Getting started with the Atlassian platform was as easy as downloading the software development kit (SDK) and following the wide range of tutorials available. Having worked on many JIRA integration projects before, it was easy enough for Hindsight to understand the overall approach and be aware of the challenges upfront (like deciding which version of the platform to target).

Selling the software through the Atlassian marketplace also minimised the non-coding work Hindsight had to do. All that was required was to register their product on the Atlassian Marketplace website and within a day it was live.

For Hindsight is has been a great way to try out an idea without requiring massive investment in resources and technology, in the best tradition of a lean startup. Eric Ries would be proud!

Hindsight are keen to do more in the UK to help encourage other developers to see the benefit of building on the Atlassian platform. Even though they are already part of the community by helping run the London Atlassian user group, they are keen to run plug-in workshops and other practical activities that get developers really engaged.

If you are into Behavour Driven Development, or are looking for a way to manage requirements in a more humane way, then check out Behave for JIRA.

If you are a keen developer, have a look at the competition entries and think about what you could create for Codegeist 2013 or other coding competitions year round! Good luck.

Thank you.
@jr0cket

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