Comment by pwenzel
We have to use Jira at my current workplace and it's so complicated. Pivotal Tracker, which I used at previous workplace, was so simple and focused. Sad to hear it's shutting down!
We have to use Jira at my current workplace and it's so complicated. Pivotal Tracker, which I used at previous workplace, was so simple and focused. Sad to hear it's shutting down!
I am fascinated by how complex JIRA is. We evaluated it in 2008. It seemed fine enough.
Looking at it 16 years later, and… what is this nonsense? It’s so customizable that it’s loaded with footguns.
I have a theory: Back in 1996 Bugzilla worked very well. It had been designed, and honed, by a bunch of senior developers who also wrote the bug management system. So lots of dog food eaten. iirc it was written in Perl.
Then, someone I believe decided to make a "Bugzilla in Java", because they didn't like Perl (reasonable).
But whoever that was didn't have the deep knowledge of how the thing was supposed to be used. Lacking that insight, they created a "Swiss Army Chainsaw", implementing simultaneously everything, and nothing.
Next, some MBAs got hold of the thing, and made everything 10X worse.
Meanwhile, Bugzilla is still the same and still the best software project management tool, if you know how it's intended to be used.
I had some thoughts on Jira: https://honeypot.net/2021/10/01/jira-is-a.html
TL;DR it's so completely customizable that it's more like a DIY project management toolkit. Pivotal and Linear have/had a more opinionated approach: "here's how you manage projects. Good luck and have fun!" Jira almost seems to push otherwise rational people to build the most baroque processes imaginable.
> Jira almost seems to push otherwise rational people to build the most baroque processes imaginable.
PM's gotta justify their jobs somehow.
I love a good PM. Trust me, you don't want to be responsible for all the reporting and status updates and all that they have to deal with daily.
It's just that I've never worked with someone I considered a good PM who loved Jira. The great ones wouldn't care if we did all the planning on papyrus because they were more concerned with getting things done than documenting them in excruciating detail.
Yes, _and_ having recently learned it and created my team's new board, the first thing I did (and you can to!) is disable all the extra features and issue types besides epices and issues. Kinda simplifies things.