Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Tara – A smart and free alternative to Jira

tara.ai

161–170 of 182 posts

Re: Show HN: Tara – A smart and free alternative to Jira

#161
post #2

Hey folks. My co-founder and I started noodling on productivity tools a few years ago. After interviewing 250+ engineers and founders, we discovered that most project management software a) takes a lot of time to configure b) is not built for cross-functional teams and c) takes away focus from the release cycle. The status quo is that engineers spend precious time wading through tickets, and EMs + PMs continue to lac…

I've never worked in a place that had 'release cycles'. Maybe it's just me, but maybe not. So I'm glad that Jira doesn't force its 'release cycle' shenanigans on me. Like with git, not being opinionated is the road to success.

Yes, sounds like something a bored project manager would "invent" to feel in control.

Re: Show HN: Tara – A smart and free alternative to Jira

#162

I wish I could be off of Jira and all of Atlassian. Sadly, that is not my decision to make. Atlassian's antics with Jira, Confluence, and BitBucket have really started to make me mad. Jira is changing it's editor... slowly. The old editor had nice shortcuts, like h1. - h6., {code}, {blockquote} etc. When you create a ticket - it's the old editor, but when you edit a ticket or write a comment, it's the new editor! Thi…

it seems to me that often the people who decide whether to use Atlassian products aren't actually using them personally...

Definitely. From a buyer’s perspective, Atlassian is awesome. It checks every single box of requirements a development team could give to an “IT department”.

Re: Show HN: Tara – A smart and free alternative to Jira

#163
post #2

Hey folks. My co-founder and I started noodling on productivity tools a few years ago. After interviewing 250+ engineers and founders, we discovered that most project management software a) takes a lot of time to configure b) is not built for cross-functional teams and c) takes away focus from the release cycle. The status quo is that engineers spend precious time wading through tickets, and EMs + PMs continue to lac…

I've never worked in a place that had 'release cycles'. Maybe it's just me, but maybe not. So I'm glad that Jira doesn't force its 'release cycle' shenanigans on me. Like with git, not being opinionated is the road to success.

I work at a place with mobile apps. You can't continuously release a new app update every day so a release cycle is useful for structuring when we're going to ship, when qa starts to test, and having deliverable dates in anticipation of app store/play store approvers (couple days)

Re: Show HN: Tara – A smart and free alternative to Jira

#164
post #134

Kudos for the release! This comment might seem counterintuitive, but I think Tara's adoption would grow a lot if you offer a way to sync or import from JIRA. JIRA sprint planning is painful. In my current company, we use it, and its shortcomings shape our way of working. I.e., not able to link histories' subtasks to a sprint, causing that the backlog is full of long histories, and you need to go looking around to see…

Thanks! A few quick thoughts: - We've done exactly this for Github Tara. We have a bi-directional sync with Github issues, and active issues are converted into tasks in Tara. Basically, if a user wanted to, they could just use Tara as a Github issue tracker. - We wanted to start with Github, then work our way through more git/source control platforms, and then move to Jira. Interestingly, structuring incoming data fr…

It makes sense that you started with Github. I agree too that Jira's data structure is a mess. I've managed one instance for years and any update was a whole mess on itself.

I think the sync configuration should be quick, something that can be bootstrapped like Trello integration with an export artifact.

About mapping for histories, it should be 1-to-1 and each spec to be a list point or a subtask. Nothing fancy nor complex if Tara is the main source of truth, leaving Jira as a way for non-tech users to report issues.

Re: Show HN: Tara – A smart and free alternative to Jira

#167
post #157
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.phacility.com/

Having come from a JIRA/Github/Confluence setup in my previous role to a Phabricator setup in my current role, I can't believe I'm saying this but I'd give anything to have JIRA back.

Would you like to elaborate? I haven't properly used Phabricator yet, but have so far had no problem (maybe even a bit of joy) browsing https://phabricator.kde.org/

Re: Show HN: Tara – A smart and free alternative to Jira

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that Jira first adds a lot of restraints and red tape, and then makes those highly configurable. I prefer tools that don't have the constraints in the first place. Ie if in the middle of the sprint a developer finds that some tickets are stuck waiting for some other team and he wants a column on the board to make that visible, he should just be able to add the column. In Jira if I accidentally put the wrong is…

Re: the board thing, Jira has actually been trying to solve this problem for years now with a concept called Simplified Workflows. [1] This allows the project admin to create Statuses and adjust their workflow without needing to get a Jira admin involved. The problem with this approach is that every project does something completely different (often times even multiple teams within a project use different processes)…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Tara – A smart and free alternative to Jira

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that Jira first adds a lot of restraints and red tape, and then makes those highly configurable. I prefer tools that don't have the constraints in the first place. Ie if in the middle of the sprint a developer finds that some tickets are stuck waiting for some other team and he wants a column on the board to make that visible, he should just be able to add the column. In Jira if I accidentally put the wrong is…

Re: the board thing, Jira has actually been trying to solve this problem for years now with a concept called Simplified Workflows. [1] This allows the project admin to create Statuses and adjust their workflow without needing to get a Jira admin involved. The problem with this approach is that every project does something completely different (often times even multiple teams within a project use different processes)…

That's what we tried (our teams are self-organizing, as they are in Scrum, so we couldn't do it another way) but the things the teams wanted had hardly any consistency (partly because the products and projects are very different, partly because of the people).

Re: Show HN: Tara – A smart and free alternative to Jira

#170
post #2

Hey folks. My co-founder and I started noodling on productivity tools a few years ago. After interviewing 250+ engineers and founders, we discovered that most project management software a) takes a lot of time to configure b) is not built for cross-functional teams and c) takes away focus from the release cycle. The status quo is that engineers spend precious time wading through tickets, and EMs + PMs continue to lac…

It's free and you're hiring people at the same time -- makes me wonder about your business model (or other goals?)
Post reply on HN