Jira Is a Microcosm of What’s Broken in Software Development • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by ensignavenger » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

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.

I've never agree to Atlassians terms of service, so I feel free to comment all I want. (Edit: I guess I don't use their cloud product, my employers stuff is all self-hosted, so maybe those terms don't even apply?)

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

#132

Post by desc » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

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…

This.

Jira is a framework for building something which approximates your actual processes.

> Justin said “I wish Atlassian would sit down with real-world developers and design this product the way we need it to work.”

The way 'you' need it to work. The process 'you' use. I suppose it's possible to build a business on creating a completely bespoke ticketing system for each company which uses one. Over time, that business might gravitate towards building a general toolkit which can be configured for each use case...

Oh look! Jira!

I'd bet that everyone's got their own distinct idea of where subtasks, ticket relations, etc actually fit in their workflow.

The article clearly exists to sell LinearB's product, which will of course work great for people who have the specific problems LinearB are solving with their product.

The rest of us will configure Jira within epsilon of 'works', then spend an afternoon reading about APIs and bash out our own automation service to update X different management tools appropriately for our workflows, and then go down the pub to bitch about management.

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

#133

Post by sufyanadam » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

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…

Pro-tip for engineers on spreadsheets: Org-mode & emacs is a great tool for the random spreadsheet you might want to scratch out to compare something or get some running totals or do cost-benefit analysis or whatever. Check out https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-lisp-... and https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/org.html...

I recently used it to find out how much a certain company owes me based on a monthly guarantee obligation they have continuously fallen short of . I've also used it to do comparisons and find out the maximum I can save on a refinance from different lenders etc, whether I should lease or purchase a car etc.. Very useful!

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

#134

Post by wolfgke » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

"This is the root of the issue. Jira was made with project managers and product managers in mind. Not dev teams. Project and product managers (collectively referred to as PMs going forward) are the primary buyers and owners of Jira. Not engineers.

Engineers love simplicity and efficiency. Jira is the polar opposite of that."

Why shouldn't project managers and product managers love efficiency, too? If the tools allows the engineers to do their work more efficiently, the development speeed of the team increases - this is what makes project managers and product managers look good.

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

#135

Post by outworlder » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

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…

> And if you don't want to be interrupted, then maybe keep your tickets up-to-date

My tickets are up to date. Doesn't matter, I'll still get asked about them.

> or proactively communicate risks

Then you are not a team player and such negativity is frowned upon.

> or sign out of Slack for a few hours

While working from home? Are you even working if you are offline?

> or get your manager to do their job better and be a buffer to protect you from interruptions.

Oh yeah. Because telling your superior to do a better job is an outstanding thing to do for your long term work prospects.

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

#136

Post by outworlder » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

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…

> and listening to everybody else's unrelated statuses

This so much. Status meetings tend to follow the org's structure, which is not necessarily logical.

Yes, it is occasionally helpful to listen to something completely unrelated if you have a better perspective. But every day? Waste of time.

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

#137

Post by devnull255 » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 8:15 PM UTC

At the company I currently work for, Jira has become yet another opportunity to engage in metrics abuse. Probably because Jira makes it easy to create reports and dashboards that are more useful for managers than for delivering software.

The company, which has "committed" itself to "embracing agile", has implemented some new employee performance policies which clearly demonstrate those decision makers don't know wtf agile is. One such policy is tying performance to "individual velocity" or story points per sprint per individual completed. Some managers, especially my current manager, care more about individual velocity than what velocity is supposed to be used for.

Consequently, developers can be raked over the coals if their individual velocity dips below a pre-determined number. When my manager confronted me with my lackluster individual velocity over the last few sprints (shown by a Jira report), I first tried to convince him that team velocity mattered more and that it was supposed to be a metric used for planning work for a sprint, not as a forecast metric. I tried to get him to see that velocity for everyone would improve when we got better at prioritizing and creating stories that allowed us to deliver value each sprint. It would also help too if we could function better as a team. But he wouldn't have any of that. I just had to improve my personal velocity.

So I learned how to use Jira better. I created pointed stories in the backlog I knew I could finish in a sprint and meet my forecasted velocity. The next time my manager ran his Jira report, he remarked on the improvement. The amount of work I actually did didn't change, but my individual velocity did.

While I agree with the premise of the OP about Jira. I would go even further than just Jira and say that today, proficiency and mastery of any tool used in the software development lifecycle seems to be more important than knowing how to do software development right.

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

#138

Post by vosper » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #135

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…

> And if you don't want to be interrupted, then maybe keep your tickets up-to-date My tickets are up to date. Doesn't matter, I'll still get asked about them. > or proactively communicate risks Then you are not a team player and such negativity is frowned upon. > or sign out of Slack for a few hours While working from home? Are you even working if you are offline? > or get your manager to do their job better and be a…

> telling your superior to do a better job is an outstanding thing to do for your long term work prospects.

I would hope there's a way to approach that conversation which doesn't involve telling your manager to "do a better job", but which still gets the outcome you're looking for :)

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

#139

Post by moretta » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

frobozz wrote: post #114

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…

Yes. I've used Jira for years and never understood the hate. The only times I have had real problems have been with particular idiosyncratic configurations or conventions that someone at my end has put in.

I feel like the classic UI was a massive pain for configuring workflows, fields and other tasks which also fuelled a lot of the hate. But in the new version at least it's much better IMO.

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

#140

Post by idj » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 8:22 PM UTC

While you do have some valid points, especially when it comes to friction between PM/Devs, the way you seem to be using Jira seems to be the polar opposite of what I have experienced.

Granted, I don't have an overwhelming amount of experience working at different companies, but I feel like the Devs in my company were actually the ones that wanted to use Jira for customization options.

Intriguing!