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I fucking hate Jira

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101–110 of 539 posts

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#102

I feel like hating on Jira is the pastime that is now passed down from each generation of programmers to the next. I'm going to stick up for Jira. I certainly don't "love" Jira, though I do think they've made significant improvements with "new Jira" (I think they call them team-managed projects now). The problem I have with the incessant Jira bitching is that I rarely feel that bitchers have a true understanding for…

> "Jira is the worst project management tool, except for all the others"

I came here to say precisely this. In addition to Jira, I've used Clubhouse, Trello, monday.com, and GitHub Issues. Jira sucks slightly less than the alternatives I've used.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#103
post #4

I wish the comments were more specific about which features they don’t like. For me a particularly frustrating aspect is the way the UI moves around a lot. I’m quite anxious to click anything until all the loading spinners have stopped in case I click the wrong thing. Then I could be taken to a page or feature I’ve never seen before. Also it’s really annoying when I try to copy something from a ticket description but…

> Also it’s really annoying when I try to copy something from a ticket description but it starts editing the whole description field.

+1. Absolute garbage interface.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#104

I feel like hating on Jira is the pastime that is now passed down from each generation of programmers to the next. I'm going to stick up for Jira. I certainly don't "love" Jira, though I do think they've made significant improvements with "new Jira" (I think they call them team-managed projects now). The problem I have with the incessant Jira bitching is that I rarely feel that bitchers have a true understanding for…

> I do think they've made significant improvements with "new Jira" (I think they call them team-managed projects now).

I feel totally the opposite. If you've ever had to administer Jira at a large company than team-managed projects are the bane of your existence. If you think, there's even a small chance that your company will grow to 300+ engineers any time in the next several years then do yourself a favor and turn off team managed projects entirely or else you'll face a painful migration away from them.

Though I will generally defend Jira as a product for many of the reasons you said.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#105

I feel like hating on Jira is the pastime that is now passed down from each generation of programmers to the next. I'm going to stick up for Jira. I certainly don't "love" Jira, though I do think they've made significant improvements with "new Jira" (I think they call them team-managed projects now). The problem I have with the incessant Jira bitching is that I rarely feel that bitchers have a true understanding for…

I'm on the same page as you, I don't love Jira either, it's not something I think about in the conversation of "software/services I enjoy using" - but I think it's _fine_.

Jira cloud in our organisation is also reasonably fast, the front end can be a bit janky sometimes, but overall considering the complexity of the application, it's not too bad.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#106
post #4

I wish the comments were more specific about which features they don’t like. For me a particularly frustrating aspect is the way the UI moves around a lot. I’m quite anxious to click anything until all the loading spinners have stopped in case I click the wrong thing. Then I could be taken to a page or feature I’ve never seen before. Also it’s really annoying when I try to copy something from a ticket description but…

> I wish the comments were more specific about which features they don’t like. I have a very specific complaint: the ease which all sorts of custom fields can be added for _everyone_. Sales will want to add a field to hold their contract status. Lo and behold, engineering now has it. It can be done in the proper way, but it seems that doing it at a global level is easier since that's how multiple Jira installations a…

I had a similar thought: Jira is very customizable; if people hate something that is so customizable then part of what they're hating is the organizations customization of it.

I've seen the same thing at multiple companies. Someone comes up with a Jira workflow, it doesn't match the needs of some people, but the company wants to standardize on that workflow, so now people are stuck using a stupid workflow that doesn't work for them. I've also seen a bunch of stupid custom fields on every single ticket. Is this Jira's fault or the organization's fault? You complain but the word from your immediate manager is that the team is already in hot water so escalating complaints about the Jira configuration isn't going to help, etc.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#107

I feel like hating on Jira is the pastime that is now passed down from each generation of programmers to the next. I'm going to stick up for Jira. I certainly don't "love" Jira, though I do think they've made significant improvements with "new Jira" (I think they call them team-managed projects now). The problem I have with the incessant Jira bitching is that I rarely feel that bitchers have a true understanding for…

Yeah I've been defended Jira here in the past, too.

My opinion is that Jira reflects the organisation that manages it. It's basically a whole lot of customizable UI and permissions hanging off a user-defined state machine. You can set it up so that individual teams can fully administer their own projects, or you can go all the way in the other direction and have centralized, locked-down management where you beg some internal specialist Jira admin(s) to make your changes.

Also, in the last couple of years it's got a lot better. It's faster, there are options for simpler configuration, and more stuff out-of-the-box (assuming you're on Cloud, but isn't everyone these days?).

In detraction: configuring it can be a huge PITA. So many screens, concepts, and so much clicking. But when it's done it works, and I think most of the hassle is just inherent complexity from such a configurable tool (if you haven't Admined Jira: you can change almost anything).

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#108
Jira is practically called out in the phoenix project. Their solution?

1. Don’t use it

2. Do a manual process

3. Get buy in and deliver actual value

4. Run into scalability issues

5. Now automate which could be Jira but now you know what value your process is achieving

6. Don’t let Jira be the end in itself. Focus on the value of the process and tune that

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-...

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#109
post #4

I wish the comments were more specific about which features they don’t like. For me a particularly frustrating aspect is the way the UI moves around a lot. I’m quite anxious to click anything until all the loading spinners have stopped in case I click the wrong thing. Then I could be taken to a page or feature I’ve never seen before. Also it’s really annoying when I try to copy something from a ticket description but…

> I wish the comments were more specific about which features they don’t like. I have a very specific complaint: the ease which all sorts of custom fields can be added for _everyone_. Sales will want to add a field to hold their contract status. Lo and behold, engineering now has it. It can be done in the proper way, but it seems that doing it at a global level is easier since that's how multiple Jira installations a…

> Tickets should not be THAT easy to edit. How often do we want to change a ticket's description, or title? I'd say, not often. If we do, there's really no harm in having an "edit" button.

It's very useful for when the user submits a ticket with "My computer isn't working" as the title and "excel is broken" as the description.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#110

Jira is bloated. Full stop. It feels like there isn't a strong unified product vision for Jira. It's just trying to solve everything. It's all "just configurable." That likely is a selling point into Enterprises who need some level of flexibility. But for a lot of situations, people just want something that works well out of the box. I often wonder what the 37signals guys would do if they ever decided to tackle this…

Isn't that what Basecamp from 37signals is meant to be? Perhaps I'm missing something as I've only used it a bit.
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