How to organise a movie night with Jira Product Discovery

“Movie night at my place tonight,” Filip offered enthusiastically.

“Great idea, what are we watching?” asked Iva.

“Heard the new Deadpool is cool,” suggested Marko.

“I hate superheroes, let’s watch a classic,” Dora shut it down.

“Surely no one’s seen Lord of the Rings in a while,” Filip chimed in again.

“I’d rather not watch anything than that sci-fi nonsense,” Iva jumped in.

“The new Tarantino is supposedly top-notch,” Marko tried again.

“Just please, no excessive blood,” added Lucija, looking up from her phone.

“Alright, we’ll find something on Netflix,” Filip concluded.

And of course… after an hour of scrolling through Netflix, they still hadn’t found something everyone agreed on.

If you’ve ever organised a movie night with friends, chances are something like this has happened to you.
One person wants this, another can’t stand that genre, a third doesn’t even care but complains just for the sake of it…

Well, here at Koios, we’ve got a cure for that.

One of the reasons many of our colleagues still opt for a hybrid work model, even though full remote is available, is the regular social hangouts we organise after hours. One of our favourites?
“Movies at Koios” – or as we like to call it, FuK.

It’s simple: pick a film, bring piles of snacks and pizza, settle into sofas and armchairs, and enjoy.
But let’s be honest – the whole thing would be way more complicated if our Atlassian consultant Tomislav Tobijas hadn’t suggested using Jira Product Discovery to streamline the whole process.

After sharing his innovative idea of managing a home renovation project through Jira Product Discovery a few months ago, “Tobi” decided to reveal how he also streamlined the organisation of FuK – “Films at Koios” using JPD.

How to organise a movie night with Jira Product Discovery

Building on my previous article about using Jira Product Discovery (JPD) for managing home improvement, I’d like to share another unique, non-business use case for JPD.

At Koios, we often host relaxed office gatherings and social events, including pool tournaments, board games, pub quizzes – and of course, movie nights.
Every few months, we screen a film on the big screen as part of our “Films at Koios” series – more affectionately known as FuK.
Naturally, snacks and drinks are always included! 🍿

To keep everyone informed about upcoming events, we use a dedicated Slack channel where all activities are announced – often with extra details or last-minute updates.

Bringing movie night ideas into Jira Product Discovery

Initially, the organising team would suggest a few films and gather feedback from others. But then we thought:
“Why not use Jira Product Discovery to simplify the whole process?”

So we now use JPD to collect movie suggestions from everyone and track which ones we’ve already watched. We set up a JPD project and made it accessible to the entire company.

Since nearly every film is listed on IMDb, it made sense to use that as our main reference point. Anyone can propose a film, whether they’ve seen it or not, by filling in fields such as:

• Film title

• IMDb link

• Categories

• IMDb rating

We also added a rule to the film duration field that flags suggestions longer than 120 minutes, as we prefer films that run under two hours.

We set up several different views for the suggestions, such as ideas by submission date, open ideas (shown in both list and board formats), and top-rated ideas based on IMDb rating. Employees can browse and switch between views to explore the suggestions.

For those who aren’t regular Jira users, we also recorded a Loom video with detailed instructions on how to propose a film and navigate through the various project views.

Film Selection Process

As the next movie night approaches, we remind our colleagues to add their suggestions to the JPD project. This reminder is usually sent a few days before the organising team selects a film category from which suggestions will be considered.

Once the category is chosen, we shortlist three or four films based on criteria such as duration and IMDb rating. These films are then put to a vote in a dedicated Slack channel, where the poll remains open until a day or two before the screening. This gives everyone enough time to prepare—someone still needs to handle snacks and drinks, depending on how many colleagues plan to join.

Tracking and reviewing movie nights

Our JPD workflow for film suggestions is simple, with three main statuses: “Open”, “Not Selected”, and “Watched”. After each movie night, we update the statuses by marking the chosen film as Watched, while the rest of the suggestions are set to Not Selected. ✅

In addition to statuses, we use custom fields to organise the films selected for each vote, along with the corresponding event dates. This system allows us to look back on past movie nights and easily see which films made the shortlist. From time to time, we reintroduce titles that weren’t selected, giving them another shot at making it to the big screen.

Room for improvement?