It seems to me that it’s slow on a number of levels. It just takes a long time to load each page, and on top of that, basic operations usually take far too many clicks. So I figured it was just a bad tool.
Things I've seen that can adversely affect your speed: installing random plugins that are poorly written, integrations, having too many admins over-complicating the Jira configuration.
Learn the keyboard shortcuts to speed up your basic operations.
It's a spawling Java app with hundreds of discrete components, aging plugin architecture and is susceptible to configuration creep.
(That seems to be my impression, at least).
It's like they spent much more time refining the UX and feel of moving around clicking on things. It's pretty great.
I just gave it a whirl - for an hour or so - so take this with a grain of salt.
Looks much nicer, and there definately has been more effort put into the design compared to trello / jira.
Thats about where things end for me though.
I don't think the UX is refined at all, it's full of usability faux pas and their CSS could undergo some basic usability testing as well.
Jira's usability isn't that bad if you use sane defaults and avoid overconfiguration. Jiras main problem (and its a big fucking problem) is responsiveness.
I did have a look at their suggestion forum and it looks very active I think I'll give them another look in a few months to see if they've managed to reign in some of the BS or if it only gets worse. (I suspect the latter will occur for various reasons.)
And please, don't take this harsh critique the wrong way, if I was choosing a platform today I'd probably pick them, beauty is a hell of a drug - just don't confuse a nice looking design with UX.
Are you on an onprem version?