The split between cloud and server offerings is partly to blame here.
My thoughts go out to the businesses that have built plugins for Jira and had to endure the variances between cloud and server, or worse, only catered for the server market.
The group at tempo timesheets[1] particularly come to mind here.
Thinking ahead - I’m hoping that an org like GitLab (who have got their Saas v On-Prem offerings balance right) is able to keep building on and catering for this space.
Their planning features are not there yet, but there’s a great group of people with oodles of traction and a roadmap that aligns with this problem space[2].
That's not really an option for organizations whose main product isn't code, no?
Azure DevOps Server, née Visual Studio Team System, already exists.
Congratulations, according to Google you are the first person on the internet ever to use that phrase. Indeed only the second ever to string the last four of those words together.
> There are two kinds of programming languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.
JIRA is the C++ of project management software. It works. It has worked forever. It is easy to shoot yourself in the foot but a savvy operator can't be beat. It's unwieldy at first but gives you all the power to build a really sophisticated and efficient process.
I do know that getting put in the jira team is one of the least fun parts of working for atlassian.
Given the option, I will always push for Jira, and associated Atlassian products.
I think the reason you like it is exactly the reason a lot of people hate it.
JIRA in its default state is fairly sane. People who hate it, usually with a white-hot burning passion, really hate the ham-fisted customisations their own organisation has done to it.
Why has this had adds playing every time I turn my radio on for the last 2 years as well..?
I'm not the previous commenter, but I also have a similar 30+ years experience, and I've used quite a lot of project management software. I've seen Jira used poorly, and used quite efficiently for managing projects. My current job uses Jira and nobody in the company has ever expressed anything negative about Jira, and it's become quite nice to use. But again, I have seen some companies absolutely fail at Jira. YMMV.
I have seen some people fawning over tools like Asana but in my usage I just found it fancier and slower than Jira.
Personally, as a developer I find GitHub issues to be good enough.
I left that job and for awhile working at places using different ticketing systems, hearing complaints on places like HN about Jira, and wishing for features those other systems were missing. A few years ago I started at a place that used the cloud hosted Jira at a much smaller company (with an enthusiastic lead who likely tweaked the setup himself). It was a much, much worse experience. It was horribly slow and I guess they had focused on "management" features that made a normal ticket process annoying and confusing (it may have been how it was configured). Reading around I think the horrible performance was because of scaling architecture decisions that Atlassian made, which I heard they've at least acknowledged and are addressing. I gasped when I saw this headline they plan to drop local hosting before getting cloud performance issues behind them.
I wish we had something even half as good as Jira.
JIRA sucks, but it sucks compared to more lightweight tools and the modern aesthetic
It outperforms previous tracking tools like bugzilla, trac, or those proprietary piles of crap like the "Rational" tools
I've used JIRA at multiple workplaces and really enjoy it. I like Github issues and Trello for my personal task/issue tracking but I don't think they're suitable for more complex projects.
In this thread there's people saying that inability to host on prem is an absolute blocker for them, for others they have zero problems with their data being SaaS-hosted. Some people need deep analytics to measure how their team is doing and they can meet deliverables, and some people could care less. Some people have 10+ workflow stages with tons of rules, some people are fine with Todo / in progress / done.
If you have a small team and dont really care about reporting, Trello is probably a great option for you.
If you want reporting, but are willing to work with a somewhat prescribed workflow / process, across a few teams at most, clubhouse or pivotal tracker are great.
If you need full control and flexibility, and are willing to give up some ease of use and speed, JIRA probably is your best bet.
In the place I worked at with quality there was a multi page document on how to file a ticket. It was a nightmare.
This is just... wow.
Every Microsoft shop I've ever worked at defaults to Azure. You need a really good reason to use GCP or AWS for anything, and it's an uphill battle. They're already paying licensing fees to Microsoft, there are incentives and discounts to stay within the ecosystem. My current employer has GitHub Enterprise and we still use DevOps for a lot of stuff, especially anything that business stakeholders have to touch.
(1) Github Enterprise, the alternative suggested, is a Microsoft product (Github is Microsoft), not GCP or AWS. Given the way Microsoft seems to be investing and promoting products, seeing Github Enterprise as having more legs than Azure DevOps is completely reasonable. (And I'm the one who introduced Azure DevOps into the discussion.)
(2) I work for what has historically been an enterprise Microsoft shop; our cloud transition, except for some use of Github and Azure AD, been primarily AWS-based.
Same here for the MS shops I work with; actually no Azure at all.
If you talk to a Microsoft rep, they “recommend github enterprise for new projects”.
Microsoft obviously cares about backwards compatibility, and there is no way to currently migrate your stuff.
So... it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but it is going to happen.
...and no, it doesn’t have the nice clickops UI from devops: but that’s legacy now in favour of the multistage yaml pipelines.
You can close your eyes and cross your fingers and say Azure Devops will Be around forever... but, you’d be wrong.
The amount of bugs i encountered is.. Bad. From not starting build agents, to stopped agents to hanging etc etc etc..
That said: i looooove the docker container concept for builders :)
I think this is on purpose to push people to the clould offering.
There's also an automatic import process from Jira [2].
YouTrack has a cloud version now. Unfortunately they used the introduction of this to raise the prices for their self-hosted version. However they do allow migration both to and from the cloud version, and they plan to introduce a self-hosted version of their newest Space product, so it seems JetBrains is more DIY friendly than Atlassian.
JB seem like a better company anyway. It's hard to forget Atlassian's decision to stop rewarding employees based on merit, a system they claimed was created by "white men" [3]. The new system rewards employees largely for following the "company values". Under the company values page [4], they claim one of their values is "Don’t #@!% the customer". Interesting way to show it.
[1] https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/Getting-S...
[2] https://www.jetbrains.com/help/youtrack/standalone/importing...
[3] https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/atlassian-ditch...
I've worked with confluence and jira and they are not as good as other products - but we can put any kind of confidential data in them. Everybody likes sharepoint/google docs/slack way better.
Looking for a Confluence competitor with permissions, version tracking, templates, and search but don't feel like I have found a good alternative.
We basically use confluence like a wiki, but it's abnormally hard to put info into it.
Me too. How awesome is that! Its absolutely fantastic news.
Edit: This is great for those of us that have to suffer Atlassian products that we didn't choose. It is also good news for companies such as Gitlab that do offer self-hosted solutions.
The split between cloud and server offerings is partly to blame here
My thoughts go out to the businesses that have built plugins for Jira and had to endure the variances between cloud and server, or worse, only catered for the server market.
The group at tempo timesheets[1] particularly come to mind here
Thinking ahead - I’m hoping that an org like GitLab (who have got their Saas v On-Prem offerings balance right) is able to keep building on and catering for this space.
Their planning features are not there yet, but there’s a great group of people with oodles of traction and a roadmap that aligns with this problem space[2].
[1] www.tempo.up [2] https://about.gitlab.com/direction/maturity/#plan
Gitlab is great for their developer niche, but the relatively weak issue tracker and wiki lets them down for more general use. Still, Gitlab is a great company with momentum and a roadmap. Feel free to join us [2] in looking at such alternatives.
[1] https://tempo-io.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/THC/pages/8969584...
"Relatively weak issue tracker and wiki" got me interested - mind elaborating in more detail what brings you to this conclusion? :)
Thanks!
You really don't know why Gitlab is not an issue tracker like Jira is? I'm sure you do, or at least you should know. Being an issue tracker like Jira is not even a bad thing! So why try to look like you think you can be as bad as Jira?
/rant (from a Gitlab fan)
sorry that it came around this way. I was really interested in your honest opinion, as my personal experience with Jira is limited at this point with 7 months into my new role. I have been asked about it during past GitLab trainings in my old job, but never used it in production myself. May sound weird, but I learn the most from users sharing their experiences :) Hence my question, it would help my research.
We're really larger than "medium-sized", but we're not the kind of company that can or will force everyone to use Jira.
Jira adoption could have happened, but it would only have been possible in a bottom-up, team-by-team basis. And certainly not with a $40000 starting price tag.
As it is, yeah, we're planning on migrating off Jira now.
Microsoft already has GitHub that works fine as a Jira/Confluence substitute for technical people. Maybe this will be their call to make it more accessable.
But if you want to replace Confluence as the knowledge base for the business people, there's Sharepoint, which is better than massaging your genitals with broken glass, but not by much.
So Atlassian is doing it because they know there is no competitor that would jump in. Because everyone else also goes that direction.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/devops/server/
“Previously known as Team Foundation Server (TFS), Azure DevOps Server is a set of collaborative software development tools, hosted on-premises.”
New Confluence licenses will no longer be available in 2021 and support ends in 2024 (though it seems the Data Centre version will still be available, but it's expensive). That's potentially 3-4 years lead time to get something going. Either totally on-prem or an either-or option (à lab GitLab).
We have the technical know-how to administer data center versions of their products, but we can’t do shit if they force potential customers to pay for a minimum of 40 000 USD for a license per product.
Many of these orgs have multiple Atlassian products so this will probably end up doubling costs on several products at the same time effectively making it a money sink and impossible to justify to their budgeting.
I would have been perfectly OK with DC taking over server with similar pricing, but this is just a monumentally idiotic greed-driven move.
Now small-medium-large organizations are either forced to pay A LOT of money for self-hosting their highly protected data or either use their cloud. The latter is out of question for almost all of the organisations I know.
If I was a Microsoft or another enterprise tech company I’d hire a thousand engineers tomorrow to develop a Jira/Confluence competitor before the grace period for server licenses ends. All that engineering money will pay itself back whent they can sell modern collab tools without tech debt from 15 years ago for a price we can tolerate.