Why is Jira disliked so much?

Subin Philips September 23, 2019

Hello everyone,,

I've been comparing different systems for a few months in order to build a project management system. Jira core stuck out to me for a) the ease of customisation and b) cost. Their use of Java is the only big red flag for me

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thank you to all. I knew I could find healthy discussions/responses here.

4 comments

Deniz Oğuz
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September 23, 2019

Jira is used a lot. It is dominating "issue tracking" business. Since a lot of users are using it, it is normal that there are more people bashing it. Even if 10 percent of people using it would complain, it makes a lot of people. Another reason I can think of is price increase. Atlassian prices are increasing nearly every year. 

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Jack Brickey
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September 23, 2019

my original reply was misplaced when this issue was moved making it appear that I agreed with this post. which I don't FWIW.

here is my original response - Agree. It would be interesting to see an objective statistical analysis comparing all of the top issue tracking and project management SW.

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Andrew Laden
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September 24, 2019

At the risk of getting my atlassian card revoked...

Native Jira is less "Full Featured" then a lot of competing products. It has a limited set of core features. They make up for this be having a rich 3rd party marketplace of apps/addons etc that you can use to add additional features or customization to make it do a whole lot more. (and a framework that makes it easy to create and use these addons.)

But for some people who have just bought Jira, finding out they have to then buy an add-on to make it do X is a source of frustration. Never mind that it was half the cost of the competitors product (which should leave extra funds for add-on purchases), it still more money then was probably initially allocated. 

Experienced jira admins know that you will need to purchase addons, so they include that in the costs.

JIRA also has a number of bugs/feature requests that have been outstanding for many years, which leads people to feel like they don't care about their customers. Its probably no different then their competitors, but because Jira is so transparent with their public Jira instance it is very easy to see these issues vs others that may not make thier bug trackers/development roadmaps as easy to view.

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Andrew Laden
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September 27, 2019
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Jack Brickey
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September 27, 2019

Could be spam. 

@Subin Philips ,

given you have opened the discussion maybe you could chime back in here as to your goal, your thoughts, etc. if you are no longer interested in this discussion please convey that. 

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James Bullock September 30, 2019

Disliked by who, for what?

Often people get bugged when something isn't optimized for their personal constitiency. Or, "it's not natively exactly what I'm used to."

For example  lots of statuses; lots of characteristics; lots of promotion transitions, all good for informing people looking to resolve in detail. In oversight in contrast, I like no more than:

  • Backlog
  • Working on it
  • Think it's done
  • Know it's done

That and a unique, stable name is all I need for status tracking. Indeed, more is in the way vs. helpful. (You do want to complement with definitions, stored somewhere else, like Confluence. So, in "Backlog" no telling when it will be done; no estimates. "Know it's done" also means "available for consumption" like, in your release-candidate build or branch.

In contrast, if I'm looking to do audit or process refinement, I want each time it's touched or changed somewhere I can find, plus aggregates in those terms. If I'm doing the resolving, I want all the context I can get.

The key is a common domain entity model of what's in your world: issues, states, things you wrangle (hardware components), roll-ups of collected work (projects, releases, epics). On top of that:

  • You kinda want an independent dashboard / entry point for each kind of use. (Presona of users.)
  • You can't resolve people's different models of your work in a tool -- you have to do the social work. (Not doing that often comes out in: "<Whatever> is terrible."
  • If people don't care about other uses as all, well, that's a problem with valuing the rest of the organization. If they're not valuable, why are they around. If they are, support them.

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