3 ms·

The last shop I worked at used Redmine. The owner loved it, most folks found it okay, but the UX just rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not opposed to working with s

The last shop I worked at used Redmine. The owner loved it, most folks found it okay, but the UX just rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not opposed to working with software with classic UIs and such, that would have been fine if the update workflow and page layout made sense. I wish I could adequately convey why. Based on other commenters talking about the APIs being strong though, and other products that seem nicer (I tried OpenProject for a time and had a pretty positive experience with it) are built upon it, it really goes to show how much a good UX can make or break a project with really great bones.

bayindirh 3y ago
Redmine might look clunky from a distance, and its installation is convoluted. However, once it works, it works forever. It's a "zero unplanned maintenance" tool which works without any problems, and can be extended with tons of features due to its extensible nature. Maybe it's about being an oldish folk who used "classical UI"s more, yet I still find their information density much better than modern "fluffy and animated" UIs. No JS animations to waste power, no browser version requirement, just a brutalist structure built around function. Paired with a powerful VM, it loads instantly, works perfectly.
- belthesar 3y ago
  I don't really need a "fluffy and animated" interface. That's not what is important to me when I'm working in a tool. For me, it's more about "How many clicks do I have to do to do a task?", or "can I find the information I'm looking for quickly?" Our task creation workflow often boiled down to "create a bunch of tasks, work them, close them, then repeat". I felt like I was having to do too much work to get information into the app in a way that was disproportionate to it providing the information I needed. From a maintenance perspective I hear you though. I supported the Redmine install, and I've supported Jira installs in the past. The sheer amount of horsepower I had to throw at, and shenanigans I had to deal with, to support Jira is mind boggling. I have a small joke that the reason Atlassian is going cloud only for their products has everything to do with the fact that only they are big brain enough to understand how to run the damn thing reasonably, haha. And yeah, administering the Redmine install was "oh yeah, we have a Redmine instance, I should probably update that". So that is definitely a feather in its cap. I also can appreciate that it has a rich ecosystem of plugins and extensions to make it your own. I often look at plugins with a grain of salt though, because having more things to add and more dependencies to support drastically changes the administrative burden of a system. For me, I'd rather have one opinionated tool with a minimal but functional feature set. Fortunately, there are alternatives out there that enable that flow for me and my teams, so it's not like I'm not served. There's always the possibility that Redmine and I just never clicked, and that's okay. I don't _need_ to like every tool, and I can easily see how folks that it did work for got great benefits out of it. My negative experiences are personal to me, but do not discredit the plenty of positive experiences teams have had using it.

bayindirh 3y ago

Redmine might look clunky from a distance, and its installation is convoluted. However, once it works, it works forever. It's a "zero unplanned maintenance" tool which works without any problems, and can be extended with tons of features due to its extensible nature. Maybe it's about being an oldish folk who used "classical UI"s more, yet I still find their information density much better than modern "fluffy and animated" UIs. No JS animations to waste power, no browser version requirement, just a brutalist structure built around function. Paired with a powerful VM, it loads instantly, works perfectly.

belthesar 3y ago
I don't really need a "fluffy and animated" interface. That's not what is important to me when I'm working in a tool. For me, it's more about "How many clicks do I have to do to do a task?", or "can I find the information I'm looking for quickly?" Our task creation workflow often boiled down to "create a bunch of tasks, work them, close them, then repeat". I felt like I was having to do too much work to get information into the app in a way that was disproportionate to it providing the information I needed. From a maintenance perspective I hear you though. I supported the Redmine install, and I've supported Jira installs in the past. The sheer amount of horsepower I had to throw at, and shenanigans I had to deal with, to support Jira is mind boggling. I have a small joke that the reason Atlassian is going cloud only for their products has everything to do with the fact that only they are big brain enough to understand how to run the damn thing reasonably, haha. And yeah, administering the Redmine install was "oh yeah, we have a Redmine instance, I should probably update that". So that is definitely a feather in its cap. I also can appreciate that it has a rich ecosystem of plugins and extensions to make it your own. I often look at plugins with a grain of salt though, because having more things to add and more dependencies to support drastically changes the administrative burden of a system. For me, I'd rather have one opinionated tool with a minimal but functional feature set. Fortunately, there are alternatives out there that enable that flow for me and my teams, so it's not like I'm not served. There's always the possibility that Redmine and I just never clicked, and that's okay. I don't _need_ to like every tool, and I can easily see how folks that it did work for got great benefits out of it. My negative experiences are personal to me, but do not discredit the plenty of positive experiences teams have had using it.