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JIRA. It's powerful, customizable, flexible and drives workflows and productivity across millions of companies around the world. It's the SAP of issue tracking.

by davedx 6y ago

JIRA. It's powerful, customizable, flexible and drives workflows and productivity across millions of companies around the world. It's the SAP of issue tracking. Despite all the baggage, they still try continuously to improve the UX of the software so it stays relevant and relatively usable. There's definitely problems with it (its performance can be awful and require dedicated server clusters to keep it up at larger orgs), but come on let's be honest, it's a huge success story and lets orgs do things "their way" with project management and software development.

coblers 6y ago
It's crazy how different opinions are on JIRA. I think it's the worst tool I'm forced to use - and have been - at all my dev jobs. It's slow, sluggish, the UX is horrible and it gets in my way. A lot of dev teams that are outside of product/project management claws simply opt for using whatever simple kanban board there might be(Trello, for example).
- Narew 6y ago
  I used to have same opinion when I used only JIRA. But on my new work we use all JIRA, Stash, Crucible, Bamboo etc ... and the way all of these tools work together is really powerfull
- manicdee 6y ago
  Every problem you mentioned with a Jira is some decision your IT folks made. The same every time I hear people telling me how awful the software is: they complain of autocratic workflows, forms being slow, forms being complex and having so many mandatory fields that they can’t get anything done. It’s all due to local configuration, some IT kiddo sees all these bells and whistles and levers to pull, so they turn them all on thinking more features is better. In the meantime the most efficient workflow I have has six states (planning, execution, UAT, deployment, warranty, closed) and it works just fine and stays out of my way.
  - natch 6y ago
    Suspected as much. Not just IT people — it’s quite a playground for process wonks, and I mean that as a bad thing. I do love JIRA but wish it would stay simple in practice where I work. Unfortunately not the case at my current job.
  - coblers 6y ago
    JIRA being slow and sluggish doesn't really have anything to do with configuration. It's a horrible tool to navigate UX-wise.
    - richardwhiuk 6y ago
      It's often deployed on completely underpowered servers.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - kls 6y ago
      Some of that does have to do with how you configure it. JIRA is a swiss army knife and what you build out of it as a process and ticket management system can look very different from what I build out of it, and they can perform differently depending on how much automation, checks, and guards you put in it. I think the problem with JIRA is they don't really have a sane default install, it really feels like a bag of parts and then you assemble it. Maybe 2 or 3 opinionated templates that take a process end to end would help people, that just want to get started and that stare into the configurable abyss of JIRA and go "nope just want a ticket system".
    - manicdee 6y ago
      What are your recommendations for better UX?
  - kossmoboleat 6y ago
    Atlassian's own hosted version was often very sluggish for me too, although granted that the self-hosted version were a bit worse...
- jasonv 6y ago
  Jira for a team of 20-30 developers, where I'm the CTO and we implement it together... I like it :-)
collyw 6y ago
I find JIRA a monster these days. I thought it was OK maybe 6 or 7 years ago, but it has so much stuff in it, I don't find it easy to navigate.
mwdalrymple 6y ago
I LOVE JIRA. The team that I run has a high level of overhead with the system that we have built and support (just due to the nature of what we do) ans we have constructed a great operations dashboard using Jira. I extensively use Epics, Labels and Components to slice and dice our tickets to keep track of where my team spends their time, what parts of our system are problematic, etc. The Dashboard within Jira that we created has been really great as I have been using it along the charts it produces to communicate with my business partners. The data that we collect isn't perfect, but its good enough to construct a narrative that my business partners can grok. I have most recently used this information to help in successful pitch for a strategic re-design of our systems as well as an ambitious resourcing proposal to go along with it. Knowing how much of your time is lost to overhead allows me to plan ahead and justify the people that I need to make the redesign happen. Jira having an API has been a real boon too. Personally I have used it with Python to mine for additional data that I need in reporting where the Jira dashboard is insufficient. I have also had my team's dedicate DevOps engineer drive all sorts of integrated work flow automation to ease the development process. My team operates within a large bureaucratic organization, so having the capability to automate all the artifacts for compliance has been a real time savings. The integration with Confluence is awesome. It really makes managing my teams work so much easier. I love to collect meeting feedback notes in confluence and then tag the bullet points with Jira tasks that I create as follow up work. The Jira issue tables driven by JQL (Jiras Issue Query Language) are super useful when I need to create project plans that combine a mixture of content. I love just dropping in a list of all the tickets that we have outstanding. I would not be nearly as effective w/o the combination of both tools.
johnwalkr 6y ago
There's good things about JIRA, and of course it needs to be configured and managed effectively to work for an organization. But it's so hard to configure consistently, and almost impossible to make it both flexible for various teams and have any sort of consistency across the organization. It's just so hard to manage. It's like Windows 10, in that there are at least 2 different interfaces to configure most things, and you just never build up the muscle memory to navigate to the right place. But it's even worse, because there's projects, issue types, issue state, swim lanes, form configuration and more, and it's a subjective decision to decide which of those are appropriate ways to configure. My mental model of JIRA is like 5 or 6 dimensions. Bitbucket integration is good, but god help you if you also use crucible and confluence which are good on their own but add more dimensions to your particular configuration of knowledge storage. Maybe the user experience can be good if the org is big enough to have 2-3 people managing JIRA full time but I'd hate to be one of those 2-3 people.
johnwalkr 6y ago
Any recommendations from the JIRA haters? I love gitlab but am always wanting a bit more when I use it. Is there an in between?
- jasonv 6y ago
  Jetbrains Space Clubhouse Trello
time0ut 6y ago
I think a lot of the complaints about JIRA are really complaints about the organization. I've seen it model really nice simple workflows and complete insanity. Ever seen a workflow with Done, Done Done, and Done Done Done issue states? JIRA does have a few technical failings. As you pointed out, its performance can be a problem. Additionally, as a normal user, I find its search lacking. If I want to find the story I worked on 6 months ago that involved adding middle name to the user table, I'm better off hunting through my commit log or my notes than using JIRA search.

by davedx 6y ago

coblers 6y ago

It's crazy how different opinions are on JIRA. I think it's the worst tool I'm forced to use - and have been - at all my dev jobs. It's slow, sluggish, the UX is horrible and it gets in my way. A lot of dev teams that are outside of product/project management claws simply opt for using whatever simple kanban board there might be(Trello, for example).

Narew 6y ago
I used to have same opinion when I used only JIRA. But on my new work we use all JIRA, Stash, Crucible, Bamboo etc ... and the way all of these tools work together is really powerfull
manicdee 6y ago
Every problem you mentioned with a Jira is some decision your IT folks made. The same every time I hear people telling me how awful the software is: they complain of autocratic workflows, forms being slow, forms being complex and having so many mandatory fields that they can’t get anything done. It’s all due to local configuration, some IT kiddo sees all these bells and whistles and levers to pull, so they turn them all on thinking more features is better. In the meantime the most efficient workflow I have has six states (planning, execution, UAT, deployment, warranty, closed) and it works just fine and stays out of my way.
- natch 6y ago
  Suspected as much. Not just IT people — it’s quite a playground for process wonks, and I mean that as a bad thing. I do love JIRA but wish it would stay simple in practice where I work. Unfortunately not the case at my current job.
- coblers 6y ago
  JIRA being slow and sluggish doesn't really have anything to do with configuration. It's a horrible tool to navigate UX-wise.
  - richardwhiuk 6y ago
    It's often deployed on completely underpowered servers.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - kls 6y ago
    Some of that does have to do with how you configure it. JIRA is a swiss army knife and what you build out of it as a process and ticket management system can look very different from what I build out of it, and they can perform differently depending on how much automation, checks, and guards you put in it. I think the problem with JIRA is they don't really have a sane default install, it really feels like a bag of parts and then you assemble it. Maybe 2 or 3 opinionated templates that take a process end to end would help people, that just want to get started and that stare into the configurable abyss of JIRA and go "nope just want a ticket system".
  - manicdee 6y ago
    What are your recommendations for better UX?
- kossmoboleat 6y ago
  Atlassian's own hosted version was often very sluggish for me too, although granted that the self-hosted version were a bit worse...
jasonv 6y ago
Jira for a team of 20-30 developers, where I'm the CTO and we implement it together... I like it :-)

collyw 6y ago

I find JIRA a monster these days. I thought it was OK maybe 6 or 7 years ago, but it has so much stuff in it, I don't find it easy to navigate.

mwdalrymple 6y ago

I LOVE JIRA. The team that I run has a high level of overhead with the system that we have built and support (just due to the nature of what we do) ans we have constructed a great operations dashboard using Jira. I extensively use Epics, Labels and Components to slice and dice our tickets to keep track of where my team spends their time, what parts of our system are problematic, etc. The Dashboard within Jira that we created has been really great as I have been using it along the charts it produces to communicate with my business partners. The data that we collect isn't perfect, but its good enough to construct a narrative that my business partners can grok. I have most recently used this information to help in successful pitch for a strategic re-design of our systems as well as an ambitious resourcing proposal to go along with it. Knowing how much of your time is lost to overhead allows me to plan ahead and justify the people that I need to make the redesign happen. Jira having an API has been a real boon too. Personally I have used it with Python to mine for additional data that I need in reporting where the Jira dashboard is insufficient. I have also had my team's dedicate DevOps engineer drive all sorts of integrated work flow automation to ease the development process. My team operates within a large bureaucratic organization, so having the capability to automate all the artifacts for compliance has been a real time savings. The integration with Confluence is awesome. It really makes managing my teams work so much easier. I love to collect meeting feedback notes in confluence and then tag the bullet points with Jira tasks that I create as follow up work. The Jira issue tables driven by JQL (Jiras Issue Query Language) are super useful when I need to create project plans that combine a mixture of content. I love just dropping in a list of all the tickets that we have outstanding. I would not be nearly as effective w/o the combination of both tools.

johnwalkr 6y ago

There's good things about JIRA, and of course it needs to be configured and managed effectively to work for an organization. But it's so hard to configure consistently, and almost impossible to make it both flexible for various teams and have any sort of consistency across the organization. It's just so hard to manage. It's like Windows 10, in that there are at least 2 different interfaces to configure most things, and you just never build up the muscle memory to navigate to the right place. But it's even worse, because there's projects, issue types, issue state, swim lanes, form configuration and more, and it's a subjective decision to decide which of those are appropriate ways to configure. My mental model of JIRA is like 5 or 6 dimensions. Bitbucket integration is good, but god help you if you also use crucible and confluence which are good on their own but add more dimensions to your particular configuration of knowledge storage. Maybe the user experience can be good if the org is big enough to have 2-3 people managing JIRA full time but I'd hate to be one of those 2-3 people.

johnwalkr 6y ago

Any recommendations from the JIRA haters? I love gitlab but am always wanting a bit more when I use it. Is there an in between?

jasonv 6y ago
Jetbrains Space Clubhouse Trello

time0ut 6y ago

I think a lot of the complaints about JIRA are really complaints about the organization. I've seen it model really nice simple workflows and complete insanity. Ever seen a workflow with Done, Done Done, and Done Done Done issue states? JIRA does have a few technical failings. As you pointed out, its performance can be a problem. Additionally, as a normal user, I find its search lacking. If I want to find the story I worked on 6 months ago that involved adding middle name to the user table, I'm better off hunting through my commit log or my notes than using JIRA search.