
GitHub and Jira Software Integration - joeyespo
https://blog.github.com/2018-10-04-announcing-the-new-github-and-jira-software-cloud-integration/
======
memset
I don't understand the negativity in this thread. Or why people are using this
post as an impetus to (ostensibly) move to gitlab. Or lament the decline and
fall of github.

Nobody is forcing anyone to use Jira. Nobody is forcing anyone to use Github.
You can continue to use both without adopting any of the UX or design or
workflows or whatever of the other.

This blog post is just saying "now we have an officially-supported integration
that we believe works better than the previous and here are some new
features."

Am I missing something here?

Otherwise, congrats to the github team for shipping this! I've used
github+jira integrations in the past, and if this is an improvement, then
cheers to making things easier for folks who use both tools as part of their
day-to-day!

~~~
bpchaps
It's because many of us have worked at companies that use JIRA extensively.
It's a tool that marks the sign that a company cares more about the management
of staff as units, instead of caring about employees as breathing and creative
forces.

It makes management's job easier, but it does nothing for the managed, except
lead to frustration and hundreds of emails that have to be waded through for
that 5% chance of relevancy.

Their integration seems particularly targeted to JIRA, when they've lapsed on
many other useful features and improved UX implementations. It reflects GH's
priorities as a company.

It's a sign that github is catering to management over the programmer.
Contrast that to gitlab, whose implementations are designed to make the
programmer's job easier.

~~~
ahi
I work in a shop that had effectively no project management. When jira was
introduced it was a godsend. Obviously email and slack requests aren't better,
so what is the alternative system that has people hating on jira?

Honest question.

~~~
bpchaps
How long has your company been using JIRA for?

JIRA has a tendency to.... decay. New ticket types are created with custom
fields that aren't ever kept up to date. Everyone starts to choose random
entries because they have no choice, and no way to add new ones. Once that
starts, things fall into chaos because nobody knows the "right" way to file
tickets. Tickets soon become immeasurably immeasurable. Projects become
categorized incorrectly on a constant basis. The only people who know how to
use JIRA effectively are the ones who know how to ignore all the noise. Once
those people leave, you're left with pure, unadulterated chaos.

And then you get people who try to fix it by adding a new ticket type or
project group, etc. Rinse, repeat.

If you haven't already, then you should check out JIRA's query language and
its API. The query language is... special (and doesn't support wildcards, last
I checked). Its API, instead of displaying field names as you see it in their
interface, shows "fieldname_21234". No joke. You have to run another api
request for all of the field names and associate them yourself. It's _painful_

To your point - _sure_ , JIRA can be used effectively. Though, any bad tool
can be used well if enforced. But that's not what most of us have seen in the
wild. JIRA eventually just becomes a behemoth of a tool.

~~~
meetbryce
That sounds a lot like a human problem, not a tool problem.

~~~
Twisol
There's a saying along the lines of, the purpose of a tool is determined by
how its users use it. For instance, security dialogs are often useless because
users blindly click through. Is this a human problem? Yes, absolutely. Does
that mean we can blame users for not using the dialog properly? No, it
doesn't. We're trying other approaches now that encourage better behaviors
from users.

All that is to say, a human problem is fundamentally a tool problem.

------
loeber
I see a lot of people complaining about JIRA in this thread, so here's my
take:

\- I've used Trello, GitHub Projects/Issues, and other Project Management
software;

\- While JIRA has a steep learning curve and is generally unpleasant to use,
it is far and away the most customizable and powerful PM software I have used;

\- Despite JIRA's poor design choices and UX clunkiness, it is so powerful
that I wouldn't use anything else. I'm hoping their design, etc. will
ultimately catch up, but even it doesn't, it's still probably the net best
option available.

~~~
strictnein
> "it is far and away the most customizable and powerful PM software I have
> used"

Opinionated software is good. Unlimited customizability is bad and the source
of almost all of Jira's problems.

~~~
jschwartzi
Not really. Opinionated software is good when the opinion is something you
agree with. When you need the opinionated software to something it wasn't
designed for it's frequently really bad.

CMake is opinionated. It's built assuming that the build yields an executable
file for Windows, Linux or Mac. Try getting CMake to cross-compile for more
than one platform at the same time, or build not than one executable and then
build a root filesystem into a system image. This is impossible without
circumventing CMake entirely. It's actually pretty easy in Make, which is what
CMake generates.

There are tons of organizations which need to manage their projects in a way
Trello or Pivotal aren't designed for. These tools require you to adopt a
methodology and they work great as long as you do. But if you need to do
something strange like integrate with a separate system test team, good luck.
That's really why organizations adopt JIRA. They want to do things that the
tool designers thought you should never do. And those things are necessary in
the eyes of those organizations.

Being opinionated is great if you're a human, but the best software is built
by people who are trying to help me do my job, not by people who want to
dictate how it should be done from the perspective of not being my employer.

~~~
strictnein
Everything you state as being a "benefit" of Jira's customizability is why
devs hate it. The software's features aren't being used to help developers do
their jobs, which was the original reason for the product, but to help
managers and report fetishists collect reams of unnecessary data points. It is
a hindrance to your organization, but at least you get to make sure all those
checkboxes are checked.

It sounds like you're either one of the report generators, so it's awesome for
you, but all your devs hate it.

------
kasey_junk
I know that my experience is by definition limited but across multiple
companies & industries the use of JIRA has been uniformly an anti/pattern.
GitHub issues on the other hand have never been a negative.

The only reason I bring this up is that I think this is an unmitigated bad
feature. The only pushback I have at times in an org is the moat between JIRA
& Github

~~~
smcleod
Yeah I've had nothing but a bad time with Jira, it's slow / high latency and
high impact to use - combining that with GitHubs poor UX and I guess they're
made for each other :/

~~~
paranoidrobot
Admittedly I havn't used Jira for about 6 years, but I don't recall it being
particularly slow, at least if you give it decent hardware to run on (this is
on-prem, so not sure how the Cloud editions go).

If you're talking about process aspects, well.. that's also a business process
thing, as to how much information PMs/etc want.

~~~
jjoonathan
Cloud JIRA is so bad that Atlassian is pulling an Oracle and adding
contractual clauses to forbid people from talking about it.

------
tootie
JIRA is the top project management platform for good reason. I know a lot of
people complain that it's complicated, but every time I've something simpler
we end up hitting a wall. JIRA just needs a sensible workflow configured for
your project and it's great.

All that being said, I don't get this move. Atlassian has a very capable git
product. GitHub should have attempted to anoint a new tool.

~~~
CodeSheikh
People complain not only it's complicated but it is slow and overloaded with
unnecessary features. Can you open up create a new ticket window and how many
features and fields do you count?

~~~
shimms
3 - because we spent time configuring it to our needs.

~~~
regularfry
You are unusual in having that be in your control, I suspect. Ours is
centrally managed.

------
anonytrary
I noticed absolutely no change in Github's product after the Microsoft news,
and I'm 99% sure there will be no appreciable change after this news settles.
I'm 100% sure that people are going to freak out and waste their time
migrating to BitBucket or GitLab for the wrong reasons. As a Github user,
there are a few things Github does that makes me unhappy, like not
hyperlinking static text when they should, but who they get in bed with is not
one of them.

~~~
johns
The Microsoft deal hasn’t even closed yet.

~~~
hinkley
In general, your new corporate overlords usually spend the first fiscal year
trying to figure out what to do with you.

So wait for the first full fiscal year after the deal closes, or the second if
its late enough in the year.

Then you will hear logic like, “We’re not going to tell you what to make, but
we won’t pay for that,” as if that’s different or even better than just
setting the agenda.

------
kuyan
My office usees Jira. I like it.

I feel that a lot of the sentiment against Jira is a result of bad management
- Jira is a tool. It can be used by good managers, and it can be used by bad
managers.

~~~
blt
Good point. Jira's depth and customizability must be like candy for terrible
micromanagers. Kind of like how C++ gets an exaggerated bad rap because it is
really attractive to people who like building complicated, baroque systems.

------
xab9
After using bugzilla, mantis, tfs, jira, gitlab and github, I honestly think
that jira is not half bad. In fact I prefer it over gitlab, but I'm alone with
this view on the team.

The hatred towards jira is on par with desktop java.

------
bongo662
While ive only been a dev for a bit over a year at my current company we use
JIRA and its been pretty easy to understand and work with. Issue comes in a
tester and dev is assigned work is tracked through the issues ID and you just
move the status through its lifecycle (progres, review, testing, done). Maybe
theirs more cumbersome workflows at other companies but mine seems to keep it
straightforward.

------
qaq
Jira is bad enough that at one point was seriously considering doing a startup
in this space. There is a ton of alternatives for "simpler" use cases but 0
better alternatives that can actually be used by large Enterprises.

~~~
lucidone
There are a million project management apps out there because it's basically
all CRUD.

~~~
qaq
There are a million project management apps that a small team can use and
there is 0 aside from Jira that large enterprises can use.

~~~
dragonwriter
> There are a million project management apps that a small team can use and
> there is 0 aside from Jira that large enterprises can use.

I'm pretty sure that's wrong; there are large enterprises that use project
management software but don't use Jira at all.

~~~
qaq
Yes there are and read what people are writing about those systems they are
even more abysmal thats why Atlassian dominates this market.

~~~
qznc
I would like to see the issue tracker at Apple.

------
philliphaydon
Nooooooooo. Ah I'm so sad. I literally found out 2 days ago we're gonna move
to Jira. I hope management doesn't find out about the integration between the
two.

------
seanjregan
This is pretty much every thread.

Tool X sucks. No, you set it up incorrectly

Tell me why it sucks?

Management sucks

Maybe your team/team and management is the problem.

Oh Hai, GitLab CEO here.

We will build whatever it is you are complaining about.

~~~
KyeRussell
I can't take GitLab seriously until it stops touting itself as a project
management tool with its flimsy label-based 'workflow' model.

------
nine_k
You may like Jira or dislike Jira, but having to click fewer controls, and
likely wait fewer times for a Jira page to load, will be a plus. Especially if
your company is heavily invested in Jira, and switching to your more favored
issue tracker is infeasible.

------
Game_Ender
I feel sad for all the Github users who will have to suffer the awful JIRA UX.
It’s a tool that tries to be everything to everyone with a decade of legacy
cruft attached. The result is something that is slow, confusing, and
incoherent. If you have an expert and sink a lot of time into, you can a few
decent workflows, but it’s just not worth it.

In the end though, don’t worry the managers will get their reports and
everyone will at least have there feature box checked (assume you don’t care
about Markdown).

~~~
cjdu
That's exactly what this is. Jira is entrenched in enterprises...whoever at
those seem to like Jira, for whatever reason. Developers want GitHub.

So bosses want Jira, developers want Github. This is one of those have your
cake and eat it too scenarios for both Atlassian and GitHub.

~~~
Aeolun
The cake is way too salty, but hey, at least it’s cake :)

------
diminoten
> Check back for updates on an upcoming enterprise version of the Jira Cloud
> and GitHub integration.

This is a bit murky re: enterprise Jira + enterprise GitHub.

------
dikei
If you think JIRA is bad, wait until you have to use IBM RTC :)

------
dhnsmakala
Can someone explain all the Jira hate to me?

Yeah it's an ugly UI. But once you are used to how it works, doesn't it do the
job fine? I don't spend that much time in task management software, just need
to look up my tasks...

~~~
strictnein
The hate for it is from the large amount of customization that is done to
workflows at large organizations, many times in the name of "compliance" or
"security".

Instead of just moving stories between lanes (To Do, In progress, Testing,
Done or whatever), you're filling out multiple forms, clicking a bunch of
checkboxes, adding links to test results, build results, PRs, etc, all for
someone you'll never know to run a weekly report and send it off to a bunch of
people who will never read it. But they will generate a wonderful paper trail
in case something happens.

~~~
mrmondo
Yeah that and it's interface feeling so incredibly slow / high latency (on
prem and cloud / hosted), it /feels/ like Java.

------
ausjke
Isn't Jira from one of its major competitor? This is interesting.

~~~
lysp
I'm guessing they want to try and take some of the bitbucket market share
back.

~~~
timberfields
This reads like a wise move on GitHub's part. Head to head, GitHub wins
against bitbucket 10 out of 10 times x infinity. But being very close to
enterprise sales cycles, some pointy haired boss somewhere says "gee, we have
a jira contract already and they'll give me this other piece of software
(bitbucket) for next to nothing...it's got to be good enough for my devs,
right?" Of course this is silly way of thinking, but I'm certain it happens
all the time, more than we think in forums like this.

~~~
itomato
Bitbucket Enterprise is not only cheaper than GitHub Enterprise, but it can
run on-prem in a cluster.

Hard to imagine where GitHub trounces Bitbucket, but I am willing to listen

------
CodeSheikh
Can we use this post and maybe discuss possible alternatives to JIRA?

~~~
CodeSheikh
Trello

~~~
ochrist
Trello was just bought by Atlassian (the company behind JIRA).

~~~
chii
Implying that it's not good simply because it's now owned by Atlassian?

Trello is good for what it's designed for - simple lists of lists of notes.

~~~
chrisper
It's probably implied that Trello one day will become Jira...

~~~
ochrist
Nah, not really. It was just for information. But Atlassian must have some
kind of plan for Trello, and I for one can't guess what that might be.

~~~
jschumacher
The plan is to let Trello do what it does best, help people manage anything
from organising a wedding to planning software projects.

------
pkamb
I'm all for this if it prompts Jira to support Markdown.

------
tilolebo
So I installed it, configured it, the sync status is "COMPLETE" but I can't
see anything related to github in my JIRA issues that are mentioned in PRs and
commits.

Is there an extra step to perform? The 3rd screenshot in
[https://github.com/marketplace/jira-software-
github](https://github.com/marketplace/jira-software-github) shows an "ACTIVE"
status.

------
knocte
Jira is the worst bug tracking tool I've ever used.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I feel like Jira is like democracy: it's the worst bug tracking tool there is,
except for all the other ones.

~~~
yborg
That was true for some time, but they're making me miss Bugzilla now. I spend
increasing amounts of time just watching Jira load it's ever more bloated UI.

------
timwaagh
Kinda surprised it's jira and not Microsoft's own TFS. Oh well. Nice for those
who use jira.

------
ed_blackburn
Any other ex-salesforce people here. If you think JIRA-GH is scary. Remember
GUS :O

------
tbarbugli
This icould be great news, it is not clear from the article but I hope they
solved the annoying problem of first repo sync hitting Github rate limits. We
had this issue several times when we migrated from Trello to Jira.

------
Cogito
To wade in on the JIRA wars going on, I was once a JIRA consultant (among
other things).

I ended up telling people I worked on business process design because once you
see 100 different ways people are using a tool you learn most of the wrong
ways to do it.

The primary issue with any task tracking or workflow tool is that the people
implementing it have never learnt what is effective and what isn't. Worse,
what is effective changes depending on what exact kind of task you are trying
to track, in addition to the organisation and everything else.

I would typically start, regardless of what the particular thing I was brought
in to help with was, with getting management/project leads/etc to agree to
what outcomes they want from a tool like JIRA.

Companies have processes that get followed, and management need to provide
direction and measure what's being done. Overwhelmingly there seems to be no
good way of transferring information between these layers, of people doing
work and other people trying to understand what that work is.

A good tool will make it easy for that information to flow.

The problem is that for the information to be useful it needs to be accurate
and complete, you need people to actually use the tool. Every time you add a
gate to a task (this person must accept this before it progresses, or this
field has to be filled out) you add friction to the process and people
disengage (often using a different tool altogether like excel or sticky
notes).

At the same time, a well designed tool supports people doing their work.
Prompts remind people what things need to be checked or completed at each
step, and notifications can let you know when something needs doing.

As long as you can get people to agree to these concepts, you can start to
design workflows and information to capture that will be useful for the people
using it, and useful for the people trying to work out what is happening.

JIRA also takes a while to learn how to architect sustainably. If you create
20 copies of different screens it becomes a real chore to go in and change
them down the track. If you do have a bit of foresight and experience,
however, it's not hard to manage hundred of projects with different workflows
and fields.

It has lots of warts and cruft that's built over time, and there isn't enough
knowledge about how to use the good bits, so it gets a bad rap.

I know how to use it pretty well, and am normally in a position to change it
when I need to, so don't run into the gripes that most people see.

The biggest positive however is not that it can do almost anything 'task-
tracky' with a bit of effort - it's that it can do that _and_ someone else
maintains it. So many tools (internal and external) grow and grow and grow to
try and cover things like assigning tasks and tracking workflow and sending
emails, or run into a wall because VBA scripts in excel can only do so much.
The ability to take almost any of those and add task tracking by simply
integrating with JIRA is a huge selling point and has provided so much value
to me over the years. That I can do the same for all parts of the business is
the main reason it has spread so far in the enterprise world.

I remember the days that JIRA used to be snuck into small teams when no one
was looking, and spread organically throughout the organisation after that
because it was so useful.

~~~
erik_seaberg
> Every time you add a gate to a task (this person must accept this before it
> progresses …

This seems to be the standard failure mode. When a ticket is wrong, I try to
fix it only to find I'm _not allowed to_ , because the workflow presumes the
actual state of the project today can't happen.

~~~
Cogito
The solution of course it to just allow people to do what they want.

Every now and then it’s useful to everyone to stop some things from happening
- it’s easier to have the gate than to not.

The fact that that exemption exists is what drives the pain most people have
with systems like this.

My trick was to say “while we’re building this let’s just leave it as open as
possible, we can lock it down once we’re sure the process works how we need
it” - and then never lock it down (or just lock down the bits that people use
to shoot themselves in the foot).

------
swagatkonchada
A lot of people are going to switch from Asana to Jira

------
deepaksurti
Ok, so finally time to move on to Gitlab, my weekend is gone! While from what
I read GH issues are not going away, I won't be surprised if GH finally
becomes a pure enterprisey product.

My only concern is what happens when Gitlab is acquired? If someone from GL
can confirm that they have serious checks and balances in place to not let the
users who make Gitlab succeed be left to fend for themselves, can be a killing
blow to Github in retaining even the left overs!

~~~
fingerprinter
This....this makes no sense. An integration doesn't mean something else is
going away. That's not how platforms work.

FWIW, gitlab is going to get acquired...it has to. Probably by google, or
oracle, or salesforce, or ibm, or hp (or whatever name they have these days),
or redhat. And depending on which one it is, will be how ruined gitlab
becomes, because all of those seem like terrible options, but I digress now.

~~~
sytse
We can't predict the future. But our plan is to become a public company in
2020
[https://about.gitlab.com/strategy/#sequence-](https://about.gitlab.com/strategy/#sequence-)

And while it doesn't prevent an acquisition our recent fundraise makes it less
likely
[https://about.gitlab.com/2018/09/19/announcing-100m-series-d...](https://about.gitlab.com/2018/09/19/announcing-100m-series-
d-funding/)

