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There are definitely ways in which JIRA sucks: it's hard to configure and requires someone with special skills, knowledge, and enthusiasm (!) in order to get it

There are definitely ways in which JIRA sucks: it's hard to configure and requires someone with special skills, knowledge, and enthusiasm (!) in order to get it right; it definitely could and should be a lot faster; navigating around it is fairly bamboozling for the inexperienced; and certainly other things besides. But, with all those caveats noted, is there actually another product on the market that does as much and is any better to use?

thriftwy 9y ago
I remember how at one of my previous employers tools team got frustrated with JIRA and created their own knockoff in something like a half year. Was lightning fast, not crumbling under the amount of issues and projects we had, and interface much cleaner. I understand there's a ton of complexity in JIRA that we didn't use and they didn't have to implement, but anyway there's no excuse how unwieldy JIRA core functonality is.
everythingswan 9y ago
This is essentially my opinion of it. I look at both Trello and JIRA as useful, depending on my use case. With a cross-discipline team focused on delivering a few things (basically epics/features/whatever) at once, I love JIRA. Working on my own, I'd use Trello. It has a similar feeling to the hatred for Excel we all have as we start to use it. So. Many. Features. When you have a team member who is a power user, it can be frustrating since they will want to lead the implementation. Then you run into a bottleneck when they are the only ones that can run/fix that report. Maybe not a great comparison beyond that. I like John's take on it that you should start with a simple, physical board. If I start with a new team that will be my preferred path. I joined a team on Asana and we simply used the list type for a project with acceptance criteria. Not a physical board but it was super basic. Over the next 3 months we started to add colored tags for epics, important links to the description during the sprint, & links in the description to related stories. When it became JIRA 6 months in, we moved to JIRA. If we would have started with JIRA there would have been a riot. But now that we know the features we need, we don't find it bamboozling. It still can be for features we're figuring out we need (I spent 3-4 hours on a simple plugin last month), but the attitude is definitely not the "JIRA sucks" mentality that I hear a lot about.
- tablet 9y ago
  I think it is possible to create a tool that will grow with the company from simplest setup to full blown PM tool with time.
harryf 9y ago
JIRA has some specific UX problems in some of the oldest parts of their product which they've been consistently ignoring in favor of multiple menu redesigns. One example off the top of my head... creating filters (custom lists of issues - stored JQL in fact) - why do filters have permissions at all? - why do they always default to private so that I forget every time and share a link which no one can read? - that UI around <Add>ing groups to a filter for permission is a disaster ...that's one example but to me it's symptomatic; PMs at Atlassian jumping on shiny-but-safe things while shying away from the stuff that matters on older features, which may carry legacy.

thriftwy 9y ago

I remember how at one of my previous employers tools team got frustrated with JIRA and created their own knockoff in something like a half year. Was lightning fast, not crumbling under the amount of issues and projects we had, and interface much cleaner. I understand there's a ton of complexity in JIRA that we didn't use and they didn't have to implement, but anyway there's no excuse how unwieldy JIRA core functonality is.

everythingswan 9y ago

This is essentially my opinion of it. I look at both Trello and JIRA as useful, depending on my use case. With a cross-discipline team focused on delivering a few things (basically epics/features/whatever) at once, I love JIRA. Working on my own, I'd use Trello. It has a similar feeling to the hatred for Excel we all have as we start to use it. So. Many. Features. When you have a team member who is a power user, it can be frustrating since they will want to lead the implementation. Then you run into a bottleneck when they are the only ones that can run/fix that report. Maybe not a great comparison beyond that. I like John's take on it that you should start with a simple, physical board. If I start with a new team that will be my preferred path. I joined a team on Asana and we simply used the list type for a project with acceptance criteria. Not a physical board but it was super basic. Over the next 3 months we started to add colored tags for epics, important links to the description during the sprint, & links in the description to related stories. When it became JIRA 6 months in, we moved to JIRA. If we would have started with JIRA there would have been a riot. But now that we know the features we need, we don't find it bamboozling. It still can be for features we're figuring out we need (I spent 3-4 hours on a simple plugin last month), but the attitude is definitely not the "JIRA sucks" mentality that I hear a lot about.

tablet 9y ago
I think it is possible to create a tool that will grow with the company from simplest setup to full blown PM tool with time.

harryf 9y ago

JIRA has some specific UX problems in some of the oldest parts of their product which they've been consistently ignoring in favor of multiple menu redesigns. One example off the top of my head... creating filters (custom lists of issues - stored JQL in fact) - why do filters have permissions at all? - why do they always default to private so that I forget every time and share a link which no one can read? - that UI around <Add>ing groups to a filter for permission is a disaster ...that's one example but to me it's symptomatic; PMs at Atlassian jumping on shiny-but-safe things while shying away from the stuff that matters on older features, which may carry legacy.