When do project management tools / methodologies start to get in the way?

Question

As part of research I'm conducting for my thesis, borne out of the frustration of using Project Management Tools (that are more suited for larger projects / large teams) to handle smaller projects with small teams, I'm trying to understand if there is an correlation between the suitability of particular methodologies (eg SCRUM) & tools (eg JIRA) for smaller teams.

In your experience what is the ideal team size or project size (as in lifecycle/timeframe) for the methodology you use?  Do the tools you use, ie. JIRA, help or do you feel that they get in the way (especially for smaller projects / smaller teams)?

If you have any comments on this, I'd be most grateful for your input in this questionnaire please.  It should take 2-5 minutes.

In my company, we tend to run short projects (<4 weeks) run by small teams (<4 people).  And each team can have up to 5 concurrent projects.  In many regards, we've found that SCRUM is cumbersome and we are now modifying the way we are using JIRA to make it feel less burdensome.

Thanks so much for your input.

Prem Mariappan · Answer

It's been a source of frustration for some years, so much so I've based my research paper on this very subject.  Hoping to uncover some data to back up how we feel!  If you can share your input on that questionnaire

But maybe we aren't adapting JIRA as well as we could.

Thank you for your response.

Allan MacDonald_n07hp1 · Answer

Hi Prem, funny you mention this now. I'm in the process of trying to find a different way to use JIRA too, and I'm on the brink of not using it at all. There's a lot I like about it, and a lot that I dislike! We're a small-medium sized studio/project and I definitely feel like I don't need everything it has, it's bloated somewhat and just finding where to go to do X feels like a challenge.