3 ms·

Confluence and more

10 points by st3fan 17y ago

tptacek 17y ago
Now would be a great time for someone to chime in here and explain why people pay lots of money for JIRA and Confluence. I'm sure there's a good reason, I just don't don't what it is.
- tomjen2 17y ago
  Properly because they have too much money (don't laugh, there are a lot of big businesses out there that have this problem), or they need official support.
  - modoc 17y ago
    What cheaper or free systems can you recommend that have the same feature-set or ease of use? I've tried: Trac, Bugzilla, Mantis, MediaWiki, SharePoint, etc... And in the important aspects, to me and the PMs/Biz folk, Jira/Confluence wins. I would love to find out about free alternatives I'm missing.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      Take, say, Trac --- what does Jira do for you in practice that Trac can't? (Genuinely curious).
      - modoc 17y ago
        I haven't used Trac in a couple of years, so I may be out of date, but: The interface is much nicer. Superficial, yes, but I like it, and so do the less technical folks. Built-in integration to Mylyn in Eclipse (you CAN do this with Trac, but you have to install plugins and configure things within Trac). Better reporting on workloads, productivity, hours, etc... Easy custom workflows. This is huge. Easy custom issue types with custom fields. Also huge. Powerful user and group based permission schemes, which can differ based on project, and hooks up to LDAP or Crowd very easily. Also does SSO. Can create tickets via incoming e-mail, and track replies to the same ticket. Supports multiple projects on a single installation, with as much privacy and security as you want. We have many clients who each have their own project, can't see any other projects, but we can see all of them, etc... Jira supports other code repositories, not just SVN. I'm a Java guy, so having it written in Java, with access to the source, and built for extension, make it easier for me to customize than learning to write Python eggs. Project Roles. Of all the free stuff I've used, I liked Trac the best, but once I tried Jira I didn't look back. And with $10 licenses, it seems pretty good for small shops. Large shops should see it pay for itself pretty easily. YMMV.
- locopati 17y ago
  Because they're solid products that intergrate well with each other and with dev environments like IDEA. You can put together a free open-source solution using many different tools, but the intergration between those tools isn't always great and opens up wider support issues (not necessarily paid support from Atlassian, but long-term maintainance). What do you propose as alternatives?
- teamonkey 17y ago
  We use them both. Jira is used for 3000-odd developers worldwide on tens of projects, fixing as many as tens of thousands of bugs daily. It's flexible to integrate with our toolchain and source control systems. Managers like it because it can easily throw up a load of stats and graphs on a single page. As a user I like it because it does everything I need it to. Confluence is used here, again for worldwide multi-project deployment. Mediawiki is also used but rarely - when starting a new project developers are given the choice and Confluence is the preferred wiki system. Managers love it because of the excellent Word editing/export features. I like it because it does everything I need it to. Downside of both: the searching on either system isn't that great. It's more IE-friendly than Firefox-friendly.
- jsankey 17y ago
  Probably because if Jira works for them between $10 and $8000 is really not "lots of money"? It takes hardly any employee time to rack up that amount. I more often wonder why people value their time so little. Disclaimer: Atlassian are actually competitors of ours, but not in either of these product categories.
  - modoc 17y ago
    This is key. Worst case scenario you have 101 users, so you're paying $8,000 for Jira. Assuming your billable and/or cost per hour is $100, If Jira saved people 48 minutes a YEAR, it would pay for itself. In most cases Jira will save a lot more time than that.
- modoc 17y ago
  They're fantastic products. Working with Jira is lightyears better (imho) than Bugzilla, Mantis, Trac, etc... It integrates with Eclipse, SVN, and Confluence. Easily customized issue types, permission rules, and workflows mean that it's simple for us to handle development tasks, creative changes, bugs, hardware change tickets, and everything else in a single system. "Oh you're creating a feature request for Client X? I'll automatically use their special workflow so you get all the right approvals and estimates." "Oh you're entering a Sev 0 production ticket? I'll page the right people!" "Oh you want new hardware? I'll prompt you for all the right fields." Honestly I could go on and on about how much time and pain Jira has saved us and our clients. Confluence is a really great Wiki. Most importantly for us it integrates nicely with Jira and Crowd, and let's us manage many independent spaces with group based permissions for access. The wins totally depend on your usage. If you're 1-2 people, Trac might be fine (although with the new super cheap pricing you should give Jira and Confluence a try). But in my experiences at a Fortune 500, contracting for several companies, and finally running my own small company, Jira/Crowd/Confluence have been absolutely no-brainers as far as being well worth the purchase price.
cpr 17y ago
One has the impression that this is all pretty much Java-world tooling. Is that true? Have people every used it for large Ruby or Python projects?

10 points by st3fan 17y ago

Now would be a great time for someone to chime in here and explain why people pay lots of money for JIRA and Confluence. I'm sure there's a good reason, I just don't don't what it is.

tomjen2 17y ago
Properly because they have too much money (don't laugh, there are a lot of big businesses out there that have this problem), or they need official support.
- modoc 17y ago
  What cheaper or free systems can you recommend that have the same feature-set or ease of use? I've tried: Trac, Bugzilla, Mantis, MediaWiki, SharePoint, etc... And in the important aspects, to me and the PMs/Biz folk, Jira/Confluence wins. I would love to find out about free alternatives I'm missing.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    Take, say, Trac --- what does Jira do for you in practice that Trac can't? (Genuinely curious).
    - modoc 17y ago
      I haven't used Trac in a couple of years, so I may be out of date, but: The interface is much nicer. Superficial, yes, but I like it, and so do the less technical folks. Built-in integration to Mylyn in Eclipse (you CAN do this with Trac, but you have to install plugins and configure things within Trac). Better reporting on workloads, productivity, hours, etc... Easy custom workflows. This is huge. Easy custom issue types with custom fields. Also huge. Powerful user and group based permission schemes, which can differ based on project, and hooks up to LDAP or Crowd very easily. Also does SSO. Can create tickets via incoming e-mail, and track replies to the same ticket. Supports multiple projects on a single installation, with as much privacy and security as you want. We have many clients who each have their own project, can't see any other projects, but we can see all of them, etc... Jira supports other code repositories, not just SVN. I'm a Java guy, so having it written in Java, with access to the source, and built for extension, make it easier for me to customize than learning to write Python eggs. Project Roles. Of all the free stuff I've used, I liked Trac the best, but once I tried Jira I didn't look back. And with $10 licenses, it seems pretty good for small shops. Large shops should see it pay for itself pretty easily. YMMV.
locopati 17y ago
Because they're solid products that intergrate well with each other and with dev environments like IDEA. You can put together a free open-source solution using many different tools, but the intergration between those tools isn't always great and opens up wider support issues (not necessarily paid support from Atlassian, but long-term maintainance). What do you propose as alternatives?
teamonkey 17y ago
We use them both. Jira is used for 3000-odd developers worldwide on tens of projects, fixing as many as tens of thousands of bugs daily. It's flexible to integrate with our toolchain and source control systems. Managers like it because it can easily throw up a load of stats and graphs on a single page. As a user I like it because it does everything I need it to. Confluence is used here, again for worldwide multi-project deployment. Mediawiki is also used but rarely - when starting a new project developers are given the choice and Confluence is the preferred wiki system. Managers love it because of the excellent Word editing/export features. I like it because it does everything I need it to. Downside of both: the searching on either system isn't that great. It's more IE-friendly than Firefox-friendly.
jsankey 17y ago
Probably because if Jira works for them between $10 and $8000 is really not "lots of money"? It takes hardly any employee time to rack up that amount. I more often wonder why people value their time so little. Disclaimer: Atlassian are actually competitors of ours, but not in either of these product categories.
- modoc 17y ago
  This is key. Worst case scenario you have 101 users, so you're paying $8,000 for Jira. Assuming your billable and/or cost per hour is $100, If Jira saved people 48 minutes a YEAR, it would pay for itself. In most cases Jira will save a lot more time than that.
modoc 17y ago
They're fantastic products. Working with Jira is lightyears better (imho) than Bugzilla, Mantis, Trac, etc... It integrates with Eclipse, SVN, and Confluence. Easily customized issue types, permission rules, and workflows mean that it's simple for us to handle development tasks, creative changes, bugs, hardware change tickets, and everything else in a single system. "Oh you're creating a feature request for Client X? I'll automatically use their special workflow so you get all the right approvals and estimates." "Oh you're entering a Sev 0 production ticket? I'll page the right people!" "Oh you want new hardware? I'll prompt you for all the right fields." Honestly I could go on and on about how much time and pain Jira has saved us and our clients. Confluence is a really great Wiki. Most importantly for us it integrates nicely with Jira and Crowd, and let's us manage many independent spaces with group based permissions for access. The wins totally depend on your usage. If you're 1-2 people, Trac might be fine (although with the new super cheap pricing you should give Jira and Confluence a try). But in my experiences at a Fortune 500, contracting for several companies, and finally running my own small company, Jira/Crowd/Confluence have been absolutely no-brainers as far as being well worth the purchase price.

cpr 17y ago

One has the impression that this is all pretty much Java-world tooling. Is that true? Have people every used it for large Ruby or Python projects?