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I fucking hate Jira

ifuckinghatejira.com

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Re: I fucking hate Jira

#501

Post by CRConrad »

tharkun__ wrote: post #384
lmm wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a neutral tool. Jira makes micromanagement easy and trusting people hard; you can use it for good, but you're working against the grain of it the whole time. Everything is default deny (issues can only go through approved transitions, by default regular users can't change the available transitions), the default issue forms have way too many mandatory fields, and a bunch of reports that only micromanagers wan…

Almost none of that is true depending on which version of Jira we are talking about and what type of project you have chosen. I'm in the Jira is actually pretty good camp. I've administered Jira instances from the ground up, including installation, integrating it with directory services, customizing workflows or just as a user in large and small organizations. The defaults even way back when actually made quite a bit…

> The defaults even way back when actually made quite a bit of sense. The default workflow for many project types were very workable.

That's probably where the wide-spread (and arguably correct) impression that it has become worse comes from: To begin with, people just installed and used it as-is, but by now corporate bureaucracies have had time to "implement" it -- i.e. set it up -- to mirror their organisation's bureaucratic structure and processes.

And yes, that impression is correct; it is Jira's fault: If it didn't have that customisability, they couldn't (ab)use it that way.

> If your organization chooses to instead use this very very configurable tool to lock things down you can't blame Jira.

Of course you can: If it didn't offer the possibility to set up those bureaucratic locks, they wouldn't be set up.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#502

Post by tharkun__ »

CRConrad wrote: post #501
tharkun__ wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost none of that is true depending on which version of Jira we are talking about and what type of project you have chosen. I'm in the Jira is actually pretty good camp. I've administered Jira instances from the ground up, including installation, integrating it with directory services, customizing workflows or just as a user in large and small organizations. The defaults even way back when actually made quite a bit…

> The defaults even way back when actually made quite a bit of sense. The default workflow for many project types were very workable. That's probably where the wide-spread (and arguably correct) impression that it has become worse comes from: To begin with, people just installed and used it as-is, but by now corporate bureaucracies have had time to "implement" it -- i.e. set it up -- to mirror their organisation's bu…

I can tell you that a lot of other tools before Jira that I have had to use were really quite good at mirroring that structure in a much worse way ;) Most of those tools from my experience were not usable in a good way.

You and other people are obviously entitled to the opinion that Jira made it worse.

In my book, that's like saying it's the Swiss Army knife's fault that someone was killed with it.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#504

Post by carlmr »

snapetom wrote: post #408
colechristensen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jira doesn't just reflect, it drives convoluted unhelpful bureaucracy. The tool drives the organization to look like the tool wants it to, which is disorganized half broken "organization" with silly overcomplicated rules that give people something to discuss enthusiastically instead of the actual work that needs doing. Jira is organization poison, not just a reflection of what an organization is.

It seems the pro-Jira comments here are basically, "It's fine if your organization isn't a mess and you don't abuse it." That's the problem with any tool, framework, language, etc where the defenders main argument is, "It's great as long as you don't abuse it." or to put the former bluntly "It's not the tool, it's your organization." Over and over and over again, if an organization is allowed to abuse and misuse some…

Exactly, it's the same with C++. You can do great stuff with it as long as every single developer on the project is extremely disciplined and knowledgeable about its pitfalls.

As organizations and projects grow you or someone else will at some point hire incompetent people that mess up this delicate balance.

Better to have guardrails.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#505

Post by wiremine »

blowski wrote: post #100
wiremine wrote: post #46

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…

> I often wonder what the 37signals guys would do if they ever decided to tackle this problem. Wouldn't they build Basecamp?

That's fair. I see Basecamp as general project management tool, not a tool geared towards software development.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#507

Post by likortera »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #58

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…

A few years ago I worked for a company that used https://shortcut.com/ (at that point, it was named clubhouse I think). I loved it. I think that tool can do everything Jira does in a much better and saner way. It looks a lot more organised, more flexible, more polished, more performant and it doesn't look like it will force you into full SCRUM if you don't want to. You even get to use the same syntax (markdown!) everywhere. Last time I had to use Jira I needed to keep in mind the syntax for writing links in the issue description was different than the syntax for writing links in comments. Tell me that's not some top level suckery.

Jira sucks big time, and there are better tools now. The reason no one "toppled the Jira crown" is just inertia, specially management inertia who are the ones deciding what tool to use. For the same reason we're still mostly using petrol for cars, not because there aren't better options, it is because it is not easy to change.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#508

Post by ConceptJunkie »

People, have you _used_ enterprise software? Jira is the first piece of enterprise software I've ever used that I _don't_ hate! Well, if Bugzilla counts, then I don't hate that either.

But in the past I've been exposed to BMC's products, which were, at least when I was exposed to them 10 years, horrible. And going further back, Lotus Notes, which even in the early aughts wasn't up to basic standards of UI from the 1980s.

Could Jira be better? Sure. But I think a lot of the complaints about Jira might only be relevant to the way their instance of Jira happens to be set up. Setting up a proper workflow that meets the demands of the organization is not an easy thing to do.

Now, I've never administered Jira, and maybe that's not good, but as someone who's used it for about 10 years, I'm fine with it.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#509

Post by felixgallo »

djur wrote: post #386
jitl wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work at Notion. I think Notion works well for tasks if your organization is small, or you are happy with lightweight process. There is no way to ensure all updates to a Notion page follow a strict state machine like Jira. Notion just doesn’t have those kind of validation / restriction tools yet. For our 100ish engineers it works well especially because planning docs flow seamlessly into project specs an…

Shouldn't these tools be used primarily at the team level? Large organizations don't necessarily have larger teams. I'm not sure why it should make a big difference if you have 2 or 200 teams of 5 using the tool.

it makes a difference because frequently, when you have (say) several hundred teams of 10-15 people, they need to interoperate (so that the fields used, and the meanings of the fields, are standardized and have a structured lifecycle), and also they need to be able to roll up to larger progress reports/status updates so that the org leaders can understand where everything is. If all the small teams organically choose their own fields/meaning/process (which happens, all the time, everywhere, by default), you can end up with a tower of babel problem.

Re: I fucking hate Jira

#510

Post by CRConrad »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #199
cogman10 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why don't you think some other company has come along and toppled the Jira crown? Because it's really hard to kill off the market leader when the market leader is embedded into the core of how a company works. I don't buy that it's a matter of competitors not being better. It is more about inertia. The argument you have here could equally be applied to C++ or Cobol "Why is new code being written in these languages?…

Here's a better answer to that question: Crowns don't come from inherent value. They come from monarchy. Jira holds the crown because so many are convinced the "industry" in which it leads is worthy or valuable. What value does a monarch provide? Order. Structure. Authority. Corporate environments value these because - art its core - that is what "Corporation" is: a new system of governance. Most of the complaints ab…

The new Thomas Jeffer(y)son? ;-)
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