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Having used Jira for only a modest 12 years, I have had multiple stages of feelings about it. I agree with the parent that “everybody” hates Jira because “it’s

by xp84 3y ago

Having used Jira for only a modest 12 years, I have had multiple stages of feelings about it. I agree with the parent that “everybody” hates Jira because “it’s too complicated” — yet when developers try to use a lean, simple tool like Pivotal or Trello, inevitably other stakeholders demand something better for business users, these simpler tools can’t deliver that, and the replacement ends up being Jira 99% of the time. I’ve started tech orgs on multiple issue trackers and this plays out every time. Also, I hated Jira before learning a lot of its features and how to use them, getting frustrated that everything is not just a setting, but something meta where you need to adjust a “scheme” and understand how it works with the other data objects in the system. Eventually I learned it, just in time for Atlassian to put a lot of effort into a candy-coated, “simplified” set of defaults that hides 99% of the system’s power and abilities. The main thing I actually don’t like about Jira is that: its insistence on setting up all new projects with infantile, Trello-like schemes, which then encourage sloppy setup when you start customizing unless you’re very seasoned with Jira. I think they should consider training an AI to “do what I mean” and help users to build out their setups —because transitioning from the “out of box experience” which I call “Expensive Trello” into a sophisticated workflow which actually models the business processes correctly and protects you against breaking your agreements, while making it easy to understand what to do next, is very difficult. In all but the biggest orgs, i don’t think it ever really happens.

XorNot 3y ago
I don't know what value non-developers are getting out of Jira, because I've been asked to produce reports out of Jira at different times and the only thing they ever want is "give me a list of all the X" or "graph the number Y across all the projects". The one thing they all do is go in and mess with the issue workflows: they never improve the workflows, but they sure love adding states and restricted transitions and renaming them...and then promptly ignore all of it because it turns out your 3 layers of "review" transitions don't actually have any staff assigned to look at them, it's just all the same guy who either spends all his time updating the issue as he works on it or just hits the transition button 3 times when he's actually done with it.
- Aurelius108 3y ago
  Nailed it, the biggest issue imho is those state transitions. Why make a state that can’t transition to all others? It takes forever to tease out the intention behind it. State machines are notoriously difficult in code, why add them into something unnecessarily?
  - xp84 3y ago
    Hugely agree that if in practice it’s just an extra click by the same person that’s a bad pattern. And you see it a LOT. Hard to justify even using a bespoke workflow when it just adds “digital paperwork.” OTOH Jira does support a way to force you to build a process you’ll honestly follow — there’s a validator that says the person who transitions from Y to Z must be a different person than from X to Y (or say, that it must be a member of a certain team). :) As an EM I think it is my job to ensure as little paperwork as possible, so I monitor this to make sure workflows don’t waste people’s time, using automations, context-sensitive paths through the workflow, etc. for instance I have a transition that skips past ALL of the steps and doesn’t even need to prompt the user, for when an issue needs to be resolved as “working as intended.”
  - flicaflow 3y ago
    We got that from the last audit. They don't like it if everyone could set the state of some ticket and thus circumvent the required workflow. A lot of companies develop certified software and thus have the same requirement.
    - Aurelius108 3y ago
      Ah that makes sense, we’ve got a process certification as well.
sverhagen 3y ago
>because “it’s too complicated” I personally "hate" Jira because it's so dumb. I open an epic, to see the stories that still need my attention, it shows all the stories, so I hit the "Hide done". Then I thoughtlessly click on one of the stories, I edit it, go back to the epic, and now it shows all the stories again. Rinse and repeat. I open a screen, it loads slowly, when I think it's ready I click on whatever I wanted to click. Apparently, it wasn't quite ready, so by the time my mouse-click lands, I click the wrong thing, which brings me to a new screen, so I have to go back to where I came from. Rinse and repeat. I open an epic, click the button to "Add a child issue", it prompts a "task", I want a "story", so I have to change the selection in the dropdown. Next time, it prompts again a "task". How many times did I mistakenly make a "task" where I had meant to make a "story"?! There's this sort of silly (to me) things all over the place, which has often made me wonder: do these people use this software themselves, and if so, do they take any pride in it?
- viraptor 3y ago
  This applies to many systems I've seen and my short summary of that is "the bigger the system the more it resembles CRUD scaffold, because they stop implementing specific user flows". Luckily it's a nice space to contract in, making simpler dedicated interfaces to the heavy enterprise stuff.
- jamesfinlayson 3y ago
  > which has often made me wonder: do these people use this software themselves, and if so, do they take any pride in it? Agreed - Jira is functional but there are endless little annoyances like this. My usual problem is that I work across two project boards, and no matter what board you're on, the default project that Create Task picks is the last board that you created a ticket on, not the project for the current board that you're viewing.
  - someweirdperson 3y ago
    Random idea, untested. Maybe it remembers client side? Then using two different browsers (or users in the same browser) could separate them.
irjustin 3y ago
I agree with this sentiment completely. It's a "do everything for everyone" but "impossible to do anything" software. Excel sheets ALWAYS is simpler to understand what's going on at a high level, but then devs want, then biz wants, etc etc and i just end up at the soup that which is jira. It's annoying because there's a always a better individual tool (pivotal, trello for devs, excel, powerpoint for biz), but none of them inter-op and then you're stuck at jira which does it all but not very well. It really feels like salesforce, just an absolute mess but it can really do everything.
fijiaarone 3y ago
Bad management demands bad tools.
- yard2010 3y ago
  [flagged]

by xp84 3y ago

XorNot 3y ago

I don't know what value non-developers are getting out of Jira, because I've been asked to produce reports out of Jira at different times and the only thing they ever want is "give me a list of all the X" or "graph the number Y across all the projects". The one thing they all do is go in and mess with the issue workflows: they never improve the workflows, but they sure love adding states and restricted transitions and renaming them...and then promptly ignore all of it because it turns out your 3 layers of "review" transitions don't actually have any staff assigned to look at them, it's just all the same guy who either spends all his time updating the issue as he works on it or just hits the transition button 3 times when he's actually done with it.

Aurelius108 3y ago
Nailed it, the biggest issue imho is those state transitions. Why make a state that can’t transition to all others? It takes forever to tease out the intention behind it. State machines are notoriously difficult in code, why add them into something unnecessarily?
- xp84 3y ago
  Hugely agree that if in practice it’s just an extra click by the same person that’s a bad pattern. And you see it a LOT. Hard to justify even using a bespoke workflow when it just adds “digital paperwork.” OTOH Jira does support a way to force you to build a process you’ll honestly follow — there’s a validator that says the person who transitions from Y to Z must be a different person than from X to Y (or say, that it must be a member of a certain team). :) As an EM I think it is my job to ensure as little paperwork as possible, so I monitor this to make sure workflows don’t waste people’s time, using automations, context-sensitive paths through the workflow, etc. for instance I have a transition that skips past ALL of the steps and doesn’t even need to prompt the user, for when an issue needs to be resolved as “working as intended.”
- flicaflow 3y ago
  We got that from the last audit. They don't like it if everyone could set the state of some ticket and thus circumvent the required workflow. A lot of companies develop certified software and thus have the same requirement.
  - Aurelius108 3y ago
    Ah that makes sense, we’ve got a process certification as well.

sverhagen 3y ago

>because “it’s too complicated” I personally "hate" Jira because it's so dumb. I open an epic, to see the stories that still need my attention, it shows all the stories, so I hit the "Hide done". Then I thoughtlessly click on one of the stories, I edit it, go back to the epic, and now it shows all the stories again. Rinse and repeat. I open a screen, it loads slowly, when I think it's ready I click on whatever I wanted to click. Apparently, it wasn't quite ready, so by the time my mouse-click lands, I click the wrong thing, which brings me to a new screen, so I have to go back to where I came from. Rinse and repeat. I open an epic, click the button to "Add a child issue", it prompts a "task", I want a "story", so I have to change the selection in the dropdown. Next time, it prompts again a "task". How many times did I mistakenly make a "task" where I had meant to make a "story"?! There's this sort of silly (to me) things all over the place, which has often made me wonder: do these people use this software themselves, and if so, do they take any pride in it?

viraptor 3y ago
This applies to many systems I've seen and my short summary of that is "the bigger the system the more it resembles CRUD scaffold, because they stop implementing specific user flows". Luckily it's a nice space to contract in, making simpler dedicated interfaces to the heavy enterprise stuff.
jamesfinlayson 3y ago
> which has often made me wonder: do these people use this software themselves, and if so, do they take any pride in it? Agreed - Jira is functional but there are endless little annoyances like this. My usual problem is that I work across two project boards, and no matter what board you're on, the default project that Create Task picks is the last board that you created a ticket on, not the project for the current board that you're viewing.
- someweirdperson 3y ago
  Random idea, untested. Maybe it remembers client side? Then using two different browsers (or users in the same browser) could separate them.

irjustin 3y ago

I agree with this sentiment completely. It's a "do everything for everyone" but "impossible to do anything" software. Excel sheets ALWAYS is simpler to understand what's going on at a high level, but then devs want, then biz wants, etc etc and i just end up at the soup that which is jira. It's annoying because there's a always a better individual tool (pivotal, trello for devs, excel, powerpoint for biz), but none of them inter-op and then you're stuck at jira which does it all but not very well. It really feels like salesforce, just an absolute mess but it can really do everything.

fijiaarone 3y ago

Bad management demands bad tools.

yard2010 3y ago
[flagged]