5 ms·

Not to mention they are no longer "cool". I hear younger developers talk about Jira like I might talk about Internet Explorer. Without Jira, the Confluence Wi

Not to mention they are no longer "cool". I hear younger developers talk about Jira like I might talk about Internet Explorer. Without Jira, the Confluence Wiki loses some luster. HipChat of course has been overrun by Slack...etc. For the record, I'm still a big fan of the Atlassian suite, and also had thought about taking a long position once they were public, but I can't do it given the above conditions and this seemingly inflated price.

__derek__ 11y ago
They don't have to be cool: they're enterprise. Jira is established as the de facto standard in Agile development/project management. Managers and above make the decision to purchase, and those with opinions on "cool" tools begrudgingly use the tools handed down all the while complaining about how uncool they are.
- sqldba 11y ago
  The tie-in between their products is also their undoing in the Enterprise market. I'm just an onlooker but I've seen Jira (the proper tool for a problem) was universally shunned by management because they specifically didn't want to be tied into the rest of the Atlasssian ecosystem. I realise that it makes no sense, but it's partly because they want diversity rather than being strung over a barrel by one vendor, and partly because they are ordered to use some different components by the higher-up conglomerate managers; which is what Enterprise is all about. I don't know what the integration options were with other systems but management struck it off the list from the get-go regardless. We were already using it internally successfully; but hey no let's try to shoehorn ServiceNow to do the same thing. I'll leave the rest for your imagination. Yes though, it sucks for us on the ground floor. We really don't give a crap WHAT gets used as long as it works, and all the different crappy products with zero integration absolutely doesn't work. Tell that to management though; they don't have to use it.
  - chx 11y ago
    Tied? How so? I consult for a large department of a certain Fortune 100 company (think 30k users) and their JIRA is tied to an Enterprise Github instance for example, not Bitbucket. Developers are on a self hosted IRC network (yes, really) as IRC is still unbeatable when you work in a heterogeneous, massively distributed environment.
    - sqldba 11y ago
      Because Atlasssian offers other products and so the impetus is to get them as well. It's not worth it to pay for Jira because why do that when you can just turn ServiceNow into... a development CMDB time tracking thing with a mere few tens of millions of effort. Look, I didn't say management was smart. That's just the dumb way they look at it.
    - mstade 11y ago
      I know at least three top tier banks that have pretty much this exact setup. Small world, huh?
      - chx 11y ago
        Moral of the story: Hipchat and Slack are, well, ahem, hip but when push comes to shove, IRC is where it is. Somewhat it reminds of me CLI vs GUI...
        mstade 11y ago
        Sure, I was thinking of the JIRA+GHE setup as well though. As for IRC – they also use some weird clients (actually, might be the same one everwhere, just rebranded) to hide away the fact that it's IRC. Some people I know would just use Irssi or whatever. I'm guessing the fact that IRC is used is that it's reliable, simple to set up, and works for a rather large audience even without any redundancy. Most extra functionality that the Slack etc. provide – integrations, notifications embedding things – are not really necessary (but possibly wanted) in that context. E-mail still reigns supreme for anything that can't fit in simple text, and certainly for more formal comms and sign-offs.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
semerda 11y ago
So who are these younger developers talking about now?
- saool 11y ago
  Those will be VC fueled and privately held till they need a sucker to hold the bag.
- girvo 11y ago
  Nothing, honestly. JIRA has been painful to use as a developer in the trenches for the 7 years and 3 companies I've used it at, but there still isn't a proper competitor to it that seems to have traction. For what it's worth, we moved to breeze.pm, but the CTO decided to build his own "complete" business management service; project management, CRM, HR, etc. all in one system and integrated with Xero. We'll see how it goes. I'm keeping an eye on Tagia.io, but I'm waiting for the "Slack" to appear.
  - stephen_g 11y ago
    Who set up those instances? The only Jira instances I have ever used were set up by developers and were really great, but I hear that it's a fatal mistake to ever let a project manager know there's such thing as the workflow editor.
    - amatix 11y ago
      JIRA without spending the time to correctly set it up to match your workflow/approach/business is a complete waste -- for companies who do invest that effort upfront (and evolve it over time) then it usually works great.
      - UK-AL 11y ago
        I have the opposite experience. The default JIRA Agile experience is great. It become a problem when a PM gets his hands on it, included about 50 steps with manual approvals etc.
      - 11y ago
Stratoscope 11y ago
> I hear younger developers talk about Jira like I might talk about Internet Explorer. Gosh, I'm 63, and I talk about JIRA like that!
seren 11y ago
It is a matter of perspective. My company just deployed Jira & Confluence. Before that we had a poor mediawiki install, and for task management basically nothing (or rather, awkward internal tool compatible with IE6...). It is a blessing. I guess if you have been using (and abusing) Atlassian tools for years, you will experience some tool fatigue, which is natural.

__derek__ 11y ago

They don't have to be cool: they're enterprise. Jira is established as the de facto standard in Agile development/project management. Managers and above make the decision to purchase, and those with opinions on "cool" tools begrudgingly use the tools handed down all the while complaining about how uncool they are.

sqldba 11y ago
The tie-in between their products is also their undoing in the Enterprise market. I'm just an onlooker but I've seen Jira (the proper tool for a problem) was universally shunned by management because they specifically didn't want to be tied into the rest of the Atlasssian ecosystem. I realise that it makes no sense, but it's partly because they want diversity rather than being strung over a barrel by one vendor, and partly because they are ordered to use some different components by the higher-up conglomerate managers; which is what Enterprise is all about. I don't know what the integration options were with other systems but management struck it off the list from the get-go regardless. We were already using it internally successfully; but hey no let's try to shoehorn ServiceNow to do the same thing. I'll leave the rest for your imagination. Yes though, it sucks for us on the ground floor. We really don't give a crap WHAT gets used as long as it works, and all the different crappy products with zero integration absolutely doesn't work. Tell that to management though; they don't have to use it.
- chx 11y ago
  Tied? How so? I consult for a large department of a certain Fortune 100 company (think 30k users) and their JIRA is tied to an Enterprise Github instance for example, not Bitbucket. Developers are on a self hosted IRC network (yes, really) as IRC is still unbeatable when you work in a heterogeneous, massively distributed environment.
  - sqldba 11y ago
    Because Atlasssian offers other products and so the impetus is to get them as well. It's not worth it to pay for Jira because why do that when you can just turn ServiceNow into... a development CMDB time tracking thing with a mere few tens of millions of effort. Look, I didn't say management was smart. That's just the dumb way they look at it.
  - mstade 11y ago
    I know at least three top tier banks that have pretty much this exact setup. Small world, huh?
    - chx 11y ago
      Moral of the story: Hipchat and Slack are, well, ahem, hip but when push comes to shove, IRC is where it is. Somewhat it reminds of me CLI vs GUI...
      - mstade 11y ago
        Sure, I was thinking of the JIRA+GHE setup as well though. As for IRC – they also use some weird clients (actually, might be the same one everwhere, just rebranded) to hide away the fact that it's IRC. Some people I know would just use Irssi or whatever. I'm guessing the fact that IRC is used is that it's reliable, simple to set up, and works for a rather large audience even without any redundancy. Most extra functionality that the Slack etc. provide – integrations, notifications embedding things – are not really necessary (but possibly wanted) in that context. E-mail still reigns supreme for anything that can't fit in simple text, and certainly for more formal comms and sign-offs.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

semerda 11y ago

So who are these younger developers talking about now?

saool 11y ago
Those will be VC fueled and privately held till they need a sucker to hold the bag.
girvo 11y ago
Nothing, honestly. JIRA has been painful to use as a developer in the trenches for the 7 years and 3 companies I've used it at, but there still isn't a proper competitor to it that seems to have traction. For what it's worth, we moved to breeze.pm, but the CTO decided to build his own "complete" business management service; project management, CRM, HR, etc. all in one system and integrated with Xero. We'll see how it goes. I'm keeping an eye on Tagia.io, but I'm waiting for the "Slack" to appear.
- stephen_g 11y ago
  Who set up those instances? The only Jira instances I have ever used were set up by developers and were really great, but I hear that it's a fatal mistake to ever let a project manager know there's such thing as the workflow editor.
  - amatix 11y ago
    JIRA without spending the time to correctly set it up to match your workflow/approach/business is a complete waste -- for companies who do invest that effort upfront (and evolve it over time) then it usually works great.
    - UK-AL 11y ago
      I have the opposite experience. The default JIRA Agile experience is great. It become a problem when a PM gets his hands on it, included about 50 steps with manual approvals etc.
    - 11y ago

Stratoscope 11y ago

> I hear younger developers talk about Jira like I might talk about Internet Explorer. Gosh, I'm 63, and I talk about JIRA like that!

seren 11y ago

It is a matter of perspective. My company just deployed Jira & Confluence. Before that we had a poor mediawiki install, and for task management basically nothing (or rather, awkward internal tool compatible with IE6...). It is a blessing. I guess if you have been using (and abusing) Atlassian tools for years, you will experience some tool fatigue, which is natural.