4 ms·

Jira is hell. There are now multiple boards, issues cloned from one board to another, and tons of lanes. We'll probably add more because documenting every detai

Jira is hell. There are now multiple boards, issues cloned from one board to another, and tons of lanes. We'll probably add more because documenting every detail is now the goal. We are a small team that is spending many hours per week having discussions on process. We even hired a consultant to come in and evaluate things. Jira seems to help stakeholders and product owners conceptualize the work and timelines but I see zero productivity gains from continuously evaluating and tweaking Jira.

elric 7y ago
Jira is just a tool. Blame the players, not the game. Or, in this case; the users, not the tool. Developers just want to know what they're supposed to be working on. Managerial types want to know what people are working on, when things will be done, and goodness knows what else. You obviously need to give developers the room and time to get actual development done. But at the same time, unless you work for a truly tiny company, there's always going to be some level of crap reporting that feels useless to most developers, but is important to someone else. It's hard to strike a balance that works for everyone.
- willis936 7y ago
  When the shape of the tool is bloat and unnecessary overhead, is it still not the tool’s fault?
- eberyvody 7y ago
  blaming the user does not feel like a winning strategy, idk. totally agree that it's a bad tool. a previous team i was on used github issues with a labeling system then switched to jira when we wanted to "get serious". my est is that we had a 50% decrease in issue quality and it shifted from 50% -> 90% of issues written by PMs and managers vs ICs who had a finer grained understanding of high leverage (impact/effort) tasks. i really do blame 1) the shittyness (er... "complexity", er... "power") of the UI and 2) the strict sprint-gaming behavior it encourages. i love a strong PM/EM for directing the team towards business value, but less so for enumerating and prioritizing the micro-tactics to get there. edit/disclaimer: i admit i'm super biased, but i've thought about this a lot working on a competitor of sorts.

elric 7y ago

Jira is just a tool. Blame the players, not the game. Or, in this case; the users, not the tool. Developers just want to know what they're supposed to be working on. Managerial types want to know what people are working on, when things will be done, and goodness knows what else. You obviously need to give developers the room and time to get actual development done. But at the same time, unless you work for a truly tiny company, there's always going to be some level of crap reporting that feels useless to most developers, but is important to someone else. It's hard to strike a balance that works for everyone.

willis936 7y ago
When the shape of the tool is bloat and unnecessary overhead, is it still not the tool’s fault?
eberyvody 7y ago
blaming the user does not feel like a winning strategy, idk. totally agree that it's a bad tool. a previous team i was on used github issues with a labeling system then switched to jira when we wanted to "get serious". my est is that we had a 50% decrease in issue quality and it shifted from 50% -> 90% of issues written by PMs and managers vs ICs who had a finer grained understanding of high leverage (impact/effort) tasks. i really do blame 1) the shittyness (er... "complexity", er... "power") of the UI and 2) the strict sprint-gaming behavior it encourages. i love a strong PM/EM for directing the team towards business value, but less so for enumerating and prioritizing the micro-tactics to get there. edit/disclaimer: i admit i'm super biased, but i've thought about this a lot working on a competitor of sorts.