5 ms·

Every time I come across one of their products I am underwhelmed. Jira and Bamboo both feel half a decade behind the game and are each clearly large, fumbling b

by mrmondo 11y ago

Every time I come across one of their products I am underwhelmed. Jira and Bamboo both feel half a decade behind the game and are each clearly large, fumbling beasts that seem to get in your way more than they do assist you. Their ecosystem is very closed and you can feel the pain of this when you visit an organisation that's drunk their cool aid and is now locked in. I'm making it all sound a bit fire here - which it's not but I really just don't think that they're good, modern products.

anko 11y ago
I'd be interested in what products you use? There are so many bug tracking products - even researching them can be hard work.
Bahamut 11y ago
I can assure you, worse tools than Jira populate the project management space - Jira is definitely one of the better options in the space sadly.
- gkop 11y ago
  It's true. It's safe to say people that disparage Jira have never tried Pivotal Tracker, for example.
  - blackaspen 11y ago
    Funny -- I find Pivotal to be hands down the best tracking tool I've ever used. You have to conform to it a little more than Jira can conform to you though, but it's not bloated.
    - walterbell 11y ago
      The challenge for enterprises is that each one has slightly different needs, and enterprises are rarely able to conform to their tools.
      - jameshart 11y ago
        The challenge for enterprises is they all believe they are special snowflakes and that the way in which they diverge from best practices is a 'market differentiator'. Most enterprises would do well to look at how enterprise products have been shaped to work and to conform to it, because there's a reason those tools work that way...
        walterbell 11y ago
        That used to be the SAP sales pitch.
        blumkvist 11y ago
        Rumor has it SAP has lower than 50% success rate on their implementations.
nailer 11y ago
Jira was a godsend compared to the shitty BMC ticketing products it replaced, but it now the shitty product that needs replacement. Atlassian make some great apps, like SourceTree, but they're like Microsoft Office: popular, and still selling loads, but having lost much of their edge and influence. Next step is Lotus-land, where the once-dominant product becomes completely irrelevant.
xienze 11y ago
Their software is plenty good enough and it's cheap -- particularly their starter options, which are in the neighborhood of 10 users for $10 per year. Everything installs and runs easily (usually "untar and run the startup script") and it all integrates together easily (i.e., give product X the URL to product Y) and deeply. That's what gets people hooked.
threeseed 11y ago
Show me an alternative that is (a) able to be hosted and (b) isn't designed for startups. There are lots of agile tools but most of them deliberately ignore the enterprise space.
- existencebox 11y ago
  I believe VSO would fit your description. You can utilize it as a Hosted or an On Prem deployment, and it's _certainly_ an enterprise product, being heavily intertwined with its TFS roots. Disclaimer: MS engineer, these are my own statements etc etc.
- douche 11y ago
  I've been looking hard at JetBrains' YouTrack. The bug/issue tracker we're currently using is not terrible, but it's a little painful. However, we've just barely gotten people trained to use the current system. I can either accept the current, somewhat clunky system, or go through another year of retraining and hope the slicker tool and the additional features are a net win. At least JetBrains actively works on their products. Our current tool hasn't changed in three years, and that was just a reskin of the UI to a more bootstrappy css.
  - structural 11y ago
    My day job / team uses YouTrack. We'd love to replace it (because the admin side of running an instance is pretty terrible), but it's been by far easier for people to use than anything else we compared to. Huge downsides: - Doing centralized authentication in a large-organization environment is basically impossible. Its LDAP implementation is broken for anything else than a couple very standard schemas that they've tested against & you can't make it authenticate using a Windows domain. They've recently split out the user management, etc., components into a separate product called Hub, but it's the same code and suffers from the same problems. [NB: Hilariously enough, other JetBrains products work just fine in this regard.] - The thing uses some custom proprietary database. Integrating backups into your normal workflow is painful. Upgrades are VERY painful (oops, the old version had a database that didn't enforce some constraints that the new one does, please go fix all your issues by hand), although there's some auxiliary API and tools for exporting individual issues as -- if I recall correctly -- JSON objects that was an 80% solution. Upsides: - The UI does the expected thing by default in all cases we could find. It is also fast & responsive, relatively uncluttered, and doesn't have a bunch of extra things to click in order to create/comment on/edit issues. - Searching for issues is very fast and powerful. - Batch updating issues (which we tend to do a lot) is extremely easy. Make a custom search describing the issues to update, then update all of them with a couple clicks. The admin downsides were (for us at least) bad enough that I'm not sure I'd recommend deploying it if you already have a working, integrated system. If you're starting from scratch, though, or committed to replacing another system for whatever reason, it's a pretty good choice.
rdl 11y ago
It could be better, but it is SO MUCH better than everything else which came before them. Confluence and Jira are pretty decent. I've never used Service Desk -- I think it's ok in-house but not really ideal for a public-facing support org. The best thing about the entire suite is it can be self-hosted; cloud versions of these tools are non starters for most organizations I come in contact with (somewhat self-selected). Hipchat is an abortion/abomination/anthema, but was an acquisition.
jcadam 11y ago
At my office we're using IBM Jazz, which is like Jira, only even more clunky. They all suck, but these tools aren't for software engineers, they're for Project Managers.
- xienze 11y ago
  Yes and no. They're primarily used by PMs but the developers certainly have to use them to work on bugs, features, etc. and update status.
mdesq 11y ago
BitBucket is pretty sweet IMHO, but then again it was an acquisition. I completely agree on Jira and Bamboo.
mdesq 11y ago
BitBucket is pretty sweet IMHO, but I agree on Jira and Bamboo.
hugh4 11y ago
All I know is that my organisation recently replaced some horrible SAP-based things with some faster, neater, clearer Atlassian-based things. And the Atlassian things don't require launching a virtual Windows machine on my mac every time I want to use them. Maybe there's better solutions than Atlassian out there, but Atlassian is still a helluva lot better than what a lot of companies are actually using.
mkching 11y ago
I'm curious which products you would recommend for bug tracking. If they have testcase management, even better. I run a managed hosting company that hosts a fair number of Atlassian instances. We have our complaints about Atlassian and our customers often experience sticker shock when upgrading past the 10-user licenses, but we've had trouble finding other issue trackers with similar functionality, flexibility and market acceptance. The same goes for Confluence as a wiki. While not perfect, most other products seem unable to do things such as access controls easily. If there are other mature products out there that people are using we'd love to take a look. We do support Bugzilla and MediaWiki as well, but this is usually a different market segment from what Atlassian serves.
- nwatson 11y ago
  At my workplace (going on two years at a startup) we were saddled with bad I.T. (every service was accessed by its IP address, no DNS lookup), hosted TeamSite/Sharepoint for engineering document management (with absolutely no imposed organization or hierarchy (though P.M. kept their stuff together well there) most things ended up being thrown around in email), Bugzilla, and Subversion. After some organization changes -- long time coming -- we switched to hosted Confluence, JIRA, BitBucket/git. The transition has taken some time but communication is going so much more smoothly since. Confluence especially has been great. Designs/how-tos/best-practices are so easy to write. Permanent records of discussions and decisions are so easy to track. I made sure to collaborate with a few others to establish the skeleton of our Confluence -- without a good skeleton it would devolve to chaos. But Confluence is so much better than Word docs floating around ... and I haven't seen any other Wiki tool that is so rich in authoring ... Confluence has: * great search capabilities * easy to organize * easy to create links to other relevant content * great text styling * great tables * plugins/macros for displaying PDF / Word / Excel inline * linking with JIRA * great diagramming tool Gliffy * easy cut-and-paste-of-images -- capturing screenshots is fast * (unfortunately to get GraphViz diagrams you need your own server, hosted version doesn't allow for that) * good export * and plugins for almost anything you'd need We're finding all kinds of great ways to use Confluence. I'd been pushing Confluence for my whole time at the company because we had no institutional memory. Confluence is helping us build that. I haven't seen any other tool for the price that comes close, but I admit limited exposure. That's my experience.
matthewmacleod 11y ago
Meh. In my opinion, Jira is pretty awesome. It's got irritating quirks in places, but so long as you spend the time to configure it in a manner that's suitable for your organisation, it doesn't get in the way. I'm not really sure that there are better alternatives out there.
einrealist 11y ago
You must have never used BMC Remedy or HP Quality Center. At one client, they call the latter one a "web based solution". WAT?!

by mrmondo 11y ago

anko 11y ago

I'd be interested in what products you use? There are so many bug tracking products - even researching them can be hard work.

Bahamut 11y ago

I can assure you, worse tools than Jira populate the project management space - Jira is definitely one of the better options in the space sadly.

gkop 11y ago
It's true. It's safe to say people that disparage Jira have never tried Pivotal Tracker, for example.
- blackaspen 11y ago
  Funny -- I find Pivotal to be hands down the best tracking tool I've ever used. You have to conform to it a little more than Jira can conform to you though, but it's not bloated.
  - walterbell 11y ago
    The challenge for enterprises is that each one has slightly different needs, and enterprises are rarely able to conform to their tools.
    - jameshart 11y ago
      The challenge for enterprises is they all believe they are special snowflakes and that the way in which they diverge from best practices is a 'market differentiator'. Most enterprises would do well to look at how enterprise products have been shaped to work and to conform to it, because there's a reason those tools work that way...
      - walterbell 11y ago
        That used to be the SAP sales pitch.
        blumkvist 11y ago
        Rumor has it SAP has lower than 50% success rate on their implementations.

nailer 11y ago

Jira was a godsend compared to the shitty BMC ticketing products it replaced, but it now the shitty product that needs replacement. Atlassian make some great apps, like SourceTree, but they're like Microsoft Office: popular, and still selling loads, but having lost much of their edge and influence. Next step is Lotus-land, where the once-dominant product becomes completely irrelevant.

xienze 11y ago

Their software is plenty good enough and it's cheap -- particularly their starter options, which are in the neighborhood of 10 users for $10 per year. Everything installs and runs easily (usually "untar and run the startup script") and it all integrates together easily (i.e., give product X the URL to product Y) and deeply. That's what gets people hooked.

threeseed 11y ago

Show me an alternative that is (a) able to be hosted and (b) isn't designed for startups. There are lots of agile tools but most of them deliberately ignore the enterprise space.

existencebox 11y ago
I believe VSO would fit your description. You can utilize it as a Hosted or an On Prem deployment, and it's _certainly_ an enterprise product, being heavily intertwined with its TFS roots. Disclaimer: MS engineer, these are my own statements etc etc.
douche 11y ago
I've been looking hard at JetBrains' YouTrack. The bug/issue tracker we're currently using is not terrible, but it's a little painful. However, we've just barely gotten people trained to use the current system. I can either accept the current, somewhat clunky system, or go through another year of retraining and hope the slicker tool and the additional features are a net win. At least JetBrains actively works on their products. Our current tool hasn't changed in three years, and that was just a reskin of the UI to a more bootstrappy css.
- structural 11y ago
  My day job / team uses YouTrack. We'd love to replace it (because the admin side of running an instance is pretty terrible), but it's been by far easier for people to use than anything else we compared to. Huge downsides: - Doing centralized authentication in a large-organization environment is basically impossible. Its LDAP implementation is broken for anything else than a couple very standard schemas that they've tested against & you can't make it authenticate using a Windows domain. They've recently split out the user management, etc., components into a separate product called Hub, but it's the same code and suffers from the same problems. [NB: Hilariously enough, other JetBrains products work just fine in this regard.] - The thing uses some custom proprietary database. Integrating backups into your normal workflow is painful. Upgrades are VERY painful (oops, the old version had a database that didn't enforce some constraints that the new one does, please go fix all your issues by hand), although there's some auxiliary API and tools for exporting individual issues as -- if I recall correctly -- JSON objects that was an 80% solution. Upsides: - The UI does the expected thing by default in all cases we could find. It is also fast & responsive, relatively uncluttered, and doesn't have a bunch of extra things to click in order to create/comment on/edit issues. - Searching for issues is very fast and powerful. - Batch updating issues (which we tend to do a lot) is extremely easy. Make a custom search describing the issues to update, then update all of them with a couple clicks. The admin downsides were (for us at least) bad enough that I'm not sure I'd recommend deploying it if you already have a working, integrated system. If you're starting from scratch, though, or committed to replacing another system for whatever reason, it's a pretty good choice.

rdl 11y ago

It could be better, but it is SO MUCH better than everything else which came before them. Confluence and Jira are pretty decent. I've never used Service Desk -- I think it's ok in-house but not really ideal for a public-facing support org. The best thing about the entire suite is it can be self-hosted; cloud versions of these tools are non starters for most organizations I come in contact with (somewhat self-selected). Hipchat is an abortion/abomination/anthema, but was an acquisition.

jcadam 11y ago

At my office we're using IBM Jazz, which is like Jira, only even more clunky. They all suck, but these tools aren't for software engineers, they're for Project Managers.

xienze 11y ago
Yes and no. They're primarily used by PMs but the developers certainly have to use them to work on bugs, features, etc. and update status.

mdesq 11y ago

BitBucket is pretty sweet IMHO, but then again it was an acquisition. I completely agree on Jira and Bamboo.

mdesq 11y ago

BitBucket is pretty sweet IMHO, but I agree on Jira and Bamboo.

hugh4 11y ago

All I know is that my organisation recently replaced some horrible SAP-based things with some faster, neater, clearer Atlassian-based things. And the Atlassian things don't require launching a virtual Windows machine on my mac every time I want to use them. Maybe there's better solutions than Atlassian out there, but Atlassian is still a helluva lot better than what a lot of companies are actually using.

mkching 11y ago

I'm curious which products you would recommend for bug tracking. If they have testcase management, even better. I run a managed hosting company that hosts a fair number of Atlassian instances. We have our complaints about Atlassian and our customers often experience sticker shock when upgrading past the 10-user licenses, but we've had trouble finding other issue trackers with similar functionality, flexibility and market acceptance. The same goes for Confluence as a wiki. While not perfect, most other products seem unable to do things such as access controls easily. If there are other mature products out there that people are using we'd love to take a look. We do support Bugzilla and MediaWiki as well, but this is usually a different market segment from what Atlassian serves.

nwatson 11y ago
At my workplace (going on two years at a startup) we were saddled with bad I.T. (every service was accessed by its IP address, no DNS lookup), hosted TeamSite/Sharepoint for engineering document management (with absolutely no imposed organization or hierarchy (though P.M. kept their stuff together well there) most things ended up being thrown around in email), Bugzilla, and Subversion. After some organization changes -- long time coming -- we switched to hosted Confluence, JIRA, BitBucket/git. The transition has taken some time but communication is going so much more smoothly since. Confluence especially has been great. Designs/how-tos/best-practices are so easy to write. Permanent records of discussions and decisions are so easy to track. I made sure to collaborate with a few others to establish the skeleton of our Confluence -- without a good skeleton it would devolve to chaos. But Confluence is so much better than Word docs floating around ... and I haven't seen any other Wiki tool that is so rich in authoring ... Confluence has: * great search capabilities * easy to organize * easy to create links to other relevant content * great text styling * great tables * plugins/macros for displaying PDF / Word / Excel inline * linking with JIRA * great diagramming tool Gliffy * easy cut-and-paste-of-images -- capturing screenshots is fast * (unfortunately to get GraphViz diagrams you need your own server, hosted version doesn't allow for that) * good export * and plugins for almost anything you'd need We're finding all kinds of great ways to use Confluence. I'd been pushing Confluence for my whole time at the company because we had no institutional memory. Confluence is helping us build that. I haven't seen any other tool for the price that comes close, but I admit limited exposure. That's my experience.

matthewmacleod 11y ago

Meh. In my opinion, Jira is pretty awesome. It's got irritating quirks in places, but so long as you spend the time to configure it in a manner that's suitable for your organisation, it doesn't get in the way. I'm not really sure that there are better alternatives out there.

einrealist 11y ago

You must have never used BMC Remedy or HP Quality Center. At one client, they call the latter one a "web based solution". WAT?!