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Are you happy with Jira as a software?

Kovah

I am asking this question openly in the hope that someone at Atlassian reads this and remembers how important users are.

At the moment I am running an own instance of Jira for the InvoicePlane open source project and have to use Jira at work. While the work-Jira is just basic issue tracking I can't control very much, being the admin of the InvoicePlane-Jira has led to countless hours of frustration and anger about stupid decisions, poor documentation and strange behaviour of the software itself.

I don't want to go into details right now because it would be just too much. Just too much issues and.. well.. quite stupid ones too. These issues let me to this point where I question the superiority of Jira and the competence as Atlassian behind it.
I can't speak for companies that actually pay for Jira. I know I should be grateful that Atlassian supports open source projects by offering the software for free. But I deeply regret spending so much time with Jira. Setup and installation, configuration, fixing problems and so on. Too much time I wasted on this instead of working on my software.
At the moment I am not sure if I could say that all these issues with Jira exist because Atlassian is a heavily greedy company and money is the only focus. But I already saw way too many Jira tickets for my exact problems that are open for years now, without any solution or closed with a resolution that expresses "we don't care about you and your problems". I really can't think of something that could be more worse to express for a company that develops software products.

For InvoicePlane as an open source project I have chosen Jira because it seemed way superior than Github issues back in 2014. Now I would like to move back. Because Jira makes more problems than it solves. And without any solution. Because Atlassian doesn't care. And for me it becomes worse with almost every release.

So my question to all other users and admins: are you happy with Jira as a software? What are your experiences? Do you have similar problems? Do you feel that Atlassian cares about your problems?

Accepted answers

All comments

Matt Doar_tzgiej

I'm happy enough. I still want more from the product, but I feel that for what it does, and for the price, there's not much to match it.

That said, it sounds like using Jira Cloud might make things easier for you? No system admin needed. There are still many ways to configure and mis-configure Jira, I know. But that's true of any complex tool. If you just want to track bugs, then GitHub will work. If you want to track all kinds of work and run a helpdesk, then Jira becomes more useful.

I see those same tickets - some of them are teenagers now. I have favourite frustrating ones. Atlassian is clear about them being used as input and suggestions, not requirements. Most companies have the same backlog but it's not made visible. Just because someone suggests something doesn't mean it's going to get done.

So I think Atlassian does care, but sometimes they don't prioritise what many vocal people want.

Matt Doar_tzgiej

BTW, I'm the lead Jira admin at LinkedIn. Before this I've consulted about Atlassian tools for about 150 companies over 11 years. And I've been using Jira since 2.x. So I've heard similar frustrations before. And if a simpler tool really works for all what you want, then that's ok - use it.

Monique vdB

@Kovah, you may be interested in @KP's recent articles about the Jira Server team's new workflow for feature requests. Responsiveness is something they are actively working to improve right now and I'm sure Keshav would welcome your input on the process to make sure it does communicate that Atlassian cares!

Joe Pitt

I agree with @Matt Doar. My biggest complaint are:

1. JIRA ships with an abhorrent permission scheme model without any warning that is is totally against the best practices of security.

2. I believe the JIRA Suite Utilities (JSU) should be incorporated into the base code and not a pay for add-on. Atlassian pointed to JSU when it was free as a reason NOT to add a function that many, if not most, users wanted.

3. I would also like issue type permissions. However, I understand this would probably require a massive rewrite of the code.

If people understand this is a COTS product and what that entails they will be much happier. It is free to download and try so anyone with unusual requirements should perform a robust test of JIRA, or any COTS product, to see if it meets their needs. I understand needs change, but management and the technical staff need to take a hard look at what they want to change with JIRA and how they can work within JIRA to accomplish their goals and modify them if needed. I've been in the JIRA community since 2007 and seen many instance were people are trying to force something because they want to do it a certain way when it can be done another way.

Henk van de Goor

Quite frankly you're not a alone in your frustration.

And we are using (paid) Jira Cloud, Confluence and other tools (Github).

Atlassian for us feels like a big bowl of spaghetti.

Documentation is just way to complicated to. It should be goal oriented meaning it should explain how to achieve something and what steps to take.

A lack of set-up wizards is also something I think is annoying.

What does not help is things like totally changing the interface just when you got used to the previous one.

Also simple tasks are way too complicated: I just posted a message to find out how we can setup a kanban board and can accommodate our client to join it and be able to CRUD it.

Should be a simple task, right? Just do step 1, 2, 3 etc..

But no...

Nowhere could I find something like a manual for such a simple task.

We set up a test-project as a Kanban board but there is nowhere to be found how to add external users (do we need to create a group/permission thing first? A separate workflow?).

We are totally lost. And we are an IT company! This should be easy for us!

Can't image how much work/time this would take running our own instance...

Chris Bovard_gdhjaf

I use Jira for side projects and overall not impressed with the changes they have made to the Text Editor and the "Next Gen" stuff.

They took something cool and made it complex now or buy the add on.

Sad when software goes this way.

Richard Lashbrooke

agree 100% - likewise, I work for a large IT company supporting sites across 4 continents and have to comment how lousy and ineffective the recent JIRA (paid for Cloud subscription) GUI changes have been.

Prior to these recent user interface changes, JIRA has been used for many years without any issues.

Atlassian should at least offer paid subscribers the option to display the user interface pre-GUI upgrade (I understand this link will soon be removed)

Very disappointing

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