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Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

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Re: Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

#621

Post by dbg31415 »

bhouston wrote: post #263
equalarrow wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yah, we're fighting this too. We have back and forth with various devs on our team - some use github, we all have to use Tracker. Just curious as to what you think Github could do to fix this. I have a list of wishes and I'm always curious what other people have.

We are using https://www.zenhub.com/

GitHub + ZenHub work great.

* ZenHub - Agile GitHub Project Management Software || https://www.zenhub.com/

GitHub + Marker for bugs.

* Marker - Visual Feedback & Bug Reporting Tools for Web Professionals || https://getmarker.io/

GitHub + Unito + Asana even... for clients to get some pretty dashboards without getting bogged down... this works great too.

* Unito - Connect your project management tools and become your team's collaboration hero || https://unito.io/

I love how many things play nice with GitHub now.

Re: Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

#622

Post by luckydata »

omouse wrote: post #425
kstrauser wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider JIRA a code smell: if an organization uses it, I probably won't be satisfied working with them. I don't think it's because of anything especially bad with Atlassian (although I was furious when they removed the ability to edit Confluence in raw mode), as that the managers I least want to work for seem especially attracted to it. Your comment just illuminated that for me and I think you're right. It's the m…

>The best I've worked with considered PM tools essentially fungible After taking a class and reading up on project management and trying to get more organized about my own projects, it's basically that. People have been able to orchestrate large projects with nothing more than pencil and paper and then typewriter. The best PMs don't need to force a tool choice.

yeah but their lives sucked while doing that. Good tools don't get the job done if you don't know what you're doing but make it a hell of a lot faster if you do.

Re: Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

#623

Post by ilaksh »

farkas wrote: post #416
mhp wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the kind words. I promise you Atlassian understands why Trello is so successful. You described Trello's core strength perfectly - and this one of the reasons they are committed to keeping it as a standalone service. (disclaimer: I'm the CEO of Trello)

I want to add to what Michael said above. In meeting with Michael, and discussing how we could work together, Michael could not be more clear that Trello's success is predicated on is breadth and its appeal to many different use-cases. This is most clearly displayed in their inspiration page, that includes many, many use-cases: https://trello.com/inspiration Keeping this strength alive will be key to Trello's long-te…

Hello, you received a reply in another comment about adding more time tracking and reporting to Trello.

This goes right to the core of all of the issues/conflicts bundled into this acquisition from UX details up through to target users and culture clash.

Time tracking is a manager-oriented feature, not a producer-oriented feature. The users producing the work usually resent things like fine grained time tracking and comparitive producer reporting because it distracts from actual work, treats creative or complex processes as though they are part of an assembly line, encourages micro-management, pits quality against time, and emphasizes wage servitude.

Managers can use Trello to stress out their employees too, but not to the extent that JIRA-ish tools enable.

The problem is you are selling to managers who love to micromanage their employees and have nothing better to do than fiddle with configuration, reports, or have meetings with the people they hired to do that.

This is why developers who are smart will probably try to protect themselves by pre-emptively replacing Trello with one of the dozens of free or inexpensive clones before you can start corporatizing it and their company.

Re: Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

#624

Post by luckydata »

lostphilosopher wrote: post #187
throwaway5752 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how much opinions can differ. I've used them both professionally and I think Trello scales poorly above 5-10 people while Jira is the least-worst option for running a project at any team size.

As someone who frequently works on teams of 10 or less this is exactly what I'm worried about. Trello is a great tool for our needs. I've been in bigger orgs that used JIRA and understand why that made sense, but I'd resent having to use it on a small team.

I used JIRA in very small teams but took great care to configure it sensibly (it took quite a bit of work, I'll give you that). Everyone was happy and even commented on how it made life a lot easier than github issues or whatever other tool they used before.

The biggest problem JIRA has is tons of legacy that nobody needs (like subtasks, a pain in the ass to work with).

Configure the tool properly and it's actually quite nice to use, especially in combination with Confluence for specs.

Re: Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

#626

Post by lobotryas »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #468
pram wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HipChat (unless you concede it was always bad)

What about HipChat don't you like? I know it can be buggy at times, but from a strictly functional perspective, I feel like it's ok, or at least sufficient for me.

I'll mention one point: editing your sent messages sucks. Afaik, using s/foo/bar is the only way in the Linux client. If I mess up the /code command (very easy to do) the. Fixing it is such a pita that I might as well not bother.

Why can't HipChat message editing be as easy as Skype's? If HipChat is at all targeted for devs, why is pasting/sharing code a pita? Where is bold/italics on linux? Your own hyperlinks (instead of pasting raw urls?

I only use HipChat because the alternatives at my company are worse. Even IRC seems better at this point.

Re: Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

#627

Post by lobotryas »

cookiecaper wrote: post #611
wpietri wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having recently switched from a workplace that used Slack to one that uses Hipchat, my first answer is "everything". It's less reliable, and reliability is my number one desire in a communications tool. And there are just so many little UI and UX details that Slack gets right that it's a pleasure to use, whereas Hipchat is generally an irritation and a disappointment for me. I guess one way to explain it is that Hipc…

This is actually a great description of Trello v. JIRA, as well. Trello may not have the burndown charts, but what it does have is dead-simple list management, and it turns out that's what's most effective for managing tasks. JIRA's BDUF approach to ticketing/bug tracking pleases middle managers whose job is to spend all day clicking around arcane interfaces and finding a way to generate a report that shows their tea…

What's funnier, in an attempt to make things easier Atlassian is alienating power users. I liked Confluence's mix of html and their own markup well enough to write all my pages that way. Then an update hit and WYSISWYG was pushed down everyone's throats hard. To the point where you had to jump through many hoops to use even a limited subset of the markup that was previously available.

Product managers need to learn a simple lesson: if a user wants to use power user features then you should let them because there's a good chance they know what they are doing.

Re: Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

#628

Post by Karunamon »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #468
pram wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HipChat (unless you concede it was always bad)

What about HipChat don't you like? I know it can be buggy at times, but from a strictly functional perspective, I feel like it's ok, or at least sufficient for me.

As an enterprise user: Just about everything to do with LDAP/AD integration. Disabling an AD user from the app and re-enabling them later converts their account into a local account, for one. If you have it connected to a Crowd server, and the Crowd server loses connection with its directory, it returns an empty user list to Hipchat, resulting in EVERY USER ACCOUNT BEING DISABLED. And as we just established, when it comes back, Hipchat sets up the users as new.

I still remember, and have nightmares about, the day ~300 users lost all private chats, private room membership, and chat history, all because of braindead design.

Hipchat is not my favorite atlassian product. The only reason they have any traction whatsoever is because Slack doesn't offer a behind the firewall product.

Re: Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

#629

Post by tedmiston »

canistr wrote: post #401
chinhodado wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't even get me started on SourceTree. Just about every release since 1.5.2 is a disaster, to the point of almost non-usable right now.

I like Tower on macOS, but version 2 is significantly worse than version 1. UI/UX and the number of bugs has been a major pain-point that has made me consider switching to SourceTree. But I still haven't gotten use to SourceTree and GitHub Desktop isn't a great client either as a substitute.

The only major bug I've experienced in Tower v2 is related to renaming repos. That part's very broken, but besides that it's been great for me.

Re: Atlassian acquires Trello for $425M

#630

Post by tedmiston »

rsp1984 wrote: post #446
deepuj wrote: post #322

This is depressing. Trello is a beloved software for a lot of people. It's sad that Trello decided to sell off to Atlassian. I can't believe the same company that makes Jira is going to run Trello. SourceTree is the only software that they make that doesn't suck.

SourceTree is the only software that they make that doesn't suck. If you compare SourceTree to other halfway modern git clients (like Tower or GitX-dev), oh boy does it suck! The layout is completely disorganized, the diffing is super lousy. It's slow. It sucks up lots of memory. It's literally the last GUI client I'd use before just going to the command line.

Second that Tower is so much more Mac-like than SourceTree. On a non-Mac platform, SourceTree would probably be my pick for a git GUI though.
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