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And if you ask me it's not Jira. It's the companies. I've been in many large companies and have seen other tools used. Jira is a huge improvement especially wit

And if you ask me it's not Jira. It's the companies. I've been in many large companies and have seen other tools used. Jira is a huge improvement especially with its workflow. Have you have had the sort of reporting requirements and workflows implemented in a tool where what's a simple workflow action in Jira with a transition screen that asks you to fill all the required fields implemented as just a screen full of fields that you are supposed to individually update correctly? And they're all over the screen seemingly unrelated? Now the good part is that you don't actually have to use all those customizations if your company doesn't 'need' that much process. Whether you have a Todo-In progress-Done workflow or Backlog-Ready for Dev-In Progress-Code review-Ready for QA-In QA-In Regression-Ready to merge-Merged to integration branch-In Integration Testing-Ready for master-Merged to master-Released to Prod workflow is up to you!

lmm 6y ago
> Have you have had the sort of reporting requirements and workflows implemented in a tool where what's a simple workflow action in Jira with a transition screen that asks you to fill all the required fields implemented as just a screen full of fields that you are supposed to individually update correctly? And they're all over the screen seemingly unrelated? Yes, the tool was called "Jira". That's actually better than my experience of the "simple workflow action" approach, where the fields you need to change aren't available, because you clicked the wrong action at the wrong time or did the wrong thing three actions back. And since there's no way to undo an action or return to the previous screen, you're stuffed. If you're lucky you might be able to find a manager who's able to do some other transition or define a new transition to fix your problem. More likely you have to throw that task away and recreate it from scratch. Oh, and there's no way to close the copy that's in the wrong state, so it's in your to-do list forever now. > Now the good part is that you don't actually have to use all those customizations if your company doesn't 'need' that much process. Whether you have a Todo-In progress-Done workflow or Backlog-Ready for Dev-In Progress-Code review-Ready for QA-In QA-In Regression-Ready to merge-Merged to integration branch-In Integration Testing-Ready for master-Merged to master-Released to Prod workflow is up to you! You need customization to have any workflow available at all - that was what I said about hoping a manager thought of what you were trying to do first. You want to put your In progress thing back to Todo? To bad, you can't. Accidentally marked something as Ready for QA when it isn't? Tough, no undo. Etc.
- tharkun__ 6y ago
  That is entirely what your company has used Jira to design. Yes it is possible because Jira is that flexible. Jiras standard workflow is literraly Todo-In progress-Done and you can transition from any state to any state and edit any fields you want at any time. Don't blame the tool. You said you needed an axe to chop wood to stay warm. Is it the axe's fault if you go kill your neighbor with it? We use Jira and we have none of the problems you describe. We also have it integrated with a bunch of other tools we use and it gives us a really good overview of where we are at with things, looking up the Why behind a code change etc. FWIW we do use a more elaborate workflow but it works well and parts of it are so that you can see if something it out with customers or not and those transitions are automated and done by our deployment scripts.
  - lmm 6y ago
    > Jiras standard workflow is literraly Todo-In progress-Done and you can transition from any state to any state There may be predefined transitions between all the predefined states. But as soon as you add a new state you do not get any transitions to/from it except those you explicitly define. Any custom step that you define will not be undoable unless you explicitly define a way to undo it, and Jira will give you no help at all in ensuring that your undo transition actually undoes. > Don't blame the tool. You said you needed an axe to chop wood to stay warm. Is it the axe's fault if you go kill your neighbor with it? If the axe keeps slipping in people's hands and they keep chopping off their fingers, that's a problem with the axe. Even if there's one guy who doesn't have that problem and thinks everyone else must've been holding it wrong, it's still a badly designed axe. > We use Jira and we have none of the problems you describe. We also have it integrated with a bunch of other tools we use and it gives us a really good overview of where we are at with things, looking up the Why behind a code change etc. Who maintains your Jira workflows, and what's the process for making changes to them? I guarantee you're doing something unusual, because like I said, I've seen Jira in five or six companies and it was bad in all of them. (Blind guess: at your company the people who are actually using it are empowered to make changes to the workflows, which is very much not the default and not what Jira's permissioning system guides you towards).

lmm 6y ago

> Have you have had the sort of reporting requirements and workflows implemented in a tool where what's a simple workflow action in Jira with a transition screen that asks you to fill all the required fields implemented as just a screen full of fields that you are supposed to individually update correctly? And they're all over the screen seemingly unrelated? Yes, the tool was called "Jira". That's actually better than my experience of the "simple workflow action" approach, where the fields you need to change aren't available, because you clicked the wrong action at the wrong time or did the wrong thing three actions back. And since there's no way to undo an action or return to the previous screen, you're stuffed. If you're lucky you might be able to find a manager who's able to do some other transition or define a new transition to fix your problem. More likely you have to throw that task away and recreate it from scratch. Oh, and there's no way to close the copy that's in the wrong state, so it's in your to-do list forever now. > Now the good part is that you don't actually have to use all those customizations if your company doesn't 'need' that much process. Whether you have a Todo-In progress-Done workflow or Backlog-Ready for Dev-In Progress-Code review-Ready for QA-In QA-In Regression-Ready to merge-Merged to integration branch-In Integration Testing-Ready for master-Merged to master-Released to Prod workflow is up to you! You need customization to have any workflow available at all - that was what I said about hoping a manager thought of what you were trying to do first. You want to put your In progress thing back to Todo? To bad, you can't. Accidentally marked something as Ready for QA when it isn't? Tough, no undo. Etc.

tharkun__ 6y ago
That is entirely what your company has used Jira to design. Yes it is possible because Jira is that flexible. Jiras standard workflow is literraly Todo-In progress-Done and you can transition from any state to any state and edit any fields you want at any time. Don't blame the tool. You said you needed an axe to chop wood to stay warm. Is it the axe's fault if you go kill your neighbor with it? We use Jira and we have none of the problems you describe. We also have it integrated with a bunch of other tools we use and it gives us a really good overview of where we are at with things, looking up the Why behind a code change etc. FWIW we do use a more elaborate workflow but it works well and parts of it are so that you can see if something it out with customers or not and those transitions are automated and done by our deployment scripts.
- lmm 6y ago
  > Jiras standard workflow is literraly Todo-In progress-Done and you can transition from any state to any state There may be predefined transitions between all the predefined states. But as soon as you add a new state you do not get any transitions to/from it except those you explicitly define. Any custom step that you define will not be undoable unless you explicitly define a way to undo it, and Jira will give you no help at all in ensuring that your undo transition actually undoes. > Don't blame the tool. You said you needed an axe to chop wood to stay warm. Is it the axe's fault if you go kill your neighbor with it? If the axe keeps slipping in people's hands and they keep chopping off their fingers, that's a problem with the axe. Even if there's one guy who doesn't have that problem and thinks everyone else must've been holding it wrong, it's still a badly designed axe. > We use Jira and we have none of the problems you describe. We also have it integrated with a bunch of other tools we use and it gives us a really good overview of where we are at with things, looking up the Why behind a code change etc. Who maintains your Jira workflows, and what's the process for making changes to them? I guarantee you're doing something unusual, because like I said, I've seen Jira in five or six companies and it was bad in all of them. (Blind guess: at your company the people who are actually using it are empowered to make changes to the workflows, which is very much not the default and not what Jira's permissioning system guides you towards).