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> And developers are expensive as hell. Not expensive enough apparently, because management will happily tolerate meetings where nothing happens except the who

> And developers are expensive as hell. Not expensive enough apparently, because management will happily tolerate meetings where nothing happens except the whole team fighting Jira. I recently had to replace my web browser because it reduced the time to load a ticket from 4 minutes to 10 seconds due to some caching issue. Entering a date/time on a non-English locale never works. Whenever I try to leave a comment with technical details, I probably spam the whole team with lots of "Ticket was edited" notifications because there is no logic to Atlassian's markup systems. I feel that Jira's configurability makes it like desktop Linux 20 years ago. Everybody swears it's rock-solid, beautiful, and easy to configure. Then when you ask anyone to have a look at their specific setup, they'll cover the screen with their bodies and panic, "ah no, I kind of messed everything up recently, haha, but you can't really blame the software for that, can you? Everyone else's installation is super clean though". After working with ~10 different Jira installations, I'm still looking for one where that's true. </rant> And as someone who enjoys documenting their own work for fellow developers and other roles, I don't even think Jira helps. Most discussions will still happen offline and without documentation, especially from non-technical roles who hate typing.

orzig 6y ago
My primary advantage over the Scrum Master that I replaced was hand writing all the required JIRA changes during the meeting, and doing them on my own time later. I was a hero! Highly recommended.
- kiksy 6y ago
  Nice. This would likely solve a huge chunk of push back against JIRA.
  - ori_b 6y ago
    Yes, I'd also enjoy jira if the company would pay someone else to use it for me.
    - my_usernam3 6y ago
      Oh man I think I need a new pair of underpants just thinking about that! That being said, my current manager is super awesome about minimizing our JIRA involvement so I really shouldn't be complaining atm.
- josephg 6y ago
  That would be great. On a client project a few years ago I effectively bullied the product owner into doing that. We were a few weeks away from a launch. I had sat down with our designer and we made a list together of about 30 changes we needed to make (“this is the wrong blue. This is 2px too big. Etc). The product owner wanted me to put all the changes through our normal process - make a jira issue for each one and we can do task estimation as a team and assign them, and so on. But most of them were tasks that would take a few minutes at most. (Some of the problems I fixed live while working with the designer). Our launch deadline was fast approaching and it would have taken more time to write a good jira ticket than it would to fix most of the issues - let alone discussing them as a group to estimate. While arguing he ended up showing his cards by admitting that the main reason he wanted everything in jira was for reporting. How else would upper management know that we were making progress? I said that sounded like his job, not mine. And he begrudgingly agreed and took my plain text list and dutifully retyped everything one by one into jira tickets. And then marked them all complete a week later when I’d fixed them all. I think that experience killed the last bit of respect I had for Agile as a methodology - at least as it’s practiced in the wild. If we were using something lighter - like trello - I don’t think I would have resisted so much.
  - firepoet 6y ago
    That is such bad Agile. No wonder people have such bad feelings about it. :-(
  - signal11 6y ago
    Great story, but re the “killed respect for Agile” bit: Agile done right is all about less process. It’s right there on the Agile Manifesto: > Individuals and interactions over processes and tools I’d also read https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html for an illustration of what is considered valuable — especially the bit about simplicity which process heavy (aka fake-agile) agile consultants totally miss; also the bits about what constitutes project progress & how to most efficiently convey information. You should be able to tailor your agile processes to what makes sense for you. Following the herd and insisting on agile ceremonies “because everyone else does it / someone told us to”, even to your team’s detriment, is cargo-culting. In your case you clearly tailored your process to something that improved your efficiency and met your reporting requirements, so, as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing agile “right”.
wpietri 6y ago
> I feel that Jira's configurability makes it like desktop Linux 20 years ago. Totally. A tool that's optimized for everybody is optimized for nobody. Jira for me is in the class of "false consensus" products. Since everybody has to manage work and get things done, there's an illusion that people mean the same thing by that. But the way people and teams work and the kind of work they do varies so greatly that there will never be one perfect work management tool.
debaserab2 6y ago
> I feel that Jira's configurability makes it like desktop Linux 20 years ago. Everybody swears it's rock-solid, beautiful, and easy to configure. Then when you ask anyone to have a look at their specific setup, they'll cover the screen with their bodies and panic, "ah no, I kind of messed everything up recently, haha, but you can't really blame the software for that, can you? Everyone else's installation is super clean though". After working with ~10 different Jira installations, I'm still looking for one where that's true. I kinda feel this way about every project management tool, be it a personal or professional one. You're always chasing the dragon for how clean it was when you originally configured it.
- ypeterholmes 6y ago
  Redmine is great.
  - jvvlimme 6y ago
    No, it’s not. From a Product Owner point of view, it’s a piece of shit. Hard to set priorities, hard to follow progress. I’ll take jira any day.
    - bendauphinee 6y ago
      From a dev perspective, I see your point. Redmine was great for the reason that we documented a lot better inside tickets because it was lower friction.
donio 6y ago
Hey now! I have fond memories of my Linux desktop from 20 years ago, I believe I was using GWM around that time. Please don't compare the abomination that is Jira to that.
tootie 6y ago
I find it kinda odd that people's complaints about JIRA seem to all center on meetings and people. JIRA is absolutely not easy to configure. It's a pro suite of tools that requires investment in setup. What it allows is total flexibility within a set of paradigms to meet any orgs preferred workflow. Other tools that are simpler are all too simplistic.

orzig 6y ago

My primary advantage over the Scrum Master that I replaced was hand writing all the required JIRA changes during the meeting, and doing them on my own time later. I was a hero! Highly recommended.

kiksy 6y ago
Nice. This would likely solve a huge chunk of push back against JIRA.
- ori_b 6y ago
  Yes, I'd also enjoy jira if the company would pay someone else to use it for me.
  - my_usernam3 6y ago
    Oh man I think I need a new pair of underpants just thinking about that! That being said, my current manager is super awesome about minimizing our JIRA involvement so I really shouldn't be complaining atm.
josephg 6y ago
That would be great. On a client project a few years ago I effectively bullied the product owner into doing that. We were a few weeks away from a launch. I had sat down with our designer and we made a list together of about 30 changes we needed to make (“this is the wrong blue. This is 2px too big. Etc). The product owner wanted me to put all the changes through our normal process - make a jira issue for each one and we can do task estimation as a team and assign them, and so on. But most of them were tasks that would take a few minutes at most. (Some of the problems I fixed live while working with the designer). Our launch deadline was fast approaching and it would have taken more time to write a good jira ticket than it would to fix most of the issues - let alone discussing them as a group to estimate. While arguing he ended up showing his cards by admitting that the main reason he wanted everything in jira was for reporting. How else would upper management know that we were making progress? I said that sounded like his job, not mine. And he begrudgingly agreed and took my plain text list and dutifully retyped everything one by one into jira tickets. And then marked them all complete a week later when I’d fixed them all. I think that experience killed the last bit of respect I had for Agile as a methodology - at least as it’s practiced in the wild. If we were using something lighter - like trello - I don’t think I would have resisted so much.
- firepoet 6y ago
  That is such bad Agile. No wonder people have such bad feelings about it. :-(
- signal11 6y ago
  Great story, but re the “killed respect for Agile” bit: Agile done right is all about less process. It’s right there on the Agile Manifesto: > Individuals and interactions over processes and tools I’d also read https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html for an illustration of what is considered valuable — especially the bit about simplicity which process heavy (aka fake-agile) agile consultants totally miss; also the bits about what constitutes project progress & how to most efficiently convey information. You should be able to tailor your agile processes to what makes sense for you. Following the herd and insisting on agile ceremonies “because everyone else does it / someone told us to”, even to your team’s detriment, is cargo-culting. In your case you clearly tailored your process to something that improved your efficiency and met your reporting requirements, so, as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing agile “right”.

wpietri 6y ago

> I feel that Jira's configurability makes it like desktop Linux 20 years ago. Totally. A tool that's optimized for everybody is optimized for nobody. Jira for me is in the class of "false consensus" products. Since everybody has to manage work and get things done, there's an illusion that people mean the same thing by that. But the way people and teams work and the kind of work they do varies so greatly that there will never be one perfect work management tool.

debaserab2 6y ago

> I feel that Jira's configurability makes it like desktop Linux 20 years ago. Everybody swears it's rock-solid, beautiful, and easy to configure. Then when you ask anyone to have a look at their specific setup, they'll cover the screen with their bodies and panic, "ah no, I kind of messed everything up recently, haha, but you can't really blame the software for that, can you? Everyone else's installation is super clean though". After working with ~10 different Jira installations, I'm still looking for one where that's true. I kinda feel this way about every project management tool, be it a personal or professional one. You're always chasing the dragon for how clean it was when you originally configured it.

ypeterholmes 6y ago
Redmine is great.
- jvvlimme 6y ago
  No, it’s not. From a Product Owner point of view, it’s a piece of shit. Hard to set priorities, hard to follow progress. I’ll take jira any day.
  - bendauphinee 6y ago
    From a dev perspective, I see your point. Redmine was great for the reason that we documented a lot better inside tickets because it was lower friction.

donio 6y ago

Hey now! I have fond memories of my Linux desktop from 20 years ago, I believe I was using GWM around that time. Please don't compare the abomination that is Jira to that.

tootie 6y ago

I find it kinda odd that people's complaints about JIRA seem to all center on meetings and people. JIRA is absolutely not easy to configure. It's a pro suite of tools that requires investment in setup. What it allows is total flexibility within a set of paradigms to meet any orgs preferred workflow. Other tools that are simpler are all too simplistic.