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> ...you haven't documented the process... How does JIRA help with that? I'd LOVE an unauthorized documentary revealing how Atlassian dog foods JIRA. My $100

> ...you haven't documented the process... How does JIRA help with that? I'd LOVE an unauthorized documentary revealing how Atlassian dog foods JIRA. My $100 bet: They don't. While Atlassian has great confidence for how you should run your projects, what they do internally bears no resemblance to that sage advice.

p2t2p 6y ago
> They don't. Funny. Can I get $100 please? Every team has their own process that is tailored to their needs, process is decided by devs, not managers, managers only do "I'd like to have this kind of visibility" requests some times and I yet to see those requests introducing any kind of burden, usually very miniscule things. We have very simple process in our team with two issue types for devs - task and bug. We have two week long sprints and put tasks from backlog into them. Statuses are: open, in progress, code review, done. If I forgot to move a ticket than a team lead or feature lead will do that for me whenever they are at it. Besides this there are epics but devs don't deal with them, feature leads and team leads and PMs do. This is all running on an instance that is deployed every 4 hours with changes from master and goes through the same upgrade process our customers would go. There's special set of very high-level tickets but we don't deal with those, those are for for people 3 levels above. Sprint planning is about 30 minutes because backlog grooming is done for devs by feature leads and team leads and that's pretty much the only obligatory meeting.
- specialist 6y ago
  Sure. Post the video(s) and a Venmo account. > Sprint planning is about 30 minutes... That's like saying Santa Klaus is real. I want to believe you. I really do.
  - p2t2p 6y ago
    By the time we're in planning, only things to discuss is estimation and priority, it takes virtually no time. We have a whole hour booked and spend half of it to just hang out, pretty much the only time where the whole team is present in one meeting.
  - aprdm 6y ago
    What they described isn't different of how it worked in my previous two companies that used Jira...
  - agnivade 6y ago
    Sprint planning takes 30 minutes for our team too. And exactly like OP, backlog grooming is done during 1-1s with leads. I am sorry if you find it that much hard to believe.
- Too 6y ago
  JIRA using JIRA.... is it too easy to claim this finally explains the total lack of end user experience in JIRA? I mean just look at all the comments here complaining about performance, search, dependencies or broken WYSInotWYG editors. The four primary features of such a tool. This has been the state of every jira installation i've ever used the past years. I'm sure your internal burn down charts are straight and nice though. But as top level says, this is not the tools fault alone, more the process it encourages.
p2t2p 6y ago
Atlassian whole point is team centricity. The team decides the process, the team decides the metrics, the team decides what to deliver and how fast. The team decides what are the QA rituals. Yes, there checks to fix a disfunctional team but I have never seen those applied. So there are as many processes as teams in Atlassian.
- specialist 6y ago
  Been chewing on your replies. Thanks for pushing back. Atlassian really should be bragging about their internal processes, cultures. Popularize your Agile equivalent of Toyota's Production System. Seed an ecology of people spreading your techniques. Embed some ethnographers and anthropologists in some random teams. Keep the cameras rolling. Show the good and the bad. Model how orgs should and could become learning orgs.
- julik 6y ago
  Was lucky to see a few situations where it was the team that decided to use JIRA, as well as other situations where a team decided not to use JIRA - because they didn't like it and their process was achievable without
ccwilson10 6y ago
Welp... fun fact, every team (even the non-tech teams) uses Jira so I'll happily send over my venmo account :p
- specialist 6y ago
  You can split the prize money with u/p2tp2. I legitimacy want to see this. Hire some film students, have them embed with some teams for some sprints, post the footage. If Atlassian really does walk the talk, why aren't you already bragging about it? I just peeked at Atlassian's YouTube stuff. Nicely produced. So that's something. I'm not even going to move the goal posts, or play No True Scotsman. Show how any team actually using JIRA, like a Twitch stream or something, and I'll cheerfully send you $100. Forgive me, but I'm struggling to accept that anyone creating and maintaining and supporting JIRA and Confluence could abide by them. Sure, I've worked on crap products before. In anger, under protest. I never accepted it.
  - ccwilson10 6y ago
    Good point, not sure why we don't make more of a fuss about it. I think there should be some content about how our HR teams use Jira coming out soon so that could be a good first step. Ironically, I was part of the group that just did the first ever official Atlassian Twitch stream the other day! Seems like an easy way to fire off content without needing a lot of approvals and checks. I'll chat with some people on the marketing side to see how hard it would be to just walk through our own setups. Saw this in a comment somewhere, but confirming we have a culture where process and setup are determined mostly on a department-by-department basis (at least for the non-tech side of the house). Our Marketing org generally works in an "agency" model where there are teams responsible for specific marketing disciplines (SEO, Video, Branding, etc etc). Just on a side note, I'm happy to walk you through how we use it personally — Zoom, email, or whatever. Always trying to learn how we can make Jira better and try to share advice where I can.
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    > I legitimacy want to see this. I wish I was sarcastic when I said I agree. Seeing a working 30 min sprint planning. Instant hit.
debaserab2 6y ago
I can't speak for Atlassian dogfooding, but I don't find this to be a very true statement: > While Atlassian has great confidence for how you should run your projects JIRA really doesn't. It's extremely flexible, which I think is where it earns a lot of it's bad rep. You can really map your entire mental model to it's statuses and workflows if you want to (but you shouldn't). The teams that I've been on that have had success with JIRA are ones where JIRA only encompasses the minimal amount of process as possible to represent the status of an story/bug/initiative with as little extra added as possible. The other key thing I've noticed is using it as consistently as possible so it can actually become the central repository (found a bug? make a bug ticket. have an idea thats starting to take shape? make a story ticket. fix a bug? put the ticket number in the commit). Seems like common sense, but usually needs to be strictly enforced, especially with individuals that are on the fringes of the development process (such as subject matter experts).
XargonEnder 6y ago
>...what they do internally bears no resemblance to that sage advice You've gotten me really curious now. Got a link or a blog or something I can read about that?

p2t2p 6y ago

> They don't. Funny. Can I get $100 please? Every team has their own process that is tailored to their needs, process is decided by devs, not managers, managers only do "I'd like to have this kind of visibility" requests some times and I yet to see those requests introducing any kind of burden, usually very miniscule things. We have very simple process in our team with two issue types for devs - task and bug. We have two week long sprints and put tasks from backlog into them. Statuses are: open, in progress, code review, done. If I forgot to move a ticket than a team lead or feature lead will do that for me whenever they are at it. Besides this there are epics but devs don't deal with them, feature leads and team leads and PMs do. This is all running on an instance that is deployed every 4 hours with changes from master and goes through the same upgrade process our customers would go. There's special set of very high-level tickets but we don't deal with those, those are for for people 3 levels above. Sprint planning is about 30 minutes because backlog grooming is done for devs by feature leads and team leads and that's pretty much the only obligatory meeting.

specialist 6y ago
Sure. Post the video(s) and a Venmo account. > Sprint planning is about 30 minutes... That's like saying Santa Klaus is real. I want to believe you. I really do.
- p2t2p 6y ago
  By the time we're in planning, only things to discuss is estimation and priority, it takes virtually no time. We have a whole hour booked and spend half of it to just hang out, pretty much the only time where the whole team is present in one meeting.
- aprdm 6y ago
  What they described isn't different of how it worked in my previous two companies that used Jira...
- agnivade 6y ago
  Sprint planning takes 30 minutes for our team too. And exactly like OP, backlog grooming is done during 1-1s with leads. I am sorry if you find it that much hard to believe.
Too 6y ago
JIRA using JIRA.... is it too easy to claim this finally explains the total lack of end user experience in JIRA? I mean just look at all the comments here complaining about performance, search, dependencies or broken WYSInotWYG editors. The four primary features of such a tool. This has been the state of every jira installation i've ever used the past years. I'm sure your internal burn down charts are straight and nice though. But as top level says, this is not the tools fault alone, more the process it encourages.

p2t2p 6y ago

Atlassian whole point is team centricity. The team decides the process, the team decides the metrics, the team decides what to deliver and how fast. The team decides what are the QA rituals. Yes, there checks to fix a disfunctional team but I have never seen those applied. So there are as many processes as teams in Atlassian.

specialist 6y ago
Been chewing on your replies. Thanks for pushing back. Atlassian really should be bragging about their internal processes, cultures. Popularize your Agile equivalent of Toyota's Production System. Seed an ecology of people spreading your techniques. Embed some ethnographers and anthropologists in some random teams. Keep the cameras rolling. Show the good and the bad. Model how orgs should and could become learning orgs.
julik 6y ago
Was lucky to see a few situations where it was the team that decided to use JIRA, as well as other situations where a team decided not to use JIRA - because they didn't like it and their process was achievable without

ccwilson10 6y ago

Welp... fun fact, every team (even the non-tech teams) uses Jira so I'll happily send over my venmo account :p

specialist 6y ago
You can split the prize money with u/p2tp2. I legitimacy want to see this. Hire some film students, have them embed with some teams for some sprints, post the footage. If Atlassian really does walk the talk, why aren't you already bragging about it? I just peeked at Atlassian's YouTube stuff. Nicely produced. So that's something. I'm not even going to move the goal posts, or play No True Scotsman. Show how any team actually using JIRA, like a Twitch stream or something, and I'll cheerfully send you $100. Forgive me, but I'm struggling to accept that anyone creating and maintaining and supporting JIRA and Confluence could abide by them. Sure, I've worked on crap products before. In anger, under protest. I never accepted it.
- ccwilson10 6y ago
  Good point, not sure why we don't make more of a fuss about it. I think there should be some content about how our HR teams use Jira coming out soon so that could be a good first step. Ironically, I was part of the group that just did the first ever official Atlassian Twitch stream the other day! Seems like an easy way to fire off content without needing a lot of approvals and checks. I'll chat with some people on the marketing side to see how hard it would be to just walk through our own setups. Saw this in a comment somewhere, but confirming we have a culture where process and setup are determined mostly on a department-by-department basis (at least for the non-tech side of the house). Our Marketing org generally works in an "agency" model where there are teams responsible for specific marketing disciplines (SEO, Video, Branding, etc etc). Just on a side note, I'm happy to walk you through how we use it personally — Zoom, email, or whatever. Always trying to learn how we can make Jira better and try to share advice where I can.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  > I legitimacy want to see this. I wish I was sarcastic when I said I agree. Seeing a working 30 min sprint planning. Instant hit.

debaserab2 6y ago

I can't speak for Atlassian dogfooding, but I don't find this to be a very true statement: > While Atlassian has great confidence for how you should run your projects JIRA really doesn't. It's extremely flexible, which I think is where it earns a lot of it's bad rep. You can really map your entire mental model to it's statuses and workflows if you want to (but you shouldn't). The teams that I've been on that have had success with JIRA are ones where JIRA only encompasses the minimal amount of process as possible to represent the status of an story/bug/initiative with as little extra added as possible. The other key thing I've noticed is using it as consistently as possible so it can actually become the central repository (found a bug? make a bug ticket. have an idea thats starting to take shape? make a story ticket. fix a bug? put the ticket number in the commit). Seems like common sense, but usually needs to be strictly enforced, especially with individuals that are on the fringes of the development process (such as subject matter experts).

XargonEnder 6y ago

>...what they do internally bears no resemblance to that sage advice You've gotten me really curious now. Got a link or a blog or something I can read about that?