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I've never really gotten into any of Atlasssian's products. It seems like they make tools for managers with bolt on functionality for engineers (which may be w

I've never really gotten into any of Atlasssian's products. It seems like they make tools for managers with bolt on functionality for engineers (which may be why I never caught onto their products). I hope this is good news for Slack, but as a software engineer today, Atlasssian's products are not the first ones I would recommend in any category.

qabqabaca 8y ago
What would you recommend instead of Jira?
- joeblau 8y ago
  What is the problem you're trying to solve?
  - lotyrin 8y ago
    An opinionated workflow of collecting from a development team and its customers potential future efforts, estimates of the cost and value of those efforts, prioritizing based on those estimates (maximize expected value, minimize expected cost), scheduling & forecasting efforts based on a sound statistical model (e.g. estimation error).
    - joeblau 8y ago
      You can accomplish most of that with Phabricator[1], except for the forecasting efforts. As for the forecasting; I worked at Amazon which had a dedicated JIRA engineer and that was the best I've ever seen JIRA being run and used. In my time there, I never saw any manager predict anything consistently accurate over the course of a long project with it without actually talking to engineering. JIRA promises armchair management, but I've yet to see those tools actually work. That being said, you may be a better JIRA user than anyone I know. JIRA has always be promoted as a tool from the top down, never from the bottom up. [1] - https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/ https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/
      - lotyrin 8y ago
        JIRA's problem is it's too configurable and popular with folks who are into prescriptive authority, so it absolutely can be worst tool you've ever used, and frequently will be.
        joeblau 8y ago
        100% agree.
- andreineculau 8y ago
  Stick to github issues or similar. Whatever is closer to the real work and gives you the biggest bang for the buck. Not the most wet dream. You do not need a gazillion of workflows and checks and stories and epics and boards etc. "Keep it simple, stupid"
  - qznc 8y ago
    What I like is to specify dependencies. Unfortunately, the simple ones (Github, Gitlab, Trac) don't have that feature. The Jira we use at work has gone overboard. There is too many ways to specify and people are confused. For example, we have "blocks" (B cannot be finished without A closed) and "follows" (B cannot be started without A closed).
    - sytse 8y ago
      As a first step GitLab has implemented relationships in issues, for more context see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4058 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4058
- pilsetnieks 8y ago
  Phabricator (https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/ https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/)
  - joeblau 8y ago
    I would also recommend this. I've been using it for a while and it's amazing. Tightly integrated into version control, great team/project/task management, code review tools, great command line integration though arcanist.
- lacogubik 8y ago
  Clubhouse [1] It has flexibility of Trello and features of Jira. We have been using for a year and we really enjoy it. [1] https://clubhouse.io https://clubhouse.io
- rvanmil 8y ago
  Our team is happy with https://www.pivotaltracker.com https://www.pivotaltracker.com
- nimchimpsky 8y ago
  trello
strictnein 8y ago
Jira was great, ~15 years ago. It was a tool that actually helped development, especially with the GreenHopper plugin Now almost the entirety of its functionality is to help various middle managers track things that are important to them, while continuously making development slower. Manager 1 wants to track Metric A? Add a drop down. Manager 2 wants to track Metric B? Add a new form to fill out. And tie them all together with workflows so that you can't do your work and mark it as complete until all the boxes are checked and fields are filled. Those that haven't experienced this probably just haven't worked in a medium or large corporation.
- andreineculau 8y ago
  > Now almost the entirety of its functionality is to help various middle managers track things that are important to them, while continuously making development slower. This!
- bitwize 8y ago
  Hey, it could be worse. It could be VersionOne.
  - strictnein 8y ago
    VersionOne has the advantage of being too clunky for middle managers to figure out.
    - krzyk 8y ago
      V1 is too clunky to figure out by developers (or any human being for that matter) and looks like something designed in the 90-ties.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  > Those that haven't experienced this probably just haven't worked in a medium or large corporation. So true, though I expect that of the HN crowd (given it's hosted by YC). Everytime I hear someone praise Jira, I think "Do you have more than 100 people using the same instance?" Middle manage needs charts and reporting, and that's Jira's strength. It's an absolute disaster to use on a daily basis.
andreineculau 8y ago
Amen to that! Both as a user and a developer in the atlassian ecosystem, the experience is like you're 2 decades behind simple basic features with astronomical implementation effort. "Enterprise" has never gotten a negative connotation within atlassian walls it seems.
core-questions 8y ago
I run the Atlassian stack for my company, so here's some thoughts on this: - Jira is pretty bog-standard these days, huge installed base. It's a bit weird to administer, and not as powerful in many ways as I'd like (especially compared to a more flexible system like ServiceNow). However, it's entrenched and a lot of people like it. - Confluence is a top tier wiki. I actually find it very nice to work with, both from an editing, organizing, and also an API standpoint. It's much nicer than MediaWiki or Sharepoint for this purpose, and though it's not ideal for collaboration on MS documents, it's still very solid for working on shared documentation. - Bamboo is a decent build system. It's lagging behind Jenkins in terms of integrations and support for source-controlled declarative build stuff, but for teams that like to point and click it works well, and the support for parallel builds, branch builds, etc. is all much easier than it is in Jenkins. - Bitbucket is a reasonable choice for on-prem Git hosting. I prefer GHE, but if you have the rest of the Atlassian apps, there are some integrations that are nice, and it's not terribly expensive, so if you have ops familiar with running Atlassian apps it may be a good choice for you. That's about it. Not something I love, but definitely not something I hate. Their support is also quite good, and guided me through a painful upgrade of a stack that my predecessors had left neglected for five years with no patching. Can't complain about that!
- gizmo385 8y ago
  > Confluence is a top tier wiki Can you explain why you feel this way? I've felt nothing but frustration using Confluence internally. It seems to continually get in the way and have an obtuse and unintuitive way of doing things.
  - alexbecker 8y ago
    Navigation in particular is nearly impossible for me.
- forty 8y ago
  I'm in a company which uses the full atlassian suite (on premise) and I find your comment is a very good summary. I always see people complaining about jira on the internet, but in real life, everyone I know seems happy with it, I have no idea where that come from. Maybe it depends on your admin and/or the size/culture of the company
mmanfrin 8y ago
It seems like they make tools for managers with bolt on functionality for engineers Yep. And who are the people who decide what project management software to use?

qabqabaca 8y ago

What would you recommend instead of Jira?

joeblau 8y ago
What is the problem you're trying to solve?
- lotyrin 8y ago
  An opinionated workflow of collecting from a development team and its customers potential future efforts, estimates of the cost and value of those efforts, prioritizing based on those estimates (maximize expected value, minimize expected cost), scheduling & forecasting efforts based on a sound statistical model (e.g. estimation error).
  - joeblau 8y ago
    You can accomplish most of that with Phabricator[1], except for the forecasting efforts. As for the forecasting; I worked at Amazon which had a dedicated JIRA engineer and that was the best I've ever seen JIRA being run and used. In my time there, I never saw any manager predict anything consistently accurate over the course of a long project with it without actually talking to engineering. JIRA promises armchair management, but I've yet to see those tools actually work. That being said, you may be a better JIRA user than anyone I know. JIRA has always be promoted as a tool from the top down, never from the bottom up. [1] - https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/ https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/
    - lotyrin 8y ago
      JIRA's problem is it's too configurable and popular with folks who are into prescriptive authority, so it absolutely can be worst tool you've ever used, and frequently will be.
      - joeblau 8y ago
        100% agree.
andreineculau 8y ago
Stick to github issues or similar. Whatever is closer to the real work and gives you the biggest bang for the buck. Not the most wet dream. You do not need a gazillion of workflows and checks and stories and epics and boards etc. "Keep it simple, stupid"
- qznc 8y ago
  What I like is to specify dependencies. Unfortunately, the simple ones (Github, Gitlab, Trac) don't have that feature. The Jira we use at work has gone overboard. There is too many ways to specify and people are confused. For example, we have "blocks" (B cannot be finished without A closed) and "follows" (B cannot be started without A closed).
  - sytse 8y ago
    As a first step GitLab has implemented relationships in issues, for more context see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4058 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/4058
pilsetnieks 8y ago
Phabricator (https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/ https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/)
- joeblau 8y ago
  I would also recommend this. I've been using it for a while and it's amazing. Tightly integrated into version control, great team/project/task management, code review tools, great command line integration though arcanist.
lacogubik 8y ago
Clubhouse [1] It has flexibility of Trello and features of Jira. We have been using for a year and we really enjoy it. [1] https://clubhouse.io https://clubhouse.io
rvanmil 8y ago
Our team is happy with https://www.pivotaltracker.com https://www.pivotaltracker.com
nimchimpsky 8y ago
trello

strictnein 8y ago

Jira was great, ~15 years ago. It was a tool that actually helped development, especially with the GreenHopper plugin Now almost the entirety of its functionality is to help various middle managers track things that are important to them, while continuously making development slower. Manager 1 wants to track Metric A? Add a drop down. Manager 2 wants to track Metric B? Add a new form to fill out. And tie them all together with workflows so that you can't do your work and mark it as complete until all the boxes are checked and fields are filled. Those that haven't experienced this probably just haven't worked in a medium or large corporation.

andreineculau 8y ago
> Now almost the entirety of its functionality is to help various middle managers track things that are important to them, while continuously making development slower. This!
bitwize 8y ago
Hey, it could be worse. It could be VersionOne.
- strictnein 8y ago
  VersionOne has the advantage of being too clunky for middle managers to figure out.
  - krzyk 8y ago
    V1 is too clunky to figure out by developers (or any human being for that matter) and looks like something designed in the 90-ties.
linuxftw 8y ago
> Those that haven't experienced this probably just haven't worked in a medium or large corporation. So true, though I expect that of the HN crowd (given it's hosted by YC). Everytime I hear someone praise Jira, I think "Do you have more than 100 people using the same instance?" Middle manage needs charts and reporting, and that's Jira's strength. It's an absolute disaster to use on a daily basis.

andreineculau 8y ago

Amen to that! Both as a user and a developer in the atlassian ecosystem, the experience is like you're 2 decades behind simple basic features with astronomical implementation effort. "Enterprise" has never gotten a negative connotation within atlassian walls it seems.

core-questions 8y ago

I run the Atlassian stack for my company, so here's some thoughts on this: - Jira is pretty bog-standard these days, huge installed base. It's a bit weird to administer, and not as powerful in many ways as I'd like (especially compared to a more flexible system like ServiceNow). However, it's entrenched and a lot of people like it. - Confluence is a top tier wiki. I actually find it very nice to work with, both from an editing, organizing, and also an API standpoint. It's much nicer than MediaWiki or Sharepoint for this purpose, and though it's not ideal for collaboration on MS documents, it's still very solid for working on shared documentation. - Bamboo is a decent build system. It's lagging behind Jenkins in terms of integrations and support for source-controlled declarative build stuff, but for teams that like to point and click it works well, and the support for parallel builds, branch builds, etc. is all much easier than it is in Jenkins. - Bitbucket is a reasonable choice for on-prem Git hosting. I prefer GHE, but if you have the rest of the Atlassian apps, there are some integrations that are nice, and it's not terribly expensive, so if you have ops familiar with running Atlassian apps it may be a good choice for you. That's about it. Not something I love, but definitely not something I hate. Their support is also quite good, and guided me through a painful upgrade of a stack that my predecessors had left neglected for five years with no patching. Can't complain about that!

gizmo385 8y ago
> Confluence is a top tier wiki Can you explain why you feel this way? I've felt nothing but frustration using Confluence internally. It seems to continually get in the way and have an obtuse and unintuitive way of doing things.
- alexbecker 8y ago
  Navigation in particular is nearly impossible for me.
forty 8y ago
I'm in a company which uses the full atlassian suite (on premise) and I find your comment is a very good summary. I always see people complaining about jira on the internet, but in real life, everyone I know seems happy with it, I have no idea where that come from. Maybe it depends on your admin and/or the size/culture of the company

mmanfrin 8y ago

It seems like they make tools for managers with bolt on functionality for engineers Yep. And who are the people who decide what project management software to use?