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A critique of project management software

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Re: A critique of project management software

#61

Post by travisjungroth »

correstco wrote: post #48

I just logged into HN to mention Todoist. I have a hobby of trying out different project management software and I even went back to a pen and paper notebook for a while. But I’ve become a huge fan and advocate of Todoist. So lightweight yet very flexible. *sorry if this sounds like a marketing message. I don’t work for the company or know anyone that does. I’m not invested in the company other than a happy customer.

I've been a serious Todoist user for years. I even built an extension app[1]. Todoist wins on number and ease of interfaces. Today I've used it on a desktop app, web app, phone, watch and CLI. It totally loses on complex cases (many people, subprojects, dependencies, integrations). I've found that using it with just one other person (an assistant) is stretching it, and a team is right out.

[1]https://habitsfortodoist.com/

Re: A critique of project management software

#62

Post by vosper »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #17

My biggest problem with using these tools is mandates forced by someone in the company that no one on my team has ever met. As another commenter pointed out, I just want a big checklist, with sub check lists, and a handful of properties, that i can create update and delete at will. Instead of being a tool to help us do our job more efficiently, it has become a source of busy work, that requires extra employees to use…

IME this is a problem of policy, not of Jira. Empower teams to administer their own Jira projects and it’s fine. But if you lock Jira down and make people beg to some distant and aloof gatekeeper every time they want to change anything, then it’s a recipe for frustration.

Having IT own Jira administration is great for IT job security and terrible for everyone else.

(Note: old Jira absolutely encouraged a one-size-fits-all approach to administration. Everything was done with the assumption that it would be cross-project, which created a morass of assigning things things. “New” Jira project are more self-contained, and so much easier to configure)

Re: A critique of project management software

#63

Post by jrockway »

jmfldn wrote: post #12

Jira in particular is everything I dislike in software. It's feature bloated, overly complex and yet, despite the overwhelming complexity, it's hard to shape to your needs very often. I want something much much simpler. Stick to the worse is better approach and adhere closer to the philosophy of doing one thing well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better?wprov=sfla1

How do they make it so slow, is my question. I've seen my computer do physics simulations synchronized with 11 other players, updating my screen 360 times a second and my headphones 48,000 times a second. But then JIRA takes 5 seconds to say "you have 3 bugs open". How is it even possible? Like what code do you type in to make it run so slowly? It boggles my mind.

Re: A critique of project management software

#64

Post by robertlagrant »

vosper wrote: post #62
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #17

My biggest problem with using these tools is mandates forced by someone in the company that no one on my team has ever met. As another commenter pointed out, I just want a big checklist, with sub check lists, and a handful of properties, that i can create update and delete at will. Instead of being a tool to help us do our job more efficiently, it has become a source of busy work, that requires extra employees to use…

IME this is a problem of policy, not of Jira. Empower teams to administer their own Jira projects and it’s fine. But if you lock Jira down and make people beg to some distant and aloof gatekeeper every time they want to change anything, then it’s a recipe for frustration. Having IT own Jira administration is great for IT job security and terrible for everyone else. (Note: old Jira absolutely encouraged a one-size-fit…

Yes, this. I wasn't recognising anyone's problems with Jira, and this is probably why.

Re: A critique of project management software

#65

Post by robertlagrant »

ElFitz wrote: post #56
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #17

My biggest problem with using these tools is mandates forced by someone in the company that no one on my team has ever met. As another commenter pointed out, I just want a big checklist, with sub check lists, and a handful of properties, that i can create update and delete at will. Instead of being a tool to help us do our job more efficiently, it has become a source of busy work, that requires extra employees to use…

Yeah. Another of the issues is that it’s picked by people who (supposedly) chose the right tool for them, without considering wether or not it was optimised for those actually doing the tasks. At least that’s how I ended up with boards that absolutely didn’t match my workflow and required me to copy / paste tasks from one board to the other to pass it off to the next step (QA), with QA feedback via Slack. That’s not…

It's possible to misconfigure any tool, that's for sure.

Re: A critique of project management software

#66

Post by timoth3y »

I think the fundamental problem with project management software is poorly defined scope.

There are features that involve project and portfolio-level reporting, forecasting, task assignment, feature definition, change-request management, team collaboration, etc.

All of these are important, but maybe bundling is not the right answer at this point.

I think that's why do much discussion comes down to "feature debate". Users talking about features they hate in their PM software and new software explaining they don't have those features.

It's a discussion focused on reducing pain rather than productive benefit.

It would be good to rethink what we really want from PM software, specifically, and how to optimize one or two core use cases.

This is not criticism of Wormhole. It might be a great software, but it follows the same pattern of discussion "You know all those features you hate in your current PM software? Well, this software doesn't have those features."

I don't want software that just sucks less. I want software that makes my life better.

Re: A critique of project management software

#67

Post by justinpage »

jrockway wrote: post #63
jmfldn wrote: post #12

Jira in particular is everything I dislike in software. It's feature bloated, overly complex and yet, despite the overwhelming complexity, it's hard to shape to your needs very often. I want something much much simpler. Stick to the worse is better approach and adhere closer to the philosophy of doing one thing well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better?wprov=sfla1

How do they make it so slow, is my question. I've seen my computer do physics simulations synchronized with 11 other players, updating my screen 360 times a second and my headphones 48,000 times a second. But then JIRA takes 5 seconds to say "you have 3 bugs open". How is it even possible? Like what code do you type in to make it run so slowly? It boggles my mind.

I've asked myself the same question many times.

I wonder if Jira inevitably becomes slower, overtime, as customers add configuration they deem necessary. Jira, having multiple options available, will happily accommodate it without considering optimization as a boundary. A vanilla instance of Jira, more than likely, outperforms any custom configuration a customer will eventually apply.

But that's just one theory.

Re: A critique of project management software

#68

Post by Kinrany »

ravenstine wrote: post #3

I've used Jira, Pivotal Tracker, Trello, Asana, Zenhub, and other project management software that was written internally. In my opinion, based on my needs on every project I've worked on, I've yet to use a project management software that did anything better than a simple Trello board or the like. At the end of the day, I want a list of tasks, a way to indicate the status on the task, a discussion section for the ta…

Task management seems simple enough that it should be doable on a general-purpose Google Sheets-like minimally programmable shared platform. If only we had one.

Re: A critique of project management software

#69

Post by qudat »

timoth3y wrote: post #66

I think the fundamental problem with project management software is poorly defined scope. There are features that involve project and portfolio-level reporting, forecasting, task assignment, feature definition, change-request management, team collaboration, etc. All of these are important, but maybe bundling is not the right answer at this point. I think that's why do much discussion comes down to "feature debate". U…

Thanks for the feedback!

> It would be good to rethink what we really want from PM software, specifically, and how to optimize one or two core use cases.

I love this line of thinking. What do you really want from PM software?

Re: A critique of project management software

#70

Post by qudat »

correstco wrote: post #48

I just logged into HN to mention Todoist. I have a hobby of trying out different project management software and I even went back to a pen and paper notebook for a while. But I’ve become a huge fan and advocate of Todoist. So lightweight yet very flexible. *sorry if this sounds like a marketing message. I don’t work for the company or know anyone that does. I’m not invested in the company other than a happy customer.

I also use Todoist and love it! Do you use it in a team environment?
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