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When happy teams are an issue
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this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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For those complaining about Jira... I used to be one of you. After changing jobs and using several alternatives, I am begging to be back on Jira. Manage Engine is currently the bane of my existence.
The issue is more that all of these planning tools enable bad managers to implement bad management practices and workflows without any actual tracking for what constitutes bad management. Almost without fail, every manager I've worked with who is very attached to these products ends up using them for the sake of using them. And then when that produces shit results it's all about "engineering buy in" and "process learning curves" and they end up doing real damage to products before someone notices that Jira actions are not correlated with protective management.
The biggest issue is that good, effective management tools actually end up being a double edged sword because of how they shield bad managers the illusion of legitimacy.
Company started on Asana, individual teams jumped to Jira, company eventually followed. I was always accidentally creating blank tickets in Asana.
Honestly 95% of Jira complaints are because people have crap workflows configured. Out of the box Jira is pretty terrible but it's very customisable and you need to adjust it to suit your needs - and they have to be your needs and workflows.
That being said, there's that last 5% that Jira just gets in the way. If anyone has ever had multiple teams working on a single product, Jira is very prescribed about how you're supposed to structure that and If you don't, it's a pain.
I can type out the entire 10 word long name of my sprint into the searchbar, and it Jira will pull up 22 pages of things that are not even CLOSE to what I searched. It's a nightmare to try and find my current sprint among the 65 other team's sprints every month.
I find jiras search to be decent enough, you might get better results using a filter on sprint name with your current sprint in it.
Right, the entire issue is that it basically acts as a massive layer of insulation between reality and bad management. The whole thing is like a fucking paradox - any time you make a change to workflows or procedures there's this stupid period where you need to "wait for buy in" where it doesn't matter how outwardly idiotic the change is, you can't actually call it obviously fucking stupid for like several weeks, or you are seen as being contrarian, or causing trouble. And the real bullshit is that the "better" the tools are, the more this effect is amplified. So as an engineer, I have paradoxically come to appreciate bad management tools simply because when someone does something stupid with them, I can call it out more easily.
I'd suggest that 95% of Jira complaints are actually about corporate culture which is felt most keenly through asshole PMs trying to micromanage you through a ticketing system. It's mostly a fine piece of software - if you have a certified wizard to configure it it can be great... if you have a dummy it's going to be barely usable - but you can say the same thing about github issue tracking.
The unfortunate thing is that the teams most likely to use Jira are also the teams I most likely never want to work on.
That might very well be the case, however, why are all of these apps so incredibly bad?
Jira especially seems like the definition of feature creep. It's more bloated than a lactose intolerant child after a tub of ice cream.
Because having more ticked boxes than the competition sells. Doesn't matter if it's of any relevance.
That's the company's fault for using all the features
We switched to a different tool that's developed by the same company I work for, and there has been nonstop complaining about it ever since. Jira might not be the best tool, but it's better than the alternatives by miles.
Also technical shit posting on Confluence is just the best. (I don't like Atlassian, I just want to go back to Jira)
I also wonder if people complaining about Jira are still on Jira Server. Jira Cloud is a much nicer experience. Certainly not perfect, but I've yet to see an actual viable alternative (once worked someplace that tried to move all project management to Gitlab... 🤮).
Cloud is way worse than server in my experience. Server was usually only bad because it was usually configured poorly and IT would never give admins to anyone who actually needed it. Cloud is bad because it's slow as hell and can't be configured correctly because the ability to configure it correctly has been sitting in "Gathering Interest" on Atlassian's issue tracker for two years despite thousands of votes and comments.
I find Linear to be reasonably pleasant.
Haha a PM at my job just tried to move everything to gitlab thankfully someone in charge realized how stupid an idea that was...
Did you ever try Pivotal Tracker? 🤮
That seriously has to be the worst product I have ever used. I don’t understand how it’s still around.
I so agree. My boss likes it and I find it bizarre that anyone pays for that garbage. We are switching to JIRA now due to a decision over his head :)
No, manage Engine and service now are the two big ones I used.
Oh God. Those are the 2 worst ones. They are mainly used for IT tickets, not for developing software. Jira isn't the worst, but it does lack basic features. It's just when companies use Jira you just know you are going to have to deal with a bunch of PMs who all they care about is velocity.
There are so many other simplified alternatives these days. Basecamp is one.
You are lucky. I've never used those but I can tell you that PT is a huge piece of shit. The UI is among the worst ever. My go-to example for why I hate it is that you can literally be working on a ticket, reading it or writing in it, and if another coworker does something to it that causes it to move positions in the board or list, the fucking thing will literally disappear from your screen in front of your eyes. It feels like the designers have never used software before.
ClickUp is A LOT worse than Jira.