8 ms·

Wait, what's wrong with JIRA?

muzani 4y ago
Jira doesn't really work well out of the box. It needs a lot of work to configure. I love Jira now, but it's been hell in the other startups. It's probably why stuff like Trello and Asana took off.
gsich 4y ago
Atlassian is an asshole company for their stance against selfhosting it.
- alrlroipsp 4y ago
  What stance? You simply purchase a license and selfhost it. See https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/compare-cloud-data-center https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/compare-cloud-dat...
  - gsich 4y ago
    Maybe for insane prices. But that too will go away.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - emrvb 4y ago
    Newsflash: Jira Server end of sales was in februari 2021. Support will completely end in februari 2024. You better start scheduling your migration.
tut-urut-utut 4y ago
People that don't need Jira but are forced to use it just hate it. Same as any other product in the world.
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Subpar at what it's supposed to do, extra features don't add a whole lot, mostly made and configured for managers instead of developers. Largely the same reasons people dislike Teams. Has even worse integrations with the Atlassian stack than Teams with the MS stack. JIRA, just like Teams, is slow, bloated, still won't fix basic issues and largely exists to appease managers. You have to actively work to make JIRA a pleasant experience. It's too easy for most management to make it hell.
viridian 4y ago
I personally find that the more I have to use JIRA, and the more magical ephemeral rules that are set up in it to take actions in response to my actions with it, the more terrible it is to use. I've worked on teams where I just threw info into a card, and it was acceptable to use, and I've worked on teams where commits had to have a JIRA tag associated or the commit got rejected, including in instances where bitbucket was timing out it's call to JIRA. In the latter cases, I prayed for Atlassian's swift destruction, but alas, was never answered. So like a lot of tools, it's how you use it, mostly. That said, as far as universal problems, cloning cards has to be one of the worst UX experiences I run into on the job with any frequency that I can't just fix myself. If the web app needs to await a successful or failed clone of a record (or series of them), I'm not sure why they can't implement a modal or a spinner or other component to tell the user that something is happening, then either navigate the user to the new card, or ask the user if they would like to view the new card. Shooting off a process that you say could take an indeterminate amount of time then dropping eventually a completion notification and link in the bottom left panel is just about the least helpful way to communicate that information. edit: unrelated meta comment, but it's funny as hell to me that this question got 4 replies in the few minutes it took me to write this reply, all within 10 minutes of the original. People are really out here just waiting for a chance to complain about JIRA. Myself included it seems. Makes me feel a bit bad, hate to pile on to popular sentiment when others have already commented in a similar direction.
- rjsw 4y ago
  I'm trying to cleanup a Git tree right now where people haven't put JIRA tags in their commit comments, it is impossible to find out why a change was made, it isn't a totally stupid requirement.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    This assumes that writing a ticket causes people to explain their rationale better than a commit comment does. That might be the case, but it often isn't because tickets are filed by developers themselves, or by PMs who just write tickets like: "A system requirement is that users be able to do X" without further explanation.
coldtea 4y ago
What's good about it?
gregmac 4y ago
There's lots, but I think it comes down to two main things: It has bad defaults, and it can be customized to have really draconian workflow rules. If you configure it to be reasonable -- keep the workflows very simple with few to no validation rules -- it can be fine to use. The temptation seems to be locking down admin access to managers, and then the admins going crazy building workflows like "these 19 custom fields must be filled out to start" "items must go through a QA step" "QA users are the only people that can approve that step" and "PMs are the only ones that can close a ticket". This quickly gets out of hand and makes it horrible to use. It also depends on the people using it -- garbage in garbage out, as they say. If people write good tickets (concise titles, format the body, remove irrelevant crap, and properly fill out meta fields like fixVersion) it is much more useful. JQL is awesome, and embedding tickets and JQL queries of tickets into Confluence is awesome (hint: easy way to make release notes) -- but both of these require non-garbage ticket content.
petejansson 4y ago
JIRA implementations I've seen don't help people see what's ahead; they focus on what's been done to date. If you're on a single, small team that has minimal dependencies on other teams, that can work, but if the project has any significant dependencies on other teams, it becomes very hard for anyone to understand how things are going.
- relaxing 4y ago
  That’s literally the point of the kanban board. I don’t understand how these projects were configured for that to be true — did they hide the backlog?

Jira doesn't really work well out of the box. It needs a lot of work to configure. I love Jira now, but it's been hell in the other startups. It's probably why stuff like Trello and Asana took off.

gsich 4y ago

Atlassian is an asshole company for their stance against selfhosting it.

alrlroipsp 4y ago
What stance? You simply purchase a license and selfhost it. See https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/compare-cloud-data-center https://www.atlassian.com/migration/assess/compare-cloud-dat...
- gsich 4y ago
  Maybe for insane prices. But that too will go away.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- emrvb 4y ago
  Newsflash: Jira Server end of sales was in februari 2021. Support will completely end in februari 2024. You better start scheduling your migration.

tut-urut-utut 4y ago

People that don't need Jira but are forced to use it just hate it. Same as any other product in the world.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago

Subpar at what it's supposed to do, extra features don't add a whole lot, mostly made and configured for managers instead of developers. Largely the same reasons people dislike Teams. Has even worse integrations with the Atlassian stack than Teams with the MS stack. JIRA, just like Teams, is slow, bloated, still won't fix basic issues and largely exists to appease managers. You have to actively work to make JIRA a pleasant experience. It's too easy for most management to make it hell.

viridian 4y ago

I personally find that the more I have to use JIRA, and the more magical ephemeral rules that are set up in it to take actions in response to my actions with it, the more terrible it is to use. I've worked on teams where I just threw info into a card, and it was acceptable to use, and I've worked on teams where commits had to have a JIRA tag associated or the commit got rejected, including in instances where bitbucket was timing out it's call to JIRA. In the latter cases, I prayed for Atlassian's swift destruction, but alas, was never answered. So like a lot of tools, it's how you use it, mostly. That said, as far as universal problems, cloning cards has to be one of the worst UX experiences I run into on the job with any frequency that I can't just fix myself. If the web app needs to await a successful or failed clone of a record (or series of them), I'm not sure why they can't implement a modal or a spinner or other component to tell the user that something is happening, then either navigate the user to the new card, or ask the user if they would like to view the new card. Shooting off a process that you say could take an indeterminate amount of time then dropping eventually a completion notification and link in the bottom left panel is just about the least helpful way to communicate that information. edit: unrelated meta comment, but it's funny as hell to me that this question got 4 replies in the few minutes it took me to write this reply, all within 10 minutes of the original. People are really out here just waiting for a chance to complain about JIRA. Myself included it seems. Makes me feel a bit bad, hate to pile on to popular sentiment when others have already commented in a similar direction.

rjsw 4y ago
I'm trying to cleanup a Git tree right now where people haven't put JIRA tags in their commit comments, it is impossible to find out why a change was made, it isn't a totally stupid requirement.
- origin_path 4y ago
  This assumes that writing a ticket causes people to explain their rationale better than a commit comment does. That might be the case, but it often isn't because tickets are filed by developers themselves, or by PMs who just write tickets like: "A system requirement is that users be able to do X" without further explanation.

coldtea 4y ago

What's good about it?

gregmac 4y ago

There's lots, but I think it comes down to two main things: It has bad defaults, and it can be customized to have really draconian workflow rules. If you configure it to be reasonable -- keep the workflows very simple with few to no validation rules -- it can be fine to use. The temptation seems to be locking down admin access to managers, and then the admins going crazy building workflows like "these 19 custom fields must be filled out to start" "items must go through a QA step" "QA users are the only people that can approve that step" and "PMs are the only ones that can close a ticket". This quickly gets out of hand and makes it horrible to use. It also depends on the people using it -- garbage in garbage out, as they say. If people write good tickets (concise titles, format the body, remove irrelevant crap, and properly fill out meta fields like fixVersion) it is much more useful. JQL is awesome, and embedding tickets and JQL queries of tickets into Confluence is awesome (hint: easy way to make release notes) -- but both of these require non-garbage ticket content.

petejansson 4y ago

JIRA implementations I've seen don't help people see what's ahead; they focus on what's been done to date. If you're on a single, small team that has minimal dependencies on other teams, that can work, but if the project has any significant dependencies on other teams, it becomes very hard for anyone to understand how things are going.

relaxing 4y ago
That’s literally the point of the kanban board. I don’t understand how these projects were configured for that to be true — did they hide the backlog?