I agree. I have been on Pivotal Tracker for over a decade. Still am. Tried Jira and a few others, usually feeling like they are too taxing on the management part.
What are alternatives that are light on the customization and day-to-day management?
I’ve been using Github Projects. It’s not as advanced and complex as Jira though, but its simplicity and closeness to code and documentation is a blessing for my hyperactive geek brain
The problem with Github projects is that they don't seem to have a super focused direction. They're trying things and then shutting them down after two years: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/39106
I do like conceptually the idea of issue tracking living tightly coupled with the codebase, but unfortunately Github can't seem to get it quite right yet.
Thanks for the context.
Ah, I didn’t know/notice any of that, probably because my use case is the absolute minimum:
A project, a few columns, tickets and an assignee field is all I’m using.
I understand most use cases are more complex than mine though.
Yeah I think making PM software is ultimately a trap. You either keep use cases super skinny and make one camp happy, or you decide that you slowly need more customers and end up like Jira. I feel like every PM software is on the spectrum of ending up like Jira, it’s just how far along that journey they are that dictates whether they are interesting to software engineers or not.
I help build Shortcut (https://www.shortcut.com/) and I think it fits the bill of light—but not spartan—on customization and day-to-day management.
To set up a new Shortcut workspace:
1. Sign up 2. Invite teammates, group them into teams if desired 3. Activate the GitHub/Gitlab/Bitbucket integration, so as engineers work via VCS their work in Shortcut progresses automatically 4. Set your workspace's timezone 5. Turn on/off Iterations (sprints) based on your process. Unfinished stories can be set to automatically roll from one iteration to the next. 6. Turn on/off point estimation based on your process
Then start writing Stories (tickets/issues) to track work.
Going further: Stories can be grouped into Epics. Epics can be grouped into Objectives (with associated Key Results if that's your thing). You can put Epics on a Roadmap to "share out" what your team is planning to work on. All optional, based on how you work and the size of your org.