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Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

zepel.io

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Re: Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

#41

Post by actionscripted »

marpstar wrote: post #36

I've been evaluating PM/bug-tracker apps lately. I'm in a unique scenario, maybe an interested party could give me some guidance: I build WP sites for a local design agency (my client) who designs the theme for their client. I have 2-3 subcontractors that I work with to build these sites. Building the site needs to be managed like a "project". Once launched, I want to give my client AND their client the ability to cr…

You might give ActiveCollab a shot. I've spent 16 years going through various project/product management systems and it's one of the only ones that springs to mind when you mention sharing client access like that and trying to keep things user-friendly.

That said, if you're using the service desk stuff from Jira I might stay with it. I understand the pain of having to administer Jira and how it creates project-specific EVERYTHING on the backend (workflows, et al.) but it's great for end users and it's super flexible.

Re: Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

#42

Post by gauthamshankar »

bachmeier wrote: post #40

How does one get their data out? Why should someone put their data inside what appears to be a walled garden that might go bankrupt?

We have an export option available. You can download an HTML, text or JSON dump of your data. We will also be releasing our public API's soon, so you can use that to export your data anytime.

Re: Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

#43

Post by rpedela »

crsv wrote: post #38

As someone running a software product team, we've made the decision to get as close to the developer process as possible with our product management tools. We've recently started doing everything in Github using Github projects, which honestly is really usable. It's kind of put me in a mindset where I'm not sure why I would ever pay for a separate product management tool as I can do most of my critical things with Gi…

You may like Clubhouse.io then. Clubhouse feels like I am using Github when committing code and automatically updating issues which I love. But it also has the higher level project management tools Github is missing.

To Zepel team: I think you are off to a great start. Personally, I would like to see more information about the Github integration on your marketing pages. Since I don't know the Github integration details (or couldn't find them), make it feel like I am using Github Issues when I commit code on the command-line just like Clubhouse has.

Re: Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

#44

Post by bachmeier »

gauthamshankar wrote: post #42
bachmeier wrote: post #40

How does one get their data out? Why should someone put their data inside what appears to be a walled garden that might go bankrupt?

We have an export option available. You can download an HTML, text or JSON dump of your data. We will also be releasing our public API's soon, so you can use that to export your data anytime.

Okay. I didn't see that in the FAQ.

Re: Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

#45

Post by MegaButts »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

This looks nice and sleek, I hope it improved upon the pain points of Jira and builds upon new strengths. The thing that kills me about Jira is the inconsistency I experience between projects. Everybody sets it up differently, and work based off entirely different views and contexts. It is exhausting and there's always too much friction. Maybe managers love it cause they got more time to waste on tools like Jira than…

I'll be the first to admit that as a whole, Jira is poorly used. That said, it's surprisingly powerful software. It's just that nobody takes the time to learn how to use it properly. Think of how shitty your first massive OOP language project was. Think of how different coding schemas and practices are between companies. Now realize that over the years, better and best practices have started to be established. Obviously mastering Jira isn't the same as mastering C++, but it actually is a skill that takes months or even years to develop. So it sounds like what you're really complaining about is that the Jira admins and program managers at your company are just not good at their job.

I think it should take approximately 5 seconds for an engineer to progress their tickets. And generally speaking, engineers shouldn't be cloning tickets in Jira without training first (even then I would discourage it, but I don't have enough context). Jira isn't user friendly but neither is C++. Once people experience a well run Jira shop (I think most people have just never seen it because in my experience it's shockingly rare) they realize it's actually useful. The problem is the people in charge of Jira usually suck. And that's a much harder problem to fix.

Re: Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

#46

Post by 19ylram49 »

Speaking from experience, JIRA is just horrible (at least for me as a software engineer and entrepreneur). I’ve wasted way too much of my precious time dealing with JIRA, so I’m all for any software company working to improve that experience. I’ll be trying out Zepel once I have a moment!

Re: Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

#48

Post by jrudolph »

Kudos for a refreshing take on software project management. This hits a nerve with me - taming JIRA is a royal PITA (couldn't help the 4 letter acronyms, sorry). Especially if you don't have time to combing your backlog all day.

Nonetheless, we have found that JIRA can scale nicely from simple to more complex workflows if you take the time to set it up/customize the workflows. But a "Feature Oriented" view that allows me to easily track progress on concurrently progressing streams of work (larger than a single epic) is sorely missing. We tried to come by with Portfolio and Structure for JIRA (both are plugins) but they feel somewhat awkward to use as they require tons of clicks for simple things.

Zepel looks like a great idea. However, JIRA is already so embedded in our workflow (thanks to bitbucket integration, ticket bots/plugins etc.)... I'd love to have something like "Github Projects" which sits on top of my normal GH issues but allows me to roll them up. Concourse for example is a nice example of using this effectively: https://github.com/concourse/concourse/projects

Anyone have a recommendation for a tool/plugin that can do this?

Re: Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

#49

Post by seehafer »

jrudolph wrote: post #48

Kudos for a refreshing take on software project management. This hits a nerve with me - taming JIRA is a royal PITA (couldn't help the 4 letter acronyms, sorry). Especially if you don't have time to combing your backlog all day. Nonetheless, we have found that JIRA can scale nicely from simple to more complex workflows if you take the time to set it up/customize the workflows. But a "Feature Oriented" view that allow…

https://www.zenhub.com/

Re: Show HN: Zepel, a Jira alternative for product teams

#50

Post by 23andwalnut »

marpstar wrote: post #36

I've been evaluating PM/bug-tracker apps lately. I'm in a unique scenario, maybe an interested party could give me some guidance: I build WP sites for a local design agency (my client) who designs the theme for their client. I have 2-3 subcontractors that I work with to build these sites. Building the site needs to be managed like a "project". Once launched, I want to give my client AND their client the ability to cr…

Duet can definitely do this. It's self hosted though- http://duetapp.com

Let me know what you think (I'm the developer)

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