How an RoR product studio started with a simple checklist —and reimagined workflows

Businesses across industries often face the same underlying challenge: the struggle to clearly define their internal processes. Various reports estimate that professionals waste up to 5 hours daily due to organizational inefficiencies. Yet, solutions frequently start with simple ideas. At Railsware, a product studio rooted deeply in Ruby on Rails (RoR), we found that simplicity itself can lead to innovation capable of transforming how teams work and collaborate.

Our journey started with one seemingly straightforward question that changed how we viewed productivity: "If I can't explain the process I do, do I really know what I'm doing?"

This puzzling question gave birth to a whole philosophy at Railsware—one centered around clarity, repeatability, and structure. It also became the core of TitanApps.io, which began as an unassuming checklist addon for Jira. Eventually, it evolved into a full suite of productivity tools used by more than 4000 companies.

From internal checklist to 2.5 million users

Initially, our team crafted the Smart Checklist add-on for Jira to cover our internal needs as our engineers' daily tasks lacked consistency and visibility.

So, in just three days, we built a simple checklist and shared it with the Atlassian community. It was the most minimal version possible —no external storage, no extra features, no API,  just a textarea where:

"-" meant incomplete

"+" meant completed

A small team (just 2.5 people) kept it running, checking in occasionally. Then, we saw over 700 installs—and noticed that other checklist tools had started copying our approach.

It quickly became clear that this wasn't just a challenge for technical teams. Specialists in HR, Finance, Operations, and Marketing faced the same—if not bigger—struggles. Many either lacked access to tools like Jira or found them too complex to use.

Tip: If you're short on time and resources but see the need for a tool—start simple. Focus on the clearest, most practical ideas, not fancy features. Build the heart – something that works first, then improve it over time.

As Smart Checklist evolved into TitanApps, we realized that the issue wasn't a lack of advanced technology. The real gap was the absence of clear, repeatable processes. Our mission became simple: help all business teams bring structure and simplicity into their daily work. This idea eventually shaped our philosophy of "codifying processes"—turning messy, inconsistent workflows into structured, scalable systems.

Codifying processes—engineer mindset for non tech team

What exactly do we mean by "codifying processes"? Basically, it means applying an engineering mindset to the stuff beyond, well, actual engineering. 

It's about taking scattered, ambiguous tasks—often hidden in email chains, lost in corporate Slack threads, or buried within half-forgotten spreadsheets—and transforming them into easy-to-grasp, standardized workflows that anyone, technical or otherwise, can understand and follow.

Thus, this approach resonates with users with different technical backgrounds – it provides immediate clarity about "what comes next," eliminating bottlenecks and improving productivity naturally.

The simplest way to start is by breaking a process—no matter how complex—into a basic checklist that the team can follow. Once a process is clearly defined, you can start improving it:

• Remove unnecessary steps.
• Add missing details to prevent confusion.
• Automate repetitive tasks where possible.

Designing for instant time-to-value

The core principle in this case is that the teams should see value right away. No complicated setup, no need for deep technical knowledge, and no waiting on IT support.

Take Smart Templates, which is part of the TitanApps family. We built it to be intuitive—so teams could quickly create, understand, and reuse issue templates for their recurring tasks. Features like Variables, Scheduler, History, and integrations with Jira Automation and Advanced Roadmaps weren't just about adding cool functionality. They came from real user needs—our goal was to make structured workflows effortless.

And it worked. Non-tech teams could now easily map out, repeat, and track their daily, weekly, or monthly processes—boosting productivity without a steep learning curve or extra effort.

Practical examples and future plans

We didn't expect significant results at once, however, reality proved us wrong. It turned out that organizational gaps and non-obvious mess consumed dozens of working hours across departments. As it was cleared up and structured, the numbers impressed us:

• An Operations team at a tech company reduced the time spent managing business travel processes by 25%. 

Their operations lead summarized the experience as transformative: "Everything is now in one place. Every step is clear, and there's no guesswork. It's like having a roadmap guiding us from the initial request to post-travel feedback."

• Another example comes from an accounting department in an IT firm that reclaimed over 175 working days annually by optimizing payroll processes. 

The standardization of previously fragmented tasks, the team significantly streamlined their monthly cycles, focusing more energy on strategic initiatives rather than chasing lost information.

That's why we keep encouraging teams to rethink how they handle daily tasks. A lot of companies are eager to throw AI at everything, but at the same time, they're drowning in messy, repetitive processes that waste time and money.

It really comes down to a simple idea: be clear about what you do, why you do it, and how to make it better. When teams start thinking this way, everything runs more smoothly—work gets done faster, collaboration improves, and there's way less frustration.

What's to learn from our experience

The point of this article isn't how cool our solutions are. What's to take away from our experience?

• Tech products for organizations should be simple and user-friendly enough to build bridges, not walls, between tech and non-tech teams
• You can't expect to magically optimize your day-to-day operations — instead, opt for step-by-step adjustments and gradual learning
• In a world full of tech, simplicity is key. And achieving simplicity is not that simple (pun intended). 

The best products often start from simple ideas. TitanApps began as just a text-based checklist add-on. The real breakthrough came from understanding a universal challenge: how hard it is to clearly define and organize workflows. 

So, perhaps, the next great thing isn't about adding more complexity to our lives—but instead getting rid of it. 

In the end, the majority of innovative solutions often aren't about doing something new, but about helping us see clearly and get better at what we already do.