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I'll try to explain the perspective some people have, including myself, about tools like Jira. I do not believe that what Jira attempts to accomplish is possi

I'll try to explain the perspective some people have, including myself, about tools like Jira. I do not believe that what Jira attempts to accomplish is possible. Organizations tend to utilize Jira to automate project management. I see that as a mistake. I want managers and project owners to be forced to keep the entire project in their head as much as is humanly possible. Software development is a messy process with a lot of moving parts and cliffs someone needs to be looking for to avoid going over. With Jira I see people attempt to essentially automate keeping track of the project and they stop having a high level and deep understanding of the project. I think Jira helps make certain role's jobs easier, as opposed to making them perform better. In shops where Jira is heavily utilized, most developers and managers tend to get in their own little worlds at the expense of the project as a whole. Which again is because not having to worry about the entire project is more comfortable for everyone at the expense of the overall success of the project. I find that smaller more specific tools solve enough of the problem of project organization and tracking without the side effect I described above. I know this is a bit of a hot topic and I understand and appreciate that many people do not share my opinion.

bunderbunder 8y ago
I'd go so far as to say that, when I'm wearing my project manager hat, our tool (which isn't Jira, but is similar) actively wants to make things worse. When I'm wearing my product manager hat, it's simply a disaster. Sticking everything in a ticketing system makes keeping a project organized more difficult for the same reason that owning lots of stuff makes keeping your house organized more difficult. There's only so many random odds and ends a person can be expected to keep neatly arranged. Especially if keeping them arranged is tangential to their actual job. I got a lot more effective at my PM responsibilities, with a lot less time spent doing it, after I laid some ground rules limiting the use of ticketing system on my project. One of the main rules was, if nobody needs to be actively thinking about it right now, it doesn't get a ticket.
- ozim 8y ago
  I have seen attempt to make project roadmap for next 6 months in JIRA, that was terrible. It is confusing for developers, it is confusing for business people, you cannot show it to the customer because they don't care about your tickets. It was too much of work to go through it so stuff that was not built because prio changed had to be closed and all clicking around taking too much time. I think you should have next 2 sprints of work max in there, probably better if you only make stories for next sprint.
  - TheGRS 8y ago
    I think the odd thing about this thread is that ticketing systems really only provide me a value-add for stuff that isn't being worked on actively. Oh its time to pick up this ticket, its marked as high priority, here's a conversation about it in the ticket, here's the acceptance criteria, etc. If I know what I'm working on all the time I can just write it down in my notebook. Its the stuff where I needed to step away to another task for a week or something and I've lost my mental model for the last task, that's where JIRA can be a helpful tool IMO. For the meta project/product management I'm just not sure. I'm endlessly frustrated by estimations and burndown charts that never seem to look good. The estimates are always too high, and the burndown charts often look like horizontal lines (sometimes they even go UP). And you can't figure out the cause of that shit by looking at a chart, or even at the board of tickets. You would need to talk to the team to figure that out.
cortesoft 8y ago
> I want managers and project owners to be forced to keep the entire project in their head as much as is humanly possible. So what do you do for projects that are too big for any single person to hold it all in their head?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

bunderbunder 8y ago

I'd go so far as to say that, when I'm wearing my project manager hat, our tool (which isn't Jira, but is similar) actively wants to make things worse. When I'm wearing my product manager hat, it's simply a disaster. Sticking everything in a ticketing system makes keeping a project organized more difficult for the same reason that owning lots of stuff makes keeping your house organized more difficult. There's only so many random odds and ends a person can be expected to keep neatly arranged. Especially if keeping them arranged is tangential to their actual job. I got a lot more effective at my PM responsibilities, with a lot less time spent doing it, after I laid some ground rules limiting the use of ticketing system on my project. One of the main rules was, if nobody needs to be actively thinking about it right now, it doesn't get a ticket.

ozim 8y ago
I have seen attempt to make project roadmap for next 6 months in JIRA, that was terrible. It is confusing for developers, it is confusing for business people, you cannot show it to the customer because they don't care about your tickets. It was too much of work to go through it so stuff that was not built because prio changed had to be closed and all clicking around taking too much time. I think you should have next 2 sprints of work max in there, probably better if you only make stories for next sprint.
- TheGRS 8y ago
  I think the odd thing about this thread is that ticketing systems really only provide me a value-add for stuff that isn't being worked on actively. Oh its time to pick up this ticket, its marked as high priority, here's a conversation about it in the ticket, here's the acceptance criteria, etc. If I know what I'm working on all the time I can just write it down in my notebook. Its the stuff where I needed to step away to another task for a week or something and I've lost my mental model for the last task, that's where JIRA can be a helpful tool IMO. For the meta project/product management I'm just not sure. I'm endlessly frustrated by estimations and burndown charts that never seem to look good. The estimates are always too high, and the burndown charts often look like horizontal lines (sometimes they even go UP). And you can't figure out the cause of that shit by looking at a chart, or even at the board of tickets. You would need to talk to the team to figure that out.

cortesoft 8y ago

> I want managers and project owners to be forced to keep the entire project in their head as much as is humanly possible. So what do you do for projects that are too big for any single person to hold it all in their head?

deleted 8y ago
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