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Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development

linearb.io

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Re: Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development

#101

Post by Hovertruck »

laurent92 wrote: post #19
cj wrote: post #3

I spend hours per day in Jira. Half as a PM, and the other half as an IC. I've never used Jira Classic, so can't comment there. But Jira Next Gen projects have been great to work with. So much functionality and bloat is stripped out of Next Gen, sometimes too much was removed I think. I hear people hating on Jira very often, but at least the way our company uses it, it's great. The only thing I'd really want to chang…

> performance By Atlassian’s ToS, you are not allowed to « comment on the performance of the products ». I know no-one thinks this would be enforced here, but I just want to highlight that it doesn’t help a company to improve if they know they can just lawyer-up a problem away and avoid benchmarks and being compared on that topic.

Ha, this just reminded me that back in... 2009 or 2010, I tweeted something about being frustrated with JIRA and within an hour I had a message from someone at Atlassian warning me that I was in violation. I think I deleted the tweet, I wish I could go back and revisit it.

Re: Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development

#102

Post by commandlinefan »

tensor wrote: post #14

"Though I think of Jira more like a spreadsheet. Very useful once upon a time. Outdated now. Static. Manual." This statement is so blatantly wrong that it actually put me off even reading the rest. Spreadsheets are stronger than they've ever been and are never going away, let alone being "outdated." Sure there are products that claim to be "the next spreadsheet" but most of those actually serve a different purpose: n…

I think he means a spreadsheet for the purposes of tracking software project progress. Although honestly, if you have a spreadsheet that's longer-lived than a few hours, you should probably evaluate whether you're adopting the best approach.

Re: Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development

#103

Post by kstrauser »

I don't have a problem with Jira directly. It's not great, but I've yet to find a project manager that's amazing so I can't say it's substantially better or worse than the alternatives.

That said, I really don't want to work with a PM who loves Jira. It's so flexible and configurable that it seems to really call out to a certain type of PM who adores adding lots of process for the sake of itself. Can we make a 43 step workflow starting with "preliminarily claimed the task", "read the requirements sheet", "read the associated documentation", "opened an editor", "ran 'git pull'", "created a new branch", etc. etc. etc.? You bet we can! I've worked with PMs who really wanted that level of granular visibility into project status, even though it greatly slowed down the work of actually getting stuff done.

So in my experience, you have PMs who love Jira because it gives them a level of control that I absolutely don't want to be involved with, and PMs who think Jira is "eh - it's alright". Atlassian's problem with the latter is that they're just as likely to say "eh, Pivotal is alright too".

There needs to be a Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for software development: measuring a process is guaranteed to slow it down, so there's a spectrum between "fast chaos" and "corporate paralysis" that you have to consciously select for, and you don't get to pretend that "fast and tracked to the tiniest detail" is something that's possible.

(Side note: Confluence died for me the day a new version removed the option of editing page markup directly. Up until then, I had a workflow that converted Python module documentation to Confluence wiki markup and uploaded it. When that went away, I vowed never to use it again until it came back. Has it come back?)

Re: Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development

#104

Post by csneeky »

After working on more than 20 green field projects over the 25+ years I've been a software engineer I can tell you that yes... all SDLC management tools suck at times, but also can be a great part of something very productive. It's how much they are tailored to the needs of the team and how practical their consumption is. I've been a part of projects where JIRA is a nightmare and part of projects where it is a blessing. Same goes for Trello, Asana, Confluence, "just github", etc.

I've also used JIRA where it is ONLY managed by the engineers and also when it is owned and managed by large teams of non-engineering stakeholders.

My 2-cents: When a project isn't going well it's the team that is deficient, not the software, in 99% of cases. Most of these tools can be customized (and combined with other tools if needed) to create something that works... and this varies on a project by project basis. It's not about the tool... it's about how pragmatic and adaptive a team can be as they apply them. Panaceas do not exist in this problem space.

Re: Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development

#105

Post by tus88 »

Yes. I remember the first time I encountered Jira, I assumed we would just login and start created cards and tasks etc.

Except the first meeting we were introduced to a "consultant" who needed to "design" our process flow before we could do anything.

I went back to Trac needless to say.

Re: Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development

#107

Post by MattGaiser »

commandlinefan wrote: post #102
tensor wrote: post #14

"Though I think of Jira more like a spreadsheet. Very useful once upon a time. Outdated now. Static. Manual." This statement is so blatantly wrong that it actually put me off even reading the rest. Spreadsheets are stronger than they've ever been and are never going away, let alone being "outdated." Sure there are products that claim to be "the next spreadsheet" but most of those actually serve a different purpose: n…

I think he means a spreadsheet for the purposes of tracking software project progress. Although honestly, if you have a spreadsheet that's longer-lived than a few hours, you should probably evaluate whether you're adopting the best approach.

If you are not a developer, spreadsheets are a tool that lets you get similar capability in many cases. It is basically no-code for accountants, portfolio managers, and non software engineers.

Re: Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development

#108

Post by tmountain »

tensor wrote: post #14

"Though I think of Jira more like a spreadsheet. Very useful once upon a time. Outdated now. Static. Manual." This statement is so blatantly wrong that it actually put me off even reading the rest. Spreadsheets are stronger than they've ever been and are never going away, let alone being "outdated." Sure there are products that claim to be "the next spreadsheet" but most of those actually serve a different purpose: n…

I agree. Spreadsheets are an incredible tool that have stood the test of time. Taking that declaration one sentence farther, they are one of the greatest success stories regarding bringing functional programming into the business world in a way that emphasizes simplicity.

Re: Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development

#109

Post by foobarian »

nooyurrsdey wrote: post #57

I've never understood the hatred for JIRA - it includes a ton of features that many find useful. Yeah it's a PM tool but you need the ability to organize boards and workflows at scale in larger organizations. It's not a tool intended for your startup that can manage with Trello or Github Projects. This reads like the usual developer's opinion of "the world is not built for me" and "I don't like it if developers aren'…

It's not just a PM tool. There are hundreds of examples at our company where e.g. developers documented various tasks in Jira tickets including steps to take, commands to run, things to watch out for, that benefited me greatly. Sometimes the original developer is no longer at the company, and yet I can find the information in a ticket. Our Jira installation is more like a shared brain than a PM tool.

Re: Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development

#110

Post by hansvm »

laurent92 wrote: post #19
cj wrote: post #3

I spend hours per day in Jira. Half as a PM, and the other half as an IC. I've never used Jira Classic, so can't comment there. But Jira Next Gen projects have been great to work with. So much functionality and bloat is stripped out of Next Gen, sometimes too much was removed I think. I hear people hating on Jira very often, but at least the way our company uses it, it's great. The only thing I'd really want to chang…

> performance By Atlassian’s ToS, you are not allowed to « comment on the performance of the products ». I know no-one thinks this would be enforced here, but I just want to highlight that it doesn’t help a company to improve if they know they can just lawyer-up a problem away and avoid benchmarks and being compared on that topic.

Haha, in addition to all the BS in their terms of service, I had a delightful experience the other day where they argued tooth and nail that they aren't subject to CCPA deletion requests if they give your username away, and at this point I've just been stonewalled.

Just speculating, I bet they've decided a lawsuit would be cheaper than figuring out how their spaghetti code works to be able to safely delete a few fields.

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