This is a great point - too many companies forget to optimize for speed of UX. My theory is because speed of UX isn't a strong selling point to decision makers.

This is a great point - too many companies forget to optimize for speed of UX. My theory is because speed of UX isn't a strong selling point to decision makers. JIRA sells well because it's a safe choice (recent fuckups not-withstanding) and is very full featured. Speed of UX matters for the end user, unfortunately too often the end user has no say in the software they're using.