I'm not sure that is quite the right take. When someone says "Jira" they are referring to the style of product management that Jira enables, not the specific to

I'm not sure that is quite the right take. When someone says "Jira" they are referring to the style of product management that Jira enables, not the specific tool. Like how "Google" is used to refer to web search, even if one actually uses Bing. Jira, the software, is far from perfect, but when one talks about hating Jira, they are really talking about the people who use Jira. The same people moving over to a competing product that offers the same feature set perfectly implemented would still leave people hating it. The software itself doesn't matter that much here. It's a people problem. So, why do people cling to a project management style that everyone hates? There is a lot of friction. Nobody wants to be the guy who pushed for an alternative that turns out to be just as bad. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", as they say. You know that IBM will deliver a failure, so everyone is ready when it does fail. If you hired Mom and Pop, you are doing so expecting them to be better than IBM, so when they fail equally there is a buildup of blame to go around. That's not a comfortable position to be in. I would suggest that winds of change are in the air, but it is indeed a slow process to find a critical mass willing to take new risks.