5 ms·

While Jira does many many things right, it is also horrible in so many ways. What options are you evaluating?

preisschild 3y ago
Not OP, but we moved to Gitlab Issues. Project Managers are missing some features, but the devs (including me) like it a lot more due to integrating so well with PRs/commits.
- wdfx 3y ago
  The problem with this though, is that commonly a requirement (ticket) does not map exactly to a single code repository. I feel that it is breaking encapsulation in a sense to be dealing with issues at the repo level. The repo and the code are implementation details of the business requirements. The tickets describing requirements belong at the next level up of abstraction?
  - peanball 3y ago
    There are issues at group / org level in GitLab that can span such tasks.
    - imp0cat 3y ago
      Also, you can create a special project to keep general issues (and use CI in this project to run Gitlab Triage bot to help you with issue management).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - john_cogs 3y ago
    GitLab team member here. One way to approach this would be using Epics [0], which can live at the group-level. Child epics and/or issues can then be used for more finely tuned requirements. 0 - https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/index.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/index.html
    - afandian 3y ago
      I should point out that multi-level epics are only available at Gitlab's $99 per user per month level. We wanted to use them, but it's not worth that much. Jira is a lot more flexible and cost effective in this regard.
      - kwanbix 3y ago
        99 per user per month is crazy expensive IMHO.
        afandian 3y ago
        And it's not just for developers who might be using the expensive stuff (git, storage, CI minutes). Also for members of the org who only use tickets.
  - mushakov 3y ago
    Hi there! I lead the product teams for planning features at GitLab. Issues at the group level are in the works to meet this exact need. You can follow the work in this issue https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/8308 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/8308 . As always, would love to hear from you in the issue if you have feedback about the approach or have follow up questions.
    - wdfx 3y ago
      Thanks for providing this info. I do use gitlab-ce at home for my personal projects and think it's awesome. I would recommend it to work in terms of its features for code management and build pipelines. But I just cannot see any of our product management team wanting to use this for Roadmap/Epic/Task tracking at all. Its far too technical and too close to the code, both of which are things they have neither the time, interest or skill to interact with. Management are comfortable with Jira (and some of the extended Atlassian suite), as it hides the technical stuff away and allows them to focus on the management data. I don't know what the perfect solution looks like though, and I also haven't spend the time to exhaustively try all the competing products either.
      - arueda 3y ago
        Hey `wdfx` GitLab team member here. :) >[Roadmap/Epic/Task tracking] Its far too technical and too close to the code I'm a Product Manager in the Plan stage at GitLab and I'd love to learn more about this impression. Would you be willing to share more either in thread or on a call? Specially, I'm trying to understand what about the GitLab Plan tools (epics, roadmaps, etc) feel dev-centric?
- brightball 3y ago
  Project Managers might just need some training. The board system in GL is very flexible and adaptable to how your org works. I was really impressed.
  - mushakov 3y ago
    YAY! I work on planning features at GitLab and Gabe from my team put together this overview view if any of you want something you can share with your team for training https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmASFwSap7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmASFwSap7c . You can also find agile planning tutorials in our docs site https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/tutorials/plan_and_track.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/tutorials/plan_and_track.html
    - essay-writer 3y ago
      [dead]
- shagie 3y ago
  One of the challenges of Gitlab is that the pricing does not work well in organizations where a significant portion of accounts would need to be non-developer roles. With devs and a premium tier, this isn't bad... but the "ok, we need to double the user count and move from premium to ultimate, even though most people are only looking for multi-level epics and the reporter role." That represents a significant cost increase. Taking all the devs from $29 to $99 and doubling the accounts is a lot more than $15 per account (devs, ba/pm/mgr, business).
  - bunderbunder 3y ago
    This is a problem for so many SaaS development tools.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    Github is fairly cheap, even at enterprise level.
    - bastardoperator 3y ago
      MSFT also does volume discounts and if you have enough spend they'll give you GitHub for free when renewing VS licenses. I'll take GH anyday over Atlassian when it comes to collaboration.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  There is no perfect issue tracking system sadly and integration with prs and commits actually is becoming a hard requirement for me. This is not something that people should be updating to an issue tracker manually, ever. Or doing without entirely (more common). Also nice in Github is the integration with Github actions and being able to see whether something can be merged safely or not. I double as a product manager and CTO, meaning I do both code and planning. We're using Github issues and Asana. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. I'd take both over Jira any day. And since I'm in charge, my company is blissfully free of anything Atlassian. I kind of like Asana for planning. It's got a few sane features one of which is separating issues from projects. This allows me to quickly plan out projects and then add tickets to the relevant team boards. And another one is making it very easy to create issues in a spreadsheet like view that minimizes the click bureaucracy other tools have. Great when you basically are thinking at the bullet point level and just want to hit enter instead of having to fiddle with obnoxious modal forms. Of course for developers Asana isn't great because it has no markdown support and no usable github integration (a few commercial things exist but they are basically glorified sync tools). Github issues have a few nice features as well. I like working with check lists and then converting the individual items to tasks. That comes close to how I like to use Asana. Where Github falls off a cliff is what passes for project management. I don't know what their PMs were smoking but it's just completely wrong and useless. It kind of lives orthogonal to issues (!!!!!) and nothing syncs automatically except with really awkward github actions crap. So, it only serves to add a lot of bureaucracy and busy work without actually addressing the core problem. A combination of over engineered and inadequate. The core issue with Github is that issues are tied to a single code repository. From a planning point of view that is just horrible because I manage a product consisting of multiple code repositories and I need one plan that may involve zero or more code repositories and not several and I don't want to lock in my issues to a single repository before I have even figured out what the plan is. I guess that's what they tried to fix with their project management thingy. Except they messed that up badly. I'd love a tool that is a bit like Asana but more integrated with pull requests, CI/CD, the notion of work being distributed across multiple code repositories, teams, etc. I don't mean yet another sync thingy that copies tickets from system X to system Y. I would like a one stop shop that can be used throughout the life cycle of a software product from before any code is written until users / customers start reporting issues and everything in between. Doesn't exist.
DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
Despite the "Azure" name, Azure DevOps Server (formerly Team Foundation Server), is still a rock-solid on-prem system for git repo hosting, issues/stories/projects, build automation, and the rest - though I feel it has stagnated somewhat, and git integration still feels half-baked compared to TFS's previous SVN-clone, but is still my first-choice for on-prem installs (granted, I'm still wedded to the MSFT stack).
- whoopsie 3y ago
  ADO is the death knell to collaborative modern teams. Who the f wants to waste their day with that UX and feature set?
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    > Who the f wants to waste their day with that UX and feature set? TFS' UX is hardly any worse than Jira's. BTW, if your complaint is based on your personal experience dealing with hideously complex Issue/Bug form-fields, "areas", and the like, then that's not so-much an issue with TFS/AzureDevOps, but with your PMs, who are the ones responsible for applying customizations to the built-in workflow forms. The stock workflow forms/fields are a (relative) breeze to use compared to Jira, IMO (but GitHub Issues+Projects are better, I agree).
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    ADO makes me yearn for Jira because of how slow and clunky it is.
    - twisteriffic 3y ago
      Having been forced to daily drive both for the past few years, I'd take DevOps over Jira any day. Neither is great, but DevOps has had 100% fewer incidents of adding a comment to the wrong issue because of a dog slow UI that's chock full of race conditions.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  If you have access to Azure DevOps Server your company likely also has access in its existing plans to GitHub Enterprise (on-prem) as well. GitHub Enterprise is usually about 6 to 9 months behind GitHub "Regular", but that's quite a bit better than Azure DevOps "Regular" which now seems destined to be 2-3 years behind GitHub and however far Azure DevOps Server trails behind that. Microsoft is still playing "will they/won't they" with killing Azure DevOps for whatever reasons make sense mostly only to themselves, but it is hard not to wonder if the writing is on the wall to migrate to something like GitHub Enterprise sooner rather than later. (Arguably yes, running GHE is different than Azure DevOps Server, as it is still mostly not Microsoft-stack. But I'm told they package it in a friendly enough way that even companies deep in Microsoft-stack-only don't have too many problems.)
brobdingnagians 3y ago
YouTrack by Jetbrains is very good
- Jwarder 3y ago
  Can anyone speak about YouTrack/Space's warts? The marketing blurbs makes Space + YouTrack look like a decent replacement for Jira + Confluence + Bitbucket, but I don't recall ever hearing a developer talk about it.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    YouTrack is pretty great. So is TeamCity and they integrate well. The JetBrains instance is open so you can just sign up for an account there and play with it. Also you can run them both on-prem and they're pretty easy to admin if you do. Space I haven't used. It seems like an attempt to reinvent both products in a GitLab style product which is a pity because the JetBrains tools are very mature and I don't think they needed a new product.
  - smileybarry 3y ago
    A decade ago when we used JIRA team-wide and not org-wide, some teams internally preferred YouTrack so they used that (until the whole org moved to JIRA). What bothered me personally was that fields were basically "unschema'd" and everything suggested every value -- everything was effectively a label field -- including typos, which are more common in a company where English is second language. But that was a decade ago, and it could've been a misconfiguration on that team's part. It was also back when JIRA was more of a structured database with real issue types and not stories atop stories for all eternity.
- dzikimarian 3y ago
  It's nice, has most of Jira features that were important for my org. Philosophy is bit different in some parts (eg. backlog management), so there was some complaining, but overall it's ok. Only one major complaint: For main license, you can buy and own license for selfhosted version. However for helpdesk addon it's subscription only, which sucks a lot. For Spaces they have only subscription-based pricing, even when self-hosted. I hope they don't go Atlassian way.
rpy 3y ago
Linear is awesome
- apple4ever 3y ago
  Linear is very much awesome. Still some work to make it really great, but it's awesome right now.
tedivm 3y ago
Slab is an excellent replacement for Confluence, although it doesn't help with Jira.
HHad3 3y ago
We've moved to plain markdown in Git(Lab) as Confluence replacement. A CI pipeline compiles it to HTML and hosts it on the web via Material for MkDocs. It lacks most collaboration options for non-developer users, but we found that they are rarely, if at all, used anyway. Non-developer users can still use an edit button that points to GitLab's web editor and update the docs that way. I can't suggest a replacement for Jira at this point. I don't think there is one tool to recommend that fits every company's workflow. The other comments seem to have some nice tools to try.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  Gitlab and github are a lot more than simple markdown. They support a lot of additions like equations, and mermaid graphs. The only thing I've used confluence for that won't work in out of the box gitlab is a circuit diagram. And the right way to do that was probably to have the pipeline generate an svg from the circuit simulation model, not draw it.
- dnsmichi 3y ago
  GitLab team member here, thanks for sharing. > It lacks most collaboration options for non-developer users, but we found that they are rarely, if at all, used anyway. Non-developer users can still use an edit button that points to GitLab's web editor and update the docs that way. Maybe the wiki in GitLab provides a possible path forward. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/wiki/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/wiki/ The wiki uses the same Rich Text editor as known from issue/MR comments, aiding visual editing with context actions - for example, Markdown tables, rows, columns, or uploading and resizing images. > Material for MkDocs. I personally love this project. I'm using it for o11y.love and opsindev.news published via GitLab pages. Editing happens mainly in the browser, using the Web IDE. Sources in case you are interested: https://gitlab.com/everyonecancontribute/observability/o11y.love https://gitlab.com/everyonecancontribute/observability/o11y.... https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/opsindev.news https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/opsindev.news PS: Tip for faster editing files using the Web IDE in the browser: Press `.` on a repository view which opens the Web IDE immediately.
zeroonetwothree 3y ago
Jira has like 100 alternatives. The best one depends on your exact needs. But Linear is goated

Not OP, but we moved to Gitlab Issues. Project Managers are missing some features, but the devs (including me) like it a lot more due to integrating so well with PRs/commits.

wdfx 3y ago
The problem with this though, is that commonly a requirement (ticket) does not map exactly to a single code repository. I feel that it is breaking encapsulation in a sense to be dealing with issues at the repo level. The repo and the code are implementation details of the business requirements. The tickets describing requirements belong at the next level up of abstraction?
- peanball 3y ago
  There are issues at group / org level in GitLab that can span such tasks.
  - imp0cat 3y ago
    Also, you can create a special project to keep general issues (and use CI in this project to run Gitlab Triage bot to help you with issue management).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- john_cogs 3y ago
  GitLab team member here. One way to approach this would be using Epics [0], which can live at the group-level. Child epics and/or issues can then be used for more finely tuned requirements. 0 - https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/index.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/epics/index.html
  - afandian 3y ago
    I should point out that multi-level epics are only available at Gitlab's $99 per user per month level. We wanted to use them, but it's not worth that much. Jira is a lot more flexible and cost effective in this regard.
    - kwanbix 3y ago
      99 per user per month is crazy expensive IMHO.
      - afandian 3y ago
        And it's not just for developers who might be using the expensive stuff (git, storage, CI minutes). Also for members of the org who only use tickets.
- mushakov 3y ago
  Hi there! I lead the product teams for planning features at GitLab. Issues at the group level are in the works to meet this exact need. You can follow the work in this issue https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/8308 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/8308 . As always, would love to hear from you in the issue if you have feedback about the approach or have follow up questions.
  - wdfx 3y ago
    Thanks for providing this info. I do use gitlab-ce at home for my personal projects and think it's awesome. I would recommend it to work in terms of its features for code management and build pipelines. But I just cannot see any of our product management team wanting to use this for Roadmap/Epic/Task tracking at all. Its far too technical and too close to the code, both of which are things they have neither the time, interest or skill to interact with. Management are comfortable with Jira (and some of the extended Atlassian suite), as it hides the technical stuff away and allows them to focus on the management data. I don't know what the perfect solution looks like though, and I also haven't spend the time to exhaustively try all the competing products either.
    - arueda 3y ago
      Hey `wdfx` GitLab team member here. :) >[Roadmap/Epic/Task tracking] Its far too technical and too close to the code I'm a Product Manager in the Plan stage at GitLab and I'd love to learn more about this impression. Would you be willing to share more either in thread or on a call? Specially, I'm trying to understand what about the GitLab Plan tools (epics, roadmaps, etc) feel dev-centric?
brightball 3y ago
Project Managers might just need some training. The board system in GL is very flexible and adaptable to how your org works. I was really impressed.
- mushakov 3y ago
  YAY! I work on planning features at GitLab and Gabe from my team put together this overview view if any of you want something you can share with your team for training https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmASFwSap7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmASFwSap7c . You can also find agile planning tutorials in our docs site https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/tutorials/plan_and_track.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/tutorials/plan_and_track.html
  - essay-writer 3y ago
    [dead]
shagie 3y ago
One of the challenges of Gitlab is that the pricing does not work well in organizations where a significant portion of accounts would need to be non-developer roles. With devs and a premium tier, this isn't bad... but the "ok, we need to double the user count and move from premium to ultimate, even though most people are only looking for multi-level epics and the reporter role." That represents a significant cost increase. Taking all the devs from $29 to $99 and doubling the accounts is a lot more than $15 per account (devs, ba/pm/mgr, business).
- bunderbunder 3y ago
  This is a problem for so many SaaS development tools.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  Github is fairly cheap, even at enterprise level.
  - bastardoperator 3y ago
    MSFT also does volume discounts and if you have enough spend they'll give you GitHub for free when renewing VS licenses. I'll take GH anyday over Atlassian when it comes to collaboration.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
There is no perfect issue tracking system sadly and integration with prs and commits actually is becoming a hard requirement for me. This is not something that people should be updating to an issue tracker manually, ever. Or doing without entirely (more common). Also nice in Github is the integration with Github actions and being able to see whether something can be merged safely or not. I double as a product manager and CTO, meaning I do both code and planning. We're using Github issues and Asana. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. I'd take both over Jira any day. And since I'm in charge, my company is blissfully free of anything Atlassian. I kind of like Asana for planning. It's got a few sane features one of which is separating issues from projects. This allows me to quickly plan out projects and then add tickets to the relevant team boards. And another one is making it very easy to create issues in a spreadsheet like view that minimizes the click bureaucracy other tools have. Great when you basically are thinking at the bullet point level and just want to hit enter instead of having to fiddle with obnoxious modal forms. Of course for developers Asana isn't great because it has no markdown support and no usable github integration (a few commercial things exist but they are basically glorified sync tools). Github issues have a few nice features as well. I like working with check lists and then converting the individual items to tasks. That comes close to how I like to use Asana. Where Github falls off a cliff is what passes for project management. I don't know what their PMs were smoking but it's just completely wrong and useless. It kind of lives orthogonal to issues (!!!!!) and nothing syncs automatically except with really awkward github actions crap. So, it only serves to add a lot of bureaucracy and busy work without actually addressing the core problem. A combination of over engineered and inadequate. The core issue with Github is that issues are tied to a single code repository. From a planning point of view that is just horrible because I manage a product consisting of multiple code repositories and I need one plan that may involve zero or more code repositories and not several and I don't want to lock in my issues to a single repository before I have even figured out what the plan is. I guess that's what they tried to fix with their project management thingy. Except they messed that up badly. I'd love a tool that is a bit like Asana but more integrated with pull requests, CI/CD, the notion of work being distributed across multiple code repositories, teams, etc. I don't mean yet another sync thingy that copies tickets from system X to system Y. I would like a one stop shop that can be used throughout the life cycle of a software product from before any code is written until users / customers start reporting issues and everything in between. Doesn't exist.

DaiPlusPlus 3y ago

Despite the "Azure" name, Azure DevOps Server (formerly Team Foundation Server), is still a rock-solid on-prem system for git repo hosting, issues/stories/projects, build automation, and the rest - though I feel it has stagnated somewhat, and git integration still feels half-baked compared to TFS's previous SVN-clone, but is still my first-choice for on-prem installs (granted, I'm still wedded to the MSFT stack).

whoopsie 3y ago
ADO is the death knell to collaborative modern teams. Who the f wants to waste their day with that UX and feature set?
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
  > Who the f wants to waste their day with that UX and feature set? TFS' UX is hardly any worse than Jira's. BTW, if your complaint is based on your personal experience dealing with hideously complex Issue/Bug form-fields, "areas", and the like, then that's not so-much an issue with TFS/AzureDevOps, but with your PMs, who are the ones responsible for applying customizations to the built-in workflow forms. The stock workflow forms/fields are a (relative) breeze to use compared to Jira, IMO (but GitHub Issues+Projects are better, I agree).
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  ADO makes me yearn for Jira because of how slow and clunky it is.
  - twisteriffic 3y ago
    Having been forced to daily drive both for the past few years, I'd take DevOps over Jira any day. Neither is great, but DevOps has had 100% fewer incidents of adding a comment to the wrong issue because of a dog slow UI that's chock full of race conditions.
WorldMaker 3y ago
If you have access to Azure DevOps Server your company likely also has access in its existing plans to GitHub Enterprise (on-prem) as well. GitHub Enterprise is usually about 6 to 9 months behind GitHub "Regular", but that's quite a bit better than Azure DevOps "Regular" which now seems destined to be 2-3 years behind GitHub and however far Azure DevOps Server trails behind that. Microsoft is still playing "will they/won't they" with killing Azure DevOps for whatever reasons make sense mostly only to themselves, but it is hard not to wonder if the writing is on the wall to migrate to something like GitHub Enterprise sooner rather than later. (Arguably yes, running GHE is different than Azure DevOps Server, as it is still mostly not Microsoft-stack. But I'm told they package it in a friendly enough way that even companies deep in Microsoft-stack-only don't have too many problems.)

brobdingnagians 3y ago

YouTrack by Jetbrains is very good

Jwarder 3y ago
Can anyone speak about YouTrack/Space's warts? The marketing blurbs makes Space + YouTrack look like a decent replacement for Jira + Confluence + Bitbucket, but I don't recall ever hearing a developer talk about it.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  YouTrack is pretty great. So is TeamCity and they integrate well. The JetBrains instance is open so you can just sign up for an account there and play with it. Also you can run them both on-prem and they're pretty easy to admin if you do. Space I haven't used. It seems like an attempt to reinvent both products in a GitLab style product which is a pity because the JetBrains tools are very mature and I don't think they needed a new product.
- smileybarry 3y ago
  A decade ago when we used JIRA team-wide and not org-wide, some teams internally preferred YouTrack so they used that (until the whole org moved to JIRA). What bothered me personally was that fields were basically "unschema'd" and everything suggested every value -- everything was effectively a label field -- including typos, which are more common in a company where English is second language. But that was a decade ago, and it could've been a misconfiguration on that team's part. It was also back when JIRA was more of a structured database with real issue types and not stories atop stories for all eternity.
dzikimarian 3y ago
It's nice, has most of Jira features that were important for my org. Philosophy is bit different in some parts (eg. backlog management), so there was some complaining, but overall it's ok. Only one major complaint: For main license, you can buy and own license for selfhosted version. However for helpdesk addon it's subscription only, which sucks a lot. For Spaces they have only subscription-based pricing, even when self-hosted. I hope they don't go Atlassian way.

rpy 3y ago

Linear is awesome

apple4ever 3y ago
Linear is very much awesome. Still some work to make it really great, but it's awesome right now.

tedivm 3y ago

Slab is an excellent replacement for Confluence, although it doesn't help with Jira.

HHad3 3y ago

We've moved to plain markdown in Git(Lab) as Confluence replacement. A CI pipeline compiles it to HTML and hosts it on the web via Material for MkDocs. It lacks most collaboration options for non-developer users, but we found that they are rarely, if at all, used anyway. Non-developer users can still use an edit button that points to GitLab's web editor and update the docs that way. I can't suggest a replacement for Jira at this point. I don't think there is one tool to recommend that fits every company's workflow. The other comments seem to have some nice tools to try.

galangalalgol 3y ago
Gitlab and github are a lot more than simple markdown. They support a lot of additions like equations, and mermaid graphs. The only thing I've used confluence for that won't work in out of the box gitlab is a circuit diagram. And the right way to do that was probably to have the pipeline generate an svg from the circuit simulation model, not draw it.
dnsmichi 3y ago
GitLab team member here, thanks for sharing. > It lacks most collaboration options for non-developer users, but we found that they are rarely, if at all, used anyway. Non-developer users can still use an edit button that points to GitLab's web editor and update the docs that way. Maybe the wiki in GitLab provides a possible path forward. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/wiki/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/wiki/ The wiki uses the same Rich Text editor as known from issue/MR comments, aiding visual editing with context actions - for example, Markdown tables, rows, columns, or uploading and resizing images. > Material for MkDocs. I personally love this project. I'm using it for o11y.love and opsindev.news published via GitLab pages. Editing happens mainly in the browser, using the Web IDE. Sources in case you are interested: https://gitlab.com/everyonecancontribute/observability/o11y.love https://gitlab.com/everyonecancontribute/observability/o11y.... https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/opsindev.news https://gitlab.com/dnsmichi/opsindev.news PS: Tip for faster editing files using the Web IDE in the browser: Press `.` on a repository view which opens the Web IDE immediately.

zeroonetwothree 3y ago

Jira has like 100 alternatives. The best one depends on your exact needs. But Linear is goated