Heh, would not go over well. Now that we have JIRA, tickets are not just watched by my boss, but my bosses boss, my bosses bosses boss, and a few dedicated project managers of some kind.

Yuck. When my company started pushing for more "agility" and my team moved to a sprint structure, I was lucky enough to have personal leverage as a senior team member. Early on I made it clear that tickets and sprints exclusively exist for the team to plan and manage expectations, and that I wasn't going to hold with upper management using them as leverage over anybody. To support that, I had to interrupt stand-ups a few times when someone would start iterating through tickets for progress instead of letting people report.

I wish misuse of these tools wasn't so widespread, but it was to be expected.

> ...tickets are not just watched by my boss, but my bosses boss, my bosses bosses boss...

Are all these people really hired for their competency? The amount of wasted time this describes is staggering. Even at the worst of times, ticket interaction by even a skip-level was a sign of mounting org-wide desperation.

Use code words.