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I fucking hate Jira

ifuckinghatejira.com

121–130 of 539 posts

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#121

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…

> It's always taken on from the position of "well, it didn't make my specific use case easy"

For customers, their own specific use cases are the only ones they should care about.

I don't know why there isn't a good solution to the problems Jira attempts to tackle, but that's no reason to get philosophical. It's OK to hate every existing option.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#122
post #2

I'm sometimes kind of surprised at how often I see people say they don't mind it. It's by far the tool I like the least out of everything I've used at any job I've ever been in.

I only use Jira for defect tracking and not project planning. In that regard it seems to be only slightly worse than Github/Gitlab's issue tracking. It'd be kinda nice if it supported Markdown but it's not a big deal.

The only things I need it to do are: (1) record an archive of comments describing the progress on the issue's resolution, (2) be able to store attachments, (3) be able to cross-reference other issues. Maybe I have a really low bar? But it seems to do those without much problem and in my case it doesn't seem to be slow.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#123

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…

> The fact is, building a generic project management and tracking tool is a really difficult, hard problem.

This is pretty much the core of it. I use Jira daily, but my exposure to it is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what it can do.

I think what most people forget is that this Jira is basically an ERM but for development-focused organizations. (Where the resources are time and people instead of processes and inventory.) If you've ever seen the complexity (or price tag!) of a real ERM, Jira actually looks very reasonable.

That said, smaller companies and teams should definitely use simpler tools that are more appropriate for their scale. Hire a Jira consultant and make the switch only when you're big enough to justify it.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#124

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…

I upvoted your comment because I believe it's a perfect example of what I was trying to point out: it is impossible to please everyone with a company-wide project management tool, but the fact remains that it is a necessity.

For all the people bitching about how Jira makes it hard to work like they want to work, their are folks like you who will complain that Jira makes it to easy to get around a company-wide standard.

To emphasize, I'm not saying either side is right or wrong, I'm just saying it's impossible to build a project management tool where large subsets of people won't complain about the exact same set of features that another subset of stakeholders likes.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#125
I wanted to make a site very similar to this but for Jenkins. Even bought a domain for it.

And never built the thing.

Some of these made me chuckle.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#126

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…

What fails to scale?

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#127

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 get paid for developing plugins for Jira since 2014. One can complain about UX and speed of this software, but I saw it being the hearth of businesses of all kinds and sizes.

Just like you won't get fired for using React in your project, you won't get fired for using Jira. It will support whatever your workflow is (and I don't mean only software development, but things like hiring or office management). If the built-in features are not enough, you will find a plugin that meets your needs.

I think long-term it's important to use a tool that give you this flexibility.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#128
post #54

Ok, it's slow, and navigation sucks, and lots of other things. Workflows are easy to get out of hand, but as long as you keep your workflows lean/tame/flexible, it's mostly "good enough". I suspect a sizable portion of the "Jira sucks" crowd are under the thumb of a maniacal administrator creating intense workflows. That said, which competitor has a visual workflow editor, to which I can add custom statuses/transitio…

Linear is much nicer. Very quick issue entry and very nice looking sprint summary/status and roadmap tabs. It's everything I want. Most importantly, it's fast. I work with issues a lot, so a slow tool like jira just isn't acceptable. Jira exists to check every checkbox so you feel serious remorse if you pick anything else, but in terms of day-to-day productivity, it doesn't do too well. "Nice to look at" and "Fast" a…

I looked at Linear and it's very software-specific. The features page says it's "the new standard for modern software development".

I do use Jira for software, but also for generic state tracking of non-software processes. E.g. some projects have no use for sprints, or code integration, or user stories.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#129
I suspect issue tracking software is one of those domains where if a piece of code hangs around for long enough it will become a mess due to incentives. Which begs the question: What are y'all's opinion on the open source competitors? Redmine, OpenProject, Apache Bloodhound, and whatever else exists?

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#130
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…

The hate is not for JIRA the tool, but JIRA the way of managing things.

No, the tool is shit too.
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