Agreed on Jira's relative value as a source of truth to individual scrums, horizontal teams, and engineering stakeholders via dashboards. The worst was one scrum that ADDED Trello to Jira. Anyway, are you going to write up UX prototyping tools? I prefer Figma though not strongly. Don't like Invision much. Balsamiq is fool's gold.
Interesting Hot Take, it was a great read! Bumped into this in 2024, but it still is relevant. I'd like to add a +1 for Linear. It's the only tool that actually doesn't bother me. We pair it with Notion for docs (but everything in Notion has a purpose, so its kept small on purpose) and it works quite well. I love the limitations it has. But I lead a team of Platform engineers - we're nerds, technically inclined and not really a Product team per-se. Your mileage may vary.
As a reluctant Asana convert (and now fan), the part of this hot take I related to most was the assertion that the problem with Jira is not the tool and its UX usually, but rather how it's unveiled and socialized (or not) within the team/org. Evan Goldin's assertion that "How useful Jira is, is purely a function of how it’s set up and how much the team actually uses it" really resonated with me. For example, at Imperfect, Asana was just sorta rolled out with no fanfare or tutorial as to how, when, or why we ought to use it. This led to pockets of the company using it religiously for a while and some of us sitting on the sidelines feeling frustrated by a tool that appeared to add more complexity than it solved for. The result was frustration and some "Asana sucks" sentiment that I briefly partook in. However, once the brand team set aside some time to chat through how Asana worked, answer everyones FAQs, and agree to some best practices on how we were going to use it as a group, our opinions on Asana changed a lot. We all ended up using Asana, getting value from it, and enjoying its contribution to workplace organization and project management. I saw this exact dynamic replicated at another startup after Imperfect: a mini civil war that boiled down to half the company using Air Table and half of it using Asana. Again, the problem wasn't actually either of these tools, it was that pockets of people were using them differently without common norms or expectations. My five cents is that PM platforms like these aren't panaceas and they also aren't demonic forces sent to complicate our work. Like email or Slack, they're just tools that can be terrifically useful or terrifically pointless depending on how thoughtfully and intentionally they're used. A huge part of this is setting up education, norms, and expectations around how and when to use them. This last piece can often get left by the wayside in fast-moving startups/companies, hence the frustration. Dumping Jira or Asana onto a busy team with little follow through is no more helpful than dumping a Sous vide machine onto a busy cook and expected a delicious dinner. We all would do well to remember that tools are only as effective as the humans using them are empowered to be.
Changed from Jira to Linear a few months ago at our company; can safely say that all the competitors are not actually crap.
Atlassian themselves seem to sloowly understand that a ticket mgmt system is not well suited for product work - enter Jira Discovery: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discovery
We have a few teams trialing it atm and they are quite happy. Going to give it a spin too.
Agreed on Jira's relative value as a source of truth to individual scrums, horizontal teams, and engineering stakeholders via dashboards. The worst was one scrum that ADDED Trello to Jira. Anyway, are you going to write up UX prototyping tools? I prefer Figma though not strongly. Don't like Invision much. Balsamiq is fool's gold.
Okay we’re keeping Jira. We are firing Confluence into the sun though
Ah yes!!!! Been waiting for this one!
Interesting Hot Take, it was a great read! Bumped into this in 2024, but it still is relevant. I'd like to add a +1 for Linear. It's the only tool that actually doesn't bother me. We pair it with Notion for docs (but everything in Notion has a purpose, so its kept small on purpose) and it works quite well. I love the limitations it has. But I lead a team of Platform engineers - we're nerds, technically inclined and not really a Product team per-se. Your mileage may vary.
As a reluctant Asana convert (and now fan), the part of this hot take I related to most was the assertion that the problem with Jira is not the tool and its UX usually, but rather how it's unveiled and socialized (or not) within the team/org. Evan Goldin's assertion that "How useful Jira is, is purely a function of how it’s set up and how much the team actually uses it" really resonated with me. For example, at Imperfect, Asana was just sorta rolled out with no fanfare or tutorial as to how, when, or why we ought to use it. This led to pockets of the company using it religiously for a while and some of us sitting on the sidelines feeling frustrated by a tool that appeared to add more complexity than it solved for. The result was frustration and some "Asana sucks" sentiment that I briefly partook in. However, once the brand team set aside some time to chat through how Asana worked, answer everyones FAQs, and agree to some best practices on how we were going to use it as a group, our opinions on Asana changed a lot. We all ended up using Asana, getting value from it, and enjoying its contribution to workplace organization and project management. I saw this exact dynamic replicated at another startup after Imperfect: a mini civil war that boiled down to half the company using Air Table and half of it using Asana. Again, the problem wasn't actually either of these tools, it was that pockets of people were using them differently without common norms or expectations. My five cents is that PM platforms like these aren't panaceas and they also aren't demonic forces sent to complicate our work. Like email or Slack, they're just tools that can be terrifically useful or terrifically pointless depending on how thoughtfully and intentionally they're used. A huge part of this is setting up education, norms, and expectations around how and when to use them. This last piece can often get left by the wayside in fast-moving startups/companies, hence the frustration. Dumping Jira or Asana onto a busy team with little follow through is no more helpful than dumping a Sous vide machine onto a busy cook and expected a delicious dinner. We all would do well to remember that tools are only as effective as the humans using them are empowered to be.