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

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

#121

Post by xmprt »

commandlinefan wrote: post #116
MattGaiser wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cool. If you have a spreadsheet that's longer-lived than a few hours, you should probably evaluate whether you're adopting the best approach. You can replace a blown fuse with a penny, too, but you should probably call an electrician instead.

Building/buying a new tool for a job that a spreadsheet can do just as easily because of your hard rule on long-lived spreadsheets feels like a huge waste of company resources.

Your penny analogy is contrived because a penny isn't remotely close to working like a fuse and a mistake can be deadly. No one is going to die if you use a spreadsheet instead of Jira for project tracking.

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

#122

Post by Tagbert »

pianoben wrote: post #58

I recognize that this is a marketing blog, but it blames Jira for what are really culture problems and/or bad management practices. This is an emblematic quote: Take subtasks, for example. The invention of Jira subtasks is an affront to dev teams. Clearly someone who has never spoken to an engineer on a dev team created it. It’s the least dev-friendly way possible to get insight into what’s happening with a Jira stor…

As a PM, I have no interest in sub tasks. I’ve got enough to do to track at an Epic and Feature/story level. If a dev team wants to use sub tasks to track their process, go for it. If not, I don’t care.

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

#123

Post by rabidrat »

vosper wrote: post #92

> This blog is not about how Jira is too complex and over-engineered with features I don’t need. This blogpost is a microcosm of engineer arrogance (it's also an ad for their product, so all of this is basically a strawman to drive sign-ups. Great content marketing, to bash on a tool people love to hate). The world is not all about engineers. Jira is a tool for whole companies, which have lots of other departments th…

> get your manager to do their job better

"This arrogant engineer I manage just told me how to do my job better! I've already assigned them 14 story points in JIRA, what more do they want me to do?"

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

#124

Post by rundmc »

Having been away from development tools for fintechs for a while I went back to my trusted Jira tool to find it incomprehensible. I also tried & quickly hated Teams & even current Slack. My new go-to tool that anyone in our org or from partners can use immediately is AirSend.io.

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

#125

Post by xmprt »

commandlinefan wrote: post #113
vosper wrote: post #92

> This blog is not about how Jira is too complex and over-engineered with features I don’t need. This blogpost is a microcosm of engineer arrogance (it's also an ad for their product, so all of this is basically a strawman to drive sign-ups. Great content marketing, to bash on a tool people love to hate). The world is not all about engineers. Jira is a tool for whole companies, which have lots of other departments th…

> engineer arrogance And this is the twilight-zone reality that software developers are forever stuck in: Manager: "I need you to integrate the TPS reports with JIRA for a client" Developer: "Ok, I can look into that" Manager: "How long is that going to take? Put some story points on the JIRA task." Developer: "Well, I've never done that before, so I'll have to do some research and I can't really say for sure-" Manag…

I've never seen a manager operate like that and if yours does then you should look into moving.

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

#126

Post by vosper »

commandlinefan wrote: post #113
vosper wrote: post #92

> This blog is not about how Jira is too complex and over-engineered with features I don’t need. This blogpost is a microcosm of engineer arrogance (it's also an ad for their product, so all of this is basically a strawman to drive sign-ups. Great content marketing, to bash on a tool people love to hate). The world is not all about engineers. Jira is a tool for whole companies, which have lots of other departments th…

> engineer arrogance And this is the twilight-zone reality that software developers are forever stuck in: Manager: "I need you to integrate the TPS reports with JIRA for a client" Developer: "Ok, I can look into that" Manager: "How long is that going to take? Put some story points on the JIRA task." Developer: "Well, I've never done that before, so I'll have to do some research and I can't really say for sure-" Manag…

I believe that this kind of work environment must exist, because it's such a strong trope, but honestly I've never really worked in a place like this. I'm sorry for people who do, and who feel stuck there. Not all software engineering is like this.

But if I had a work environment like this, I would be blaming management, and not Jira.

And I should have been clear: not many engineers are actually "how dare you interrupt me, I'm an ENGINEER" types, in my experience.

But I guess I've seen enough blog posts that are so precious about being a software engineer, and so (perhaps unintentionally) dismissive of other people in the org who are also trying to do their jobs, that I probably got triggered a little.

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

#127

Post by commandlinefan »

xmprt wrote: post #125
commandlinefan wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> engineer arrogance And this is the twilight-zone reality that software developers are forever stuck in: Manager: "I need you to integrate the TPS reports with JIRA for a client" Developer: "Ok, I can look into that" Manager: "How long is that going to take? Put some story points on the JIRA task." Developer: "Well, I've never done that before, so I'll have to do some research and I can't really say for sure-" Manag…

I've never seen a manager operate like that and if yours does then you should look into moving.

Maybe I've had a 30-year string of bad luck.

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

#128

Post by natchy »

yishaibeeri wrote: post #117
natchy wrote: post #112

> The current software delivery process revolves around pushing decisions down to dev teams and forcing engineers to push status updates back up. This system ensures executives are the only ones who have context and can see the bigger picture while engineers do all of the work. > This is backwards. It holds us back from building the best product and slows us down from delivering faster. Thats engineering. If you don'…

> Thats engineering. ... Engineering really doesn't have to be like that. I've worked for companies where the leaders took care to push context down, not decisions. When done right, results are very tangible, and (most) of the devs much happier. A few devs struggle and feel lost - probably the ones you want least on your team.

> push context down, not decisions

whats the difference? either way the context or decision is defined by someone else, and you're still the one swinging the hammer.

I actually think there's a major problem in engineering where many don't take charge of their lives and want to guide the decisions. Its a weird Stockholm syndrome love-affair with being the engineer. Idealism is also a problem ("it doesn't have to be like that.").

> (most) of the devs much happier

yeah, but not the ambitious ones I was talking about.

I'm not knocking engineering, I'm saying it's a stepping stone in your career, and not a long term place if you want to influence trajectory within a company.

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

#129

Post by xmprt »

ceocoder wrote: post #53
laurent92 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is from Atlassian's ToS (d) incorporate any Cloud Products into a product or service you provide to a third party; does this mean that I can't integrate JIRA into a ticket tracking workflow that I build for my product with IFTTT that creates a new ticket when someone sends an email to a support alias? (e) interfere with or otherwise circumvent mechanisms in the Cloud Products intended to limit your use; (f) reve…

Does that mean hackernews could be sued by Jira for allowing this thread to stay up (assuming they use Jira internally and signed the ToS)?
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