# Why I Built Strategy Hub: A Jira OKR App That Doesn't Fight Your Workflow

> A UX researcher's take on why existing Jira strategy tools couldn't flex — and why building Strategy Hub on Forge was the fix.

Canonical: https://caskcode.io/blog/why-i-built-strategy-hub-a-jira-okr-app-that-doesn-t-fight-your-workflow/

By Bartosz Wyszkowski · August 3, 2026

I'm Bartosz, founder of [caskcode.io](https://caskcode.io/) and [Strategy Hub for Jira](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/4032874960/strategy-hub-okrs-goals-kpis-strategy-planning-for-jira). Before this, I spent years as a UX researcher working close to the Atlassian ecosystem — sitting in on customer calls, watching how teams actually used Jira, and, more often than I'd like, watching where it broke down.

There's a specific kind of conversation that stuck with me. Not customers telling us what to build — that's not really how good product work happens. It was us doing what UX research is supposed to do: listening for the pain points, the problems people ran into that our software simply didn't cover, and then going away and designing the actual solution ourselves. A clearer way to connect daily Jira work to quarterly goals. A KPI view that didn't need three plugins duct-taped together. A planning screen that matched how the team actually thought.

We'd design it. We knew it was the right solution. And then, more often than I'd like, we couldn't ship it — or what we could realistically offer was a scaled-back version, shaped less by what the problem needed and more by what the existing software could actually support.

Not because nobody cared. Because the app underneath had years of legacy decisions baked into it. Redesigning the UX meant unpicking architecture that was never built to bend that way. "Expensive" undersold it — sometimes it just wasn't realistic given what the app was built on.

That's not a knock on the teams building those apps. Plenty of tools in the Jira strategy and OKR space have been around for years, and being around for years is exactly the problem: the market's demands moved, and the software didn't move with it. Flexibility gets harder to add after the fact, not easier.

So when I sat down to build Strategy Hub, the starting question wasn't "what features should this have." It was: what if the app was built now, on what's available now, instead of carrying a decade of technical debt into a market that's changed?

**Why now, specifically**

Two things made this the right moment to actually build it rather than just complain about it.

First, Atlassian Forge. Building fully inside Atlassian's infrastructure means Strategy Hub doesn't run on some third-party backend we'd have to convince customers to trust. There's no separate server holding your Jira data, no "please trust our small vendor with your sensitive information" conversation to have. Your data stays inside Atlassian's own environment. For admins and security teams evaluating a new vendor, that's not a minor detail — it's usually the first question they ask, and with Forge, the answer is straightforward.

Second, Rovo. Atlassian's AI layer is becoming part of how teams work inside Jira, and Forge apps are built to plug into it cleanly. If strategic planning and OKR tracking are going to get smarter — surfacing risks, summarizing progress, connecting the dots between a ticket and a goal — that has to happen where the AI already lives, not bolted on separately. Strategy Hub is built with that integration in mind from day one, not retrofitted later.

**How it's actually built**

I'll be direct about this because I'd rather you hear it from me than wonder: we used AI coding assistants heavily while building Strategy Hub. That's not a gimmick or a shortcut we're hiding — it's how a lot of serious software gets built in 2026. What matters is who's steering it: every part of the architecture and every line that ships has gone through senior engineers who've built production Atlassian apps before. AI made us faster. It didn't make the decisions.

**What it actually does**

![](pasted-image-1785782591878.png)

Here's where I'll be honest with you rather than write a features page disguised as a blog post: the functionality is broad enough that it deserves its own dedicated post, and I'll write that separately. What I can tell you right now is the short version - pretty much everything I've seen teams miss from Atlassian Goals (the native Jira goal-tracking that used to live under Atlas), Strategy Hub has:

- **Real OKR hierarchies, not one flat table.** Atlassian Goals ties a single metric to each goal, which works for a simple target but breaks down the moment you have the classic 3–5 Key Results under one Objective. Strategy Hub is built around nested Items - Objectives, Key Results, KPIs, whatever your framework calls them - so the hierarchy is the data model, not a workaround.
- **Views built for actually seeing the cascade.** I've read more than one thread of teams exporting Atlassian Goals data to Google Sheets or mind-mapping tools just to see how a divisional lead's OKRs cascade down. Strategy Hub ships with a Portfolio board, Team board, Roadmap, and Hierarchy map out of the box - no exporting required.
- **A framework that fits how you plan, not the other way around.** Eight starting presets (OKRs, single-page plans, and more), and every Type, Status, and hierarchy level is yours to reshape afterward. Atlassian Goals gives you goals; Strategy Hub gives you a structure you actually chose.
- **Rollups that reflect real work, not just ticket counts.** Progress can roll up from linked Jira work weighted by story points or priority, not just a raw count of linked issues.
- **Rovo and Jira wired in natively, not bolted on.** A custom JQL function to reference Strategy Hub Items directly in Jira filters, plus a native Rovo agent - because if strategic planning lives next to your Jira work, it should be queryable the same way.

Full walkthrough (with screenshots) is in the [setup docs](https://docs.caskcode.io/strategy-hub/app-setup/) if you want to see it before installing.

**What this means for you**

If you've been stuck with a Jira strategy tool that almost does what you need - but not quite, and support says it's "on the roadmap" - that's the gap Strategy Hub is built to close. Modern UI, built for how strategic planning actually works today, running entirely on Atlassian's own infrastructure, with Rovo integration built in rather than added on.

Right now, Strategy Hub is free. That's a deliberate choice, not a promotion - as someone who's spent years doing UX research, I'd rather find out what's broken or missing before charging anyone for it. So if you install it, the actual ask is simple: use it, and tell me what's wrong. That feedback is worth more to me right now than revenue.

I'm still the one answering support tickets and reading every piece of feedback. If something's missing or wrong, tell me - that's genuinely the fastest way it gets fixed.

[Try Strategy Hub on the Atlassian Marketplace →](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/4032874960/strategy-hub-okrs-goals-kpis-strategy-planning-for-jira?hosting=cloud&tab=overview)