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Jira is my daily nightmare. I guess the "no CTO was ever fired for choosing SAP" applies to Jira too. It just does the opposite of that it tries to do, which is

Jira is my daily nightmare. I guess the "no CTO was ever fired for choosing SAP" applies to Jira too. It just does the opposite of that it tries to do, which is making development tracking easy (not to mention those silly ideas coming from agile coaches to use Jira to measure wrong things, which makes of it a horrible combo).

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
IME, Jira makes development tracking easy, at first. But then, when software developers realize how much Jira gets in their way, the good ones do their best to avoid using it. Which results in Jira being a great tool for middle-managers to query a very stale database.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Or it becomes a performance piece that mostly says what the developers want to say, rather than the truth.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
gherkinnn 6y ago
Agreed. Jira can do many things. Or so I’m told. I just don’t think it helps me as a dev.
ivalm 6y ago
So what is like Jira but good? I use jira at work and I like it. But our use case is maybe more limited/liberal. For us it is: 1) list tasks to do and how tasks are linked 2) archive discussion about issues and integrates with butbucket (so in commit it will link to ticket to read about why something was done; similarly from issue discussion I can see the relevant commits; this also goes well with history either by looking to linked issues or blaming in git and getting issues that resulted in the commits) 3) enables pointing other devs to something (I did some partial task, need help, I assign or cc someone else, they contribute to the issue as appropriate and then hand it back). Helps ensure all relevant discussion is centralized and persisted. What we don’t do is use it as an explicit performance/formal sprint tool... there is no middle manager questioning me about something I wrote/didn’t write in jira. is this where people start to hate it?
- regularfry 6y ago
  In my experience, you can do all that on github directly, with the benefit that everything's closer to the code. I presume Bitbucket has comparable functionality. Jira is just another tool on top that doesn't add anything unless you're doing the perf tracking bit outside the team.
  - ivalm 6y ago
    I use github as well (but never just bitbucket), I feel jira provides a better coordination/overview functionality, although I agree in most ways they are convergent. Part of it is our jira covers multiples related projects/sub teams/independent repos in ways I don’t think github can do seamlessly (but I never worked on a big project on github so maybe it is just my limitation)
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Pivotal Tracker is okay.
- jrockway 6y ago
  My experience with bug trackers is that people hate them no matter which one you choose. The infinite list of stuff you know is broken or sub-optimal crushes the spirit. (Jira is particularly bad, because it is slow and complicated, but switching to simpler tools doesn't make that underlying problem go away.) When people complain about bug trackers, they probably need a new outlook on work. They need to aggressively prioritize tasks. They need to be in a mental state where they're happy working on the highest priority thing, not the most interesting thing. You can't get there by buying a new tool for $9.99 per user per month. You probably need a vacation. At my last job, we switched from Jira to Github Issues to Asana. Each tool had the same problems -- bugs were filed faster than they were fixed. I am personally okay with that -- I know that most of these things will never be done, but it's nice to park the idea somewhere. But to others, it's crushing, and although people will complain that they don't like Jira's UI, what they really hate is that realization that they will never "finish".
  - 6y ago
pachico 6y ago
Not to mention how horrible Confluence is, which is a product I can't believe how strongly it's advertised as a life saver. Any editor I've tried is way better. (Every time I have to "insert macro > other macros > code > choose title > choose syntax highlighter" just to document some code it just makes my life more miserable.)
- patrickserrano 6y ago
  I agree Confluence is a pain to use, and pages with a lot of info or a lot of macros can been nearly impossible to edit because of how slow they are. On your point about inserting code blocks you should be able to type `/code` and hit enter. If you’re not using the newer version or a page with the new editor, I think you type `{` instead of `/` but it’s been a while since I’ve used that one.
  - atsaloli 6y ago
    In the old issue view, you can type {code:java} ... some java code {code} to mark off a code block, and to use Java syntax highlighting (for example). That's when you are editing in "raw" mode, which, incidentally, I haven't been able to discover how to do in the New Issue View (which I finally discovered how to turn off, that is to say, switch back to Old Issue View, globally -- it's under account settings, yay! The "New Issue View" is a lab setting you can turn OFF.) You can also change an issue from the new view to the old view by selecting "switch to old view" from the More menu (three dots). I have to say, it's painful using Atlassian tools after having worked with GitLab for 5 years... I miss being able to use standard markdown in Issues, and editing the Wiki using Git/vi instead of in a text box in a Web browser, with strange markup.
mr_toad 6y ago
If you think Jira is bad you should see Remedy.
- philipwhiuk 6y ago
  I still have flashbacks to the year I spent with Remedy. And then my current company picked up SalesForce.... It's like relieving the horror. JIRA is terrible to manage and it's permissions system is rubbish but it does issue management okay.
tcbasche 6y ago
I think for the most part it works well, it just has frustrating quirks like sometimes not being able to save comments (what the hell?) or attach images. Having said that though, the user experience is also really laggy... I think if it was faster it would be less frustrating

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago

IME, Jira makes development tracking easy, at first. But then, when software developers realize how much Jira gets in their way, the good ones do their best to avoid using it. Which results in Jira being a great tool for middle-managers to query a very stale database.

hinkley 6y ago
Or it becomes a performance piece that mostly says what the developers want to say, rather than the truth.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

gherkinnn 6y ago

Agreed. Jira can do many things. Or so I’m told. I just don’t think it helps me as a dev.

ivalm 6y ago

So what is like Jira but good? I use jira at work and I like it. But our use case is maybe more limited/liberal. For us it is: 1) list tasks to do and how tasks are linked 2) archive discussion about issues and integrates with butbucket (so in commit it will link to ticket to read about why something was done; similarly from issue discussion I can see the relevant commits; this also goes well with history either by looking to linked issues or blaming in git and getting issues that resulted in the commits) 3) enables pointing other devs to something (I did some partial task, need help, I assign or cc someone else, they contribute to the issue as appropriate and then hand it back). Helps ensure all relevant discussion is centralized and persisted. What we don’t do is use it as an explicit performance/formal sprint tool... there is no middle manager questioning me about something I wrote/didn’t write in jira. is this where people start to hate it?

regularfry 6y ago
In my experience, you can do all that on github directly, with the benefit that everything's closer to the code. I presume Bitbucket has comparable functionality. Jira is just another tool on top that doesn't add anything unless you're doing the perf tracking bit outside the team.
- ivalm 6y ago
  I use github as well (but never just bitbucket), I feel jira provides a better coordination/overview functionality, although I agree in most ways they are convergent. Part of it is our jira covers multiples related projects/sub teams/independent repos in ways I don’t think github can do seamlessly (but I never worked on a big project on github so maybe it is just my limitation)
ForHackernews 6y ago
Pivotal Tracker is okay.
jrockway 6y ago
My experience with bug trackers is that people hate them no matter which one you choose. The infinite list of stuff you know is broken or sub-optimal crushes the spirit. (Jira is particularly bad, because it is slow and complicated, but switching to simpler tools doesn't make that underlying problem go away.) When people complain about bug trackers, they probably need a new outlook on work. They need to aggressively prioritize tasks. They need to be in a mental state where they're happy working on the highest priority thing, not the most interesting thing. You can't get there by buying a new tool for $9.99 per user per month. You probably need a vacation. At my last job, we switched from Jira to Github Issues to Asana. Each tool had the same problems -- bugs were filed faster than they were fixed. I am personally okay with that -- I know that most of these things will never be done, but it's nice to park the idea somewhere. But to others, it's crushing, and although people will complain that they don't like Jira's UI, what they really hate is that realization that they will never "finish".
- 6y ago

pachico 6y ago

Not to mention how horrible Confluence is, which is a product I can't believe how strongly it's advertised as a life saver. Any editor I've tried is way better. (Every time I have to "insert macro > other macros > code > choose title > choose syntax highlighter" just to document some code it just makes my life more miserable.)

patrickserrano 6y ago
I agree Confluence is a pain to use, and pages with a lot of info or a lot of macros can been nearly impossible to edit because of how slow they are. On your point about inserting code blocks you should be able to type `/code` and hit enter. If you’re not using the newer version or a page with the new editor, I think you type `{` instead of `/` but it’s been a while since I’ve used that one.
- atsaloli 6y ago
  In the old issue view, you can type {code:java} ... some java code {code} to mark off a code block, and to use Java syntax highlighting (for example). That's when you are editing in "raw" mode, which, incidentally, I haven't been able to discover how to do in the New Issue View (which I finally discovered how to turn off, that is to say, switch back to Old Issue View, globally -- it's under account settings, yay! The "New Issue View" is a lab setting you can turn OFF.) You can also change an issue from the new view to the old view by selecting "switch to old view" from the More menu (three dots). I have to say, it's painful using Atlassian tools after having worked with GitLab for 5 years... I miss being able to use standard markdown in Issues, and editing the Wiki using Git/vi instead of in a text box in a Web browser, with strange markup.

mr_toad 6y ago

If you think Jira is bad you should see Remedy.

philipwhiuk 6y ago
I still have flashbacks to the year I spent with Remedy. And then my current company picked up SalesForce.... It's like relieving the horror. JIRA is terrible to manage and it's permissions system is rubbish but it does issue management okay.

tcbasche 6y ago

I think for the most part it works well, it just has frustrating quirks like sometimes not being able to save comments (what the hell?) or attach images. Having said that though, the user experience is also really laggy... I think if it was faster it would be less frustrating