Ask HN: What would your ideal issue tracker look like?

#1

Post by alangibson » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

Issue trackers are something every development team needs, but no one ever seems happy with. Jira is slow and crusty, Trello doesn't scale well for large organizations, and so on.

If you could manifest it just by imagining it, what would your ideal issue tracker look like?

Re: Ask HN: What would your ideal issue tracker look like?

#2

Post by smt88 » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 7:20 PM UTC

The problem with Jira is not that it's slow or crusty. It's not slow anymore, and any crustiness is hidden under the hood.

Its real problems are a polarizing UI (I like it, others hate it) and flexibility that leans toward bloatware-level complexity. But you can configure it to look/feel as simple as Trello, of course.

To beat Jira for me, you'd have to do something revolutionary, like having the entire issue tracker hosted/versioned in git (so issues are inherently tied to code in some way).

I haven't thought that concept all the way through, but it seems like the only way Jira fails me -- when I need to manually tie issues to commits (even though it can be as easy as using a hashtag).

Re: Ask HN: What would your ideal issue tracker look like?

#3

Post by sashk » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

Fast, good search and stable UI.

Re: Ask HN: What would your ideal issue tracker look like?

#4

Post by megous » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

No one size fits all and there's no ideal. Choice is necessary.

There are some universals though. Fast. I hate waiting 10s for page loads in Jira or anything really, if I'm searching for something.

Good data export. Jira is very good with this. You can get XML with all the information, IDs, relationships between things, comments, etc in a single call.

With this I can create a tool personalized for my particular use of the issue tracker, and only go to the issue tracker's website for non-routine tasks.

Re: Ask HN: What would your ideal issue tracker look like?

#5

Post by alangibson » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #4

No one size fits all and there's no ideal. Choice is necessary. There are some universals though. Fast. I hate waiting 10s for page loads in Jira or anything really, if I'm searching for something. Good data export. Jira is very good with this. You can get XML with all the information, IDs, relationships between things, comments, etc in a single call. With this I can create a tool personalized for my particular use o…

Totally agree on Jira's speed. Watching it creep toward a fully rendered page is what got me thinking about this.

I also find customization to be way more trouble than it should be. You basically have to hack it to add a template to the description field.

Re: Ask HN: What would your ideal issue tracker look like?

#6

Post by brayhite » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

A tool that all teams involved can effectively work in, or at least every stakeholder from each team can work in. Communication is incredibly vital, and if a tool gets in the way of that, or creates friction in clearly documenting what the next step is, it’s not worth the money or time.

Re: Ask HN: What would your ideal issue tracker look like?

#7

Post by noir_lord » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

Pure API with a trello like level of attention to the API (there API is fabulous).

Give devs the primitives to build their own without starting from scratch, my problem (me as sole programmer supporting software that 70 people use) is not the same as yours.

Re: Ask HN: What would your ideal issue tracker look like?

#8

Post by carter_harwood » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

Addition of offline/sync support would be great.

Re: Ask HN: What would your ideal issue tracker look like?

#9

Post by iamdeedubs » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

I'd like to have cli be a first class experience. Work offline. GUI for the pointy hairs.

Re: Ask HN: What would your ideal issue tracker look like?

#10

Post by whalesalad » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

I think it's Trello with an automation and management layer on top. Templates for preconfigured boards, workflows to add custom actions to a list or card, such as 'archive list to xyz board and rename to foo'.

Then combine that with some kind of inception where a card itself can be a board that you can "enter". This way when a single card gets too heavy, it becomes a board without all of the ceremony around that.