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we just moved from jira hosted to jira cloud and it is, shockingly, worse! As a user I've always hated JIRA and as an admin it is shockingly bad. There must b

we just moved from jira hosted to jira cloud and it is, shockingly, worse! As a user I've always hated JIRA and as an admin it is shockingly bad. There must be some alternatives that are still viable.

the_common_man 9y ago
I believe you but can you elaborate what is bad about it?
- liveoneggs 9y ago
  it's slower, it's uglier, and you can't customize it at all (even basic stuff like font sizes)
- ivankirigin 9y ago
  There are some actions in Asana, like tags and projects, which are immediate and inline, often with a hotkey. In jira, it could literally be 4 full screens. Other examples include filtering and search. Google has raised the bar so high in both gmail and core search for how a query should work. Jira says fuck you here is JQL, and it isn't at all obvious why.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Yes, search is really bad. We now have a corporation wide JIRA and searches return results from all 100+ projects. If I want to search in my project I have to use JQL.
jschwartzi 9y ago
You could try hosting a Redmine instance. I remember it being pretty comparable to JIRA in feature set. I haven't used it in years though.
- mariusmg 9y ago
  Personally i find Redmine to be pretty horrible (and i have to use it daily). It's slow and it doesn't have a working search feature. Maybe Mantis is better these days...
  - polskibus 9y ago
    Have you tried bitnami packaged version? It comes with some optimized presets and additional services that help with caching.
istorical 9y ago
I like Pivotal Tracker for its good info density.
darethas 9y ago
May I suggest a crazy idea? Ditch it and just see what happens. We are a large organization, and had an end of year crunch so naturally when you need to pinch the absolute most productivity out of your workers, typically process is the first thing that goes. We just had our most productive 2 week sprint in over a year, by a mile. Instead of Jira, we busted out the dusty whiteboard, and used this amazing technology called an expo marker to write down what we were working on and who was working on what. It had amazing visibility too -- our manager could stop by at any time and see with his own eyes what we were working on -- all without having to log in! The best part? We got to ditch the meeting to plan the planning, the planning to plan the week, and the retro to go over the week to start of the next week's meeting to plan the planning. We got back like two entire days, and we didn't have any 9:00 AM context switches when most of us were in the zone already having to give a benign update that could have just been communicated via slack! Some of this is sarcasm and I do understand why managers and leaders reach for Jira, but seriously: Why did we stop using the whiteboard. If you need visibility into this crap, hire someone to do that. You have analysts for your business, why not have an analyst for your tech? It doesn't make us more productive.
- bsder 9y ago
  > Why did we stop using the whiteboard. Because you can't do the following things without doing something other than "the whiteboard": 1) You can't share it 2) You can't back it up 3) You can't search it And that's just for starters. Shall I go on?
  - eric_h 9y ago
    > 1) You can't share it > 2) You can't back it up The number of photos of whiteboards I've taken over the years beg to differ. Point 3 is certainly valid. Whiteboards definitely don't work for remote teams.
- solatic 9y ago
  > Why did we stop using the whiteboard? Because whiteboards aren't visible outside the rooms they're in, and they don't save histories of what was written on them in the past. If your org is scaling beyond a single geographical location, then you need some kind of system to communicate status to stakeholders elsewhere. Email and Slack are nowhere good enough for that; a ticketing system is absolutely vital.

the_common_man 9y ago

I believe you but can you elaborate what is bad about it?

liveoneggs 9y ago
it's slower, it's uglier, and you can't customize it at all (even basic stuff like font sizes)
ivankirigin 9y ago
There are some actions in Asana, like tags and projects, which are immediate and inline, often with a hotkey. In jira, it could literally be 4 full screens. Other examples include filtering and search. Google has raised the bar so high in both gmail and core search for how a query should work. Jira says fuck you here is JQL, and it isn't at all obvious why.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  Yes, search is really bad. We now have a corporation wide JIRA and searches return results from all 100+ projects. If I want to search in my project I have to use JQL.

jschwartzi 9y ago

You could try hosting a Redmine instance. I remember it being pretty comparable to JIRA in feature set. I haven't used it in years though.

mariusmg 9y ago
Personally i find Redmine to be pretty horrible (and i have to use it daily). It's slow and it doesn't have a working search feature. Maybe Mantis is better these days...
- polskibus 9y ago
  Have you tried bitnami packaged version? It comes with some optimized presets and additional services that help with caching.

istorical 9y ago

I like Pivotal Tracker for its good info density.

darethas 9y ago

May I suggest a crazy idea? Ditch it and just see what happens. We are a large organization, and had an end of year crunch so naturally when you need to pinch the absolute most productivity out of your workers, typically process is the first thing that goes. We just had our most productive 2 week sprint in over a year, by a mile. Instead of Jira, we busted out the dusty whiteboard, and used this amazing technology called an expo marker to write down what we were working on and who was working on what. It had amazing visibility too -- our manager could stop by at any time and see with his own eyes what we were working on -- all without having to log in! The best part? We got to ditch the meeting to plan the planning, the planning to plan the week, and the retro to go over the week to start of the next week's meeting to plan the planning. We got back like two entire days, and we didn't have any 9:00 AM context switches when most of us were in the zone already having to give a benign update that could have just been communicated via slack! Some of this is sarcasm and I do understand why managers and leaders reach for Jira, but seriously: Why did we stop using the whiteboard. If you need visibility into this crap, hire someone to do that. You have analysts for your business, why not have an analyst for your tech? It doesn't make us more productive.

bsder 9y ago
> Why did we stop using the whiteboard. Because you can't do the following things without doing something other than "the whiteboard": 1) You can't share it 2) You can't back it up 3) You can't search it And that's just for starters. Shall I go on?
- eric_h 9y ago
  > 1) You can't share it > 2) You can't back it up The number of photos of whiteboards I've taken over the years beg to differ. Point 3 is certainly valid. Whiteboards definitely don't work for remote teams.
solatic 9y ago
> Why did we stop using the whiteboard? Because whiteboards aren't visible outside the rooms they're in, and they don't save histories of what was written on them in the past. If your org is scaling beyond a single geographical location, then you need some kind of system to communicate status to stakeholders elsewhere. Email and Slack are nowhere good enough for that; a ticketing system is absolutely vital.