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GitHub and Jira Software Integration

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Re: GitHub and Jira Software Integration

#61

Post by _wmd »

bpchaps wrote: post #40
memset wrote: post #26

I don't understand the negativity in this thread. Or why people are using this post as an impetus to (ostensibly) move to gitlab. Or lament the decline and fall of github. Nobody is forcing anyone to use Jira. Nobody is forcing anyone to use Github. You can continue to use both without adopting any of the UX or design or workflows or whatever of the other. This blog post is just saying "now we have an officially-supp…

It's because many of us have worked at companies that use JIRA extensively. It's a tool that marks the sign that a company cares more about the management of staff as units, instead of caring about employees as breathing and creative forces. It makes management's job easier, but it does nothing for the managed, except lead to frustration and hundreds of emails that have to be waded through for that 5% chance of relev…

^ disenfranchised programmer alert

Jira's just a tool, a tool with an API, if it burns you so much then set up an email filter and spend a weekend on some GitHub-workalike wrapper or whatever other tool you believe does a better job. God I hate the damned thing, but placed beside all other similar tools in its class, I'd recommend it any day of the week, including over the joke of a system GitHub supplies - hell the ancient Bugzilla even compares favourably with GitHub.

Re: GitHub and Jira Software Integration

#62

Post by bpchaps »

ahi wrote: post #52
bpchaps wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because many of us have worked at companies that use JIRA extensively. It's a tool that marks the sign that a company cares more about the management of staff as units, instead of caring about employees as breathing and creative forces. It makes management's job easier, but it does nothing for the managed, except lead to frustration and hundreds of emails that have to be waded through for that 5% chance of relev…

I work in a shop that had effectively no project management. When jira was introduced it was a godsend. Obviously email and slack requests aren't better, so what is the alternative system that has people hating on jira? Honest question.

How long has your company been using JIRA for?

JIRA has a tendency to.... decay. New ticket types are created with custom fields that aren't ever kept up to date. Everyone starts to choose random entries because they have no choice, and no way to add new ones. Once that starts, things fall into chaos because nobody knows the "right" way to file tickets. Tickets soon become immeasurably immeasurable. Projects become categorized incorrectly on a constant basis. The only people who know how to use JIRA effectively are the ones who know how to ignore all the noise. Once those people leave, you're left with pure, unadulterated chaos.

And then you get people who try to fix it by adding a new ticket type or project group, etc. Rinse, repeat.

If you haven't already, then you should check out JIRA's query language and its API. The query language is... special (and doesn't support wildcards, last I checked). Its API, instead of displaying field names as you see it in their interface, shows "fieldname_21234". No joke. You have to run another api request for all of the field names and associate them yourself. It's painful

To your point - sure, JIRA can be used effectively. Though, any bad tool can be used well if enforced. But that's not what most of us have seen in the wild. JIRA eventually just becomes a behemoth of a tool.

Re: GitHub and Jira Software Integration

#63

Post by benatkin »

knocte wrote: post #29
benatkin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on how it's configured and on the team's workflow. It really sucked at my second to last job, but at my most recent job it was reasonably usable, in that about half the time it was better than a comparable tool like Pivotal Tracker or Asana, and about half the time it was worse. A good and bad thing about it is that it isn't a typical single page app - good because it has fewer glitches and bad bec…

You may be right, pivotal might be even worse. Haven't used Asana.

I have a lot of respect for Pivotal Tracker. It's a really elegant design, it is just missing a good detail view on issues, like GitHub's with history, comments, convenient deep linking, markdown, syntax highlighting, integrations, etc. Trello has a good detailed view for its cards, but not as good as GitHub.

Re: GitHub and Jira Software Integration

#64

Post by Aeolun »

ahi wrote: post #52
bpchaps wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because many of us have worked at companies that use JIRA extensively. It's a tool that marks the sign that a company cares more about the management of staff as units, instead of caring about employees as breathing and creative forces. It makes management's job easier, but it does nothing for the managed, except lead to frustration and hundreds of emails that have to be waded through for that 5% chance of relev…

I work in a shop that had effectively no project management. When jira was introduced it was a godsend. Obviously email and slack requests aren't better, so what is the alternative system that has people hating on jira? Honest question.

It’s not that JIRA cannot be decent, but in any enterpriseish environment it ALWAYS turns into a monster.

The Jira environment I’m currently working in, takes 2+ seconds for any interaction to update the interface (that’s the sped up version. People tell me it used to take 20...).

Creating a new ticket displays no less than 150 fields (not all of which are required, thank god).

Re: GitHub and Jira Software Integration

#65

Post by chacham15 »

Karupan wrote: post #39
loeber wrote: post #11

I see a lot of people complaining about JIRA in this thread, so here's my take: - I've used Trello, GitHub Projects/Issues, and other Project Management software; - While JIRA has a steep learning curve and is generally unpleasant to use, it is far and away the most customizable and powerful PM software I have used; - Despite JIRA's poor design choices and UX clunkiness, it is so powerful that I wouldn't use anything…

For me that’s exactly the problem with JIRA. Each team I’ve worked with uses a different board, workflow, and what not. I still don’t understand the hierarchy. And since it is infinitely configurable, the UX is just horrible. It’s not optimised for any particular audience and is all over the place.

For me this is a huge benefit: the engineering team, product management team, qa team, ux team, etc. can each see the things that are relevant to them in the way that they like while still being able to pass the tasks off to the other teams / track them if they would like. You have to put in work to make each flow work for each customer & make sure that the tags are standardized, but once thats in place its super easy (at least for my team)

Re: GitHub and Jira Software Integration

#66

Post by MaulingMonkey »

ahi wrote: post #52
bpchaps wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because many of us have worked at companies that use JIRA extensively. It's a tool that marks the sign that a company cares more about the management of staff as units, instead of caring about employees as breathing and creative forces. It makes management's job easier, but it does nothing for the managed, except lead to frustration and hundreds of emails that have to be waded through for that 5% chance of relev…

I work in a shop that had effectively no project management. When jira was introduced it was a godsend. Obviously email and slack requests aren't better, so what is the alternative system that has people hating on jira? Honest question.

The two... archtypical complaints typically I hear levied against JIRA are typically:

1) It's sometimes a tool for managerial micromanagement, such as the extraction of unreasonably certain estimates as "promises", which can then be adjusted further down by your project managers, which can then be used to pressure devs into crunch or worse, instead of as a means of adjusting expectations.

2) It's an extremely complicated piece of software which you can (read: will) overcustomize into oblivion, confusion, and general busywork. Having grown over the years, it's various complications are also not consistent with each other, so some features don't really work well with others. The antithesis of KISS or YAGNI.

3) Project managers will still ask you about stuff instead of referring to JIRA. What's the point of sending time estimates into the void if they're going to swing by and disrupt your flow to hear those same estimates from you in person anyways?!

#1 gives people a (reasonable) emotional reason to hate JIRA, #2 gives people a (reasonable) rational reason to hate JIRA. #3 probably counts for both. I feel like I'm the weird one out not having come to hate JIRA in my social circles.

Project management is important, but JIRA is just a tool, not project management. Ultimately, that's a communication problem with your stakeholders and the people who get to call the shots. Email, slack, trello boards, even water-cooler chit chat can be better than an over-configured JIRA install in the right hands with the right managers. Get everyone on the same page in terms of tasks and priorities, manage expectations, track progress, avoid last minute surprises...

Something like a Trello board is sometimes popular with the "JIRA is overcomplicated" crowd. I use it for personal projects sometimes. It's OK. I'm OK with JIRA in the right hands too though. You don't have to tweak every single knob and settings. You can practice some self restraint and avoid it nerd sniping you, probably.

Re: GitHub and Jira Software Integration

#67

Post by Aeolun »

kasey_junk wrote: post #48
bpchaps wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because many of us have worked at companies that use JIRA extensively. It's a tool that marks the sign that a company cares more about the management of staff as units, instead of caring about employees as breathing and creative forces. It makes management's job easier, but it does nothing for the managed, except lead to frustration and hundreds of emails that have to be waded through for that 5% chance of relev…

The worst part is there is no evidence it makes managements job easier. The saying is JIRA is yo project management what PowerPoint is to public speaking. For people who are good it can marginally improve the output but for most people it’s an easy way to wank away your time convincing yourself you are working on the right thing as you ignore the real issues.

Nobody ever got fired for picking Jira

Re: GitHub and Jira Software Integration

#68

Post by stevenjohns »

ahi wrote: post #52
bpchaps wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because many of us have worked at companies that use JIRA extensively. It's a tool that marks the sign that a company cares more about the management of staff as units, instead of caring about employees as breathing and creative forces. It makes management's job easier, but it does nothing for the managed, except lead to frustration and hundreds of emails that have to be waded through for that 5% chance of relev…

I work in a shop that had effectively no project management. When jira was introduced it was a godsend. Obviously email and slack requests aren't better, so what is the alternative system that has people hating on jira? Honest question.

It depends on how Jira is used. In your case it appears that there was just oversight added when there wasn't before, but for many of us we get quizzed daily on whether or not we're logging hours for individual tasks, "burn down" is used as a measure of productivity and there are dozens upon dozens of emails sent out to the point where you can ignore everything and still do okay.

This is excluding Jira's design, which frustratingly makes you click several times to uncover data that should be obvious, and various other minor issues that just create headaches, for example: estimations for individual tasks don't bubble up for stories or epics, so you can have two wildly different sets of data to maintain.

The alternative systems would change depending on what people's issues with Jira are -- i.e are they design-based or ideology-based.

Re: GitHub and Jira Software Integration

#69

Post by bisby »

ahi wrote: post #52
bpchaps wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because many of us have worked at companies that use JIRA extensively. It's a tool that marks the sign that a company cares more about the management of staff as units, instead of caring about employees as breathing and creative forces. It makes management's job easier, but it does nothing for the managed, except lead to frustration and hundreds of emails that have to be waded through for that 5% chance of relev…

I work in a shop that had effectively no project management. When jira was introduced it was a godsend. Obviously email and slack requests aren't better, so what is the alternative system that has people hating on jira? Honest question.

I was running an on-prem jira. But I felt like I was doing something completely wrong because it was so unbearably slow. I was slightly embarrassed that it was on me that this was running so slow.

Our team grew to the point where we needed a bigger license, so we just migrated over to Jira Cloud. And it was even slower than the on-prem install.

No "no project management" isn't a better solution. No, I can't name any alternatives off the top of my head that are better than jira. But holy cow, jira is not a good piece of software. It has a lot of great concepts, but it runs like garbage and really isn't THAT fancy for what most people require. Especially for the cost.

It's not good, but it's not exactly a risky move either. "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM."

Re: GitHub and Jira Software Integration

#70

Post by Aeolun »

chacham15 wrote: post #65
Karupan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me that’s exactly the problem with JIRA. Each team I’ve worked with uses a different board, workflow, and what not. I still don’t understand the hierarchy. And since it is infinitely configurable, the UX is just horrible. It’s not optimised for any particular audience and is all over the place.

For me this is a huge benefit: the engineering team, product management team, qa team, ux team, etc. can each see the things that are relevant to them in the way that they like while still being able to pass the tasks off to the other teams / track them if they would like. You have to put in work to make each flow work for each customer & make sure that the tags are standardized, but once thats in place its super eas…

My experience is that they can sort of see, the things that are sort of relevant to them.

Jira is the definition of a jack of all trades, but master of none.

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