Comment On Manual JIRA

Well it's still the same amount of effort/wasted time/overhead. It's just that it's on paper instead of the computer.

Using a tracking tool to track every task does seem a bit pointless. A bug tracking tool is essential as a go-between for QA and development, however, for pure development tasks, it just seems unneccessary overhead. That's why those tasks are in the project plan!

Fist. Awesome! But they should have put it on a wooden table

He must have been upset that he couldn't draw pictures in JIRA.

Ho ho! I have felt this way many times (in fact I have a Jira tab open in Firefox next to this one!).

But the real WTF is that he's got outer space at only 24 miles altitude.

That's adorable. Sounds like this designer has an interesting sense of humor. I particularly like the Atlassian logo. :)

Can anyone recommend any free bug tracking software? Using Excel to track bugs is a pain.

hmm, his first name was Paul... Has (had in my case) a dislike for Jira. If 'paul' used Index cards, I really am wondering if I'm the subject of this... except I was the team lead and forced index cards on everyone else :)


** Why: The team, Project manager, developers, testers were all in the same room, we had several large whiteboards... we went 'manual' with index cards for tasks, a section stuck up for 'to do', and names with cards underneath in another section of the board.

Managment hated this, as they couldn't 'see' what was going on.. despite the fact that all they had to do was open our door and look at the wall instead of hitting a url. Or just wait till the weekly managment update meeting or status report email to be sent out.

Everyone else liked it... even the project manager ditched his Gant chart.

lol...

+

Jim:

Using a tracking tool to track every task does seem a bit pointless. A bug tracking tool is essential as a go-between for QA and development, however, for pure development tasks, it just seems unneccessary overhead. That's why those tasks are in the project plan!

Yes, but how is the project manager supposed to know the tasks are finished? Is the person really going to want to get emails every time a task is finished? Proper tracking lets project managers know how long tasks are taking and compare the real values to the estimates. Of course, it can be a pain, depending on the tools and how much information you have to update every time. And if you're using the tracking tools properly, you shouldn't have to come up with status reports all the time since the built in reporting tools should give project managers the information they need.

We're using Mantis (http://www.mantisbt.org/) and it does its job pretty well.

Patrick:

Jim:

Using a tracking tool to track every task does seem a bit pointless. A bug tracking tool is essential as a go-between for QA and development, however, for pure development tasks, it just seems unneccessary overhead. That's why those tasks are in the project plan!

Yes, but how is the project manager supposed to know the tasks are finished? Is the person really going to want to get emails every time a task is finished? Proper tracking lets project managers know how long tasks are taking and compare the real values to the estimates. Of course, it can be a pain, depending on the tools and how much information you have to update every time. And if you're using the tracking tools properly, you shouldn't have to come up with status reports all the time since the built in reporting tools should give project managers the information they need.

Well you could take a page from Agile development and have daily stand ups (or maybe only have them 3 times a week). In my experience, stand ups work pretty well unless you have a moron in the group who forgets everything the minute you tell him and insists on rehashing previous meetings during the stand ups.

Yes, I worked with such a moron.

Stand ups are just status updates and can go smoothly otherwise.

Jim:

Using a tracking tool to track every task does seem a bit pointless. A bug tracking tool is essential as a go-between for QA and development, however, for pure development tasks, it just seems unneccessary overhead. That's why those tasks are in the project plan!

You still need some way to track "Has X been done?" and to quickly look up what things still need to be done.

L.M.A.O.

awesome!

What... no wooden table? We've been cheated.

I always thought outer space was eight miles high. Granted, I may have been unduly influenced by McGwuinn, Crosby, et al.

Mantis and Trac are often used (although Trac is annoying to set up). I've been playing with Mingle ( http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-intelligence ) recently, and have so far fallen in love with it. It's free for up to 5 users, and for academic or open-source use.

Anyone else feeling strangely reminded of a certain Futurama episode?
You sure this guy is called "Paul", not "Bender"? :)

haha, i had a similar manual ClearQuest at my last job. A tester came to the meeting with some bugs that had just found jotted on a sheet of paper. They brought them up in the meeting, noted that the bug wasn't in CQ yet, but asked my boss to assign somebody to it anyhow because it was urgent.

She took the paper out of the guy's hand and wrote: "State: Assessing. Owner: vt_mruhlin and handed it to me." I think the reason she gave it to me was because she expected me to lose it, thus stressing the need for the tool. But I was bored in the meeting, so I sat there and read their description, wrote my assessment and time estimates, submitted my changes to the change review board (a.k.a. passed the sheet across the table and got somebody from the CCB to sign it). CCB then passed it back to my boss to allocate to developers. She passed it back to me.

We were all having a good laugh going through the process manually, but once I asked the one guy with a laptop to print out some code for me so I could hand-write in my fixes, somebody decided we should actually get back on track with the meeting.

I am a software tester by profession, and where I work we have a separation. Developers develop (and do simple testing to make sure that the stuff they produce actually works), and the testers do the deeper testing (including chain testing, system testing, integration testing, quality assurance, and checking whether the build applications measure up to described behaviour, the requirements and the business rules).

We do the findings (the bugs as you call them), and the developers solve them.

But I agree, JIRA is a steaming pile of manure. :) (but the Access-based tool we are using at the moment is also slow)

Bosshog:

But the real WTF is that he's got outer space at only 24 miles altitude.

He also misspelled "description".

But the real WTF is that he's got outer space at only 24 miles altitude.

Well, look at it this way. If the rocks used to build the pyramid are sufficiently dense, the pyramid will have sufficient gravitational pull to make a "dip" in the atmosphere near the pyramid, thus ensuring that the tip of the pyramid is at the exact spot where the atmosphere ends (at 24 miles).

Grovesy:

Managment hated this, as they couldn't 'see' what was going on.. despite the fact that all they had to do was open our door and look at the wall instead of hitting a url. Or just wait till the weekly managment update meeting or status report email to be sent out.

Set up a webcam

Stupidumb:

Can anyone recommend any free bug tracking software? Using Excel to track bugs is a pain.

Trac is nice, it has some extra nifty features like a wiki and an svn repository browser

Bosshog:

But the real WTF is that he's got outer space at only 24 miles altitude.

I guess he's reffering to the outer "spec" as in specification ;)

*MUST ... STOP ... WORKING ... ON ... FUNCTIONAL ... SPECS ... FOR ... TODAY*

We use JIRA where I work and some people occasionally get carried away. One guy was in charge of a small (non-coding) group. As he doled out the tasks to his minions he would put them all into JIRA. Great! he didn't have to speak to them or send them an email as JIRA would do this on submission of the new task. Of course, JIRA send emails for new issues/tasks, edits of tasks, comments or about anything else. So this meant that the team became buried under automated emails. Even so this didn't stop them even adding JIRA tasks for things that had already been done. (Add new task, then resolve!)

This probably would have been all right if it had not been for one "issue" that was added.
[paraphrased]
"could everyone make sure that they use JIRA for all tasks and close them off?"

not sure if this one was ever closed.

mauhiz:

Egyptians had JIRA (on papyrus), that's why they could build such great buildings. That is how they did it :

1. steal papyrus
2. use JIRA
3. ?????
4. Pyramids!

5. ?????
6. Profit!

dlikhten:

mauhiz:

Egyptians had JIRA (on papyrus), that's why they could build such great buildings. That is how they did it :

1. steal papyrus
2. use JIRA
3. ?????
4. Pyramids!

5. ?????
6. Profit!

7. Stargate!


(The WTF is definitely 24 miles as the distance to space. Someone should submit a bug rep- oh.)

Stupidumb:

Can anyone recommend any free bug tracking software? Using Excel to track bugs is a pain.

http://www.bugzilla.org/

It looks like Sameera (or whatever the first name in Subtasks is, the handwriting is kind of difficult to read) must be the senior developer on this project, as he has the best job. I mean, sure, he has to toil endlessly, but he's also the only one that has the opportunity, nay, the OBLIGATION, to get laid.

They use it on Skullcrusher Mountain, too:

1. steal pony
2. steal monkey
3. use JIRA
4. ?????
5. Half pony, half monkey monster!

When I was the only developer on a team of Sys Admins, I wrote a small tool to track my releases, updates, and bugs. One day my manager spotted it over my shoulder and decided it was the be-all end-all tool to manage everyone's workloads.

He forced me to send the link to him (I "forgot" several times when he requested it). He started adding a bunch of junk data to play around with it then started asking me questions like "How do I specify what server has the issue?" and "How do I specify what customer or project the sent the issue to us?".

Fast forward 6 nightmarish years and my (glorified Excel spreadsheet) bug tracker now has all the workflow/trouble ticket, hardware inventory, software inventory, network data, and financial data for all the development hosting at a massive corporation shoehorned into it. I was finally rescued when they decided the system had reached steady state and outsourced it to Egypt. They ported it from PHP to VB.Net and now it is incredibly slow and doesn't really work. Glad I got out of there.

SuperousOxide:

Jim:

Using a tracking tool to track every task does seem a bit pointless. A bug tracking tool is essential as a go-between for QA and development, however, for pure development tasks, it just seems unneccessary overhead. That's why those tasks are in the project plan!

You still need some way to track "Has X been done?" and to quickly look up what things still need to be done.

That's why we have status meetings, also gives a chance to raise issues directly, instead of entering them into some tool where it goes unnoticed. This way, one can also stress the urgency of certain issues.

I've used Lotus Notes as a bug tracking system before. Now, in theory it was actually a pretty cool system, but I guess in theory Lotus Notes is actually good also (and in theory communism works). There is some value to integrating bug tracking into your calendar/e-mail/sales/marketing. Imagine having task due dates showing up next to your meetings in your calendar, or being able to e-mail a list of links of outstanding issues to other people. We even had it integrated into our build system: creating a new build would do a lookup on all issues that were supposedly resolved for that release and compile a report/readme.txt file. Pretty cool stuff, I think.

Except for the fact that the issue-tracking calendar was completely separate from the normal meeting calendar. And the part where it (used to) e-mail all clients when a new build was made (wtf?). And the part where tickets could become locked forever so you'd have to put in a duplicate issue. And the fact that the search mechanism sucked so QA/Support guys would put in about 500 copies of the same issue. And the fact that it ran on LOTUS FUCKING NOTES so it was slow as hell and almost unusable.

Other than that it was sweet, though.

At my work our tracker has 3 priorities (Low, Normal and High). Most people respects them and uses them wisely.

But one person refuses to use anything lower than Normal. In fact, most of his entries are High. We have tried to talk to him, but he refuses since his entries are always "important". We have given up on him, and mentally reduces the level by one :-)

The funny part is that occasionally he sends something that really deserves the "High" status. And since they will seem like any other entry, he has to use ALL CAPS IN THE TITLE with several exclamation marks and the words "IMPORTANT" and "ASAP".

durnurd:

But the real WTF is that he's got outer space at only 24 miles altitude.

Well, look at it this way. If the rocks used to build the pyramid are sufficiently dense, the pyramid will have sufficient gravitational pull to make a "dip" in the atmosphere near the pyramid, thus ensuring that the tip of the pyramid is at the exact spot where the atmosphere ends (at 24 miles).

If it were sufficiently dense to do that, wouldn't it just sort of sink through the earth's crust? Planets, by definition, have a habit of smoothing out really big bumps like a 24 mile tall pyramid.

--NotAn

Mr Mr:

At my work our tracker has 3 priorities (Low, Normal and High). Most people respects them and uses them wisely...except that one jerk

Oh, that reminds me. The aforementioned Lotus Notes bug tracking system had 2 fields for this, "Priority" and "Severity." Priority was a number between 1 (highest priority) and 6, and Severity could have values of "Blocker", "Critical", "Major", etc.

No one could figure out what they meant, though. You'd get weird mixes that didn't make any sense. I think I've seen this in CodeBeamer, also...

Me:

Fist. Awesome! But they should have put it on a wooden table

Wooden table jokes are lamer then FDR's legs.

The Real WTF is that they use a paid tool when you have excellent OSS bug tracking software out there... bugzilla anyone?

Ubersoldat:

The Real WTF is that they use a paid tool when you have excellent OSS bug tracking software out there... bugzilla anyone?

Agreed, but the problem with OSS is that, in a sufficiently large company, OSS has to go through the legal department for approval, etc. Sometimes, the cost of legal exceeds the cost of the license, and if not, in some cases, the features of the proprietary product exceed the features in the OSS product. I'm not familiar enough with either product to make the call in this case, however, OSS isn't always the answer.

Ubersoldat:

The Real WTF is that they use a paid tool when you have excellent OSS bug tracking software out there... bugzilla anyone?

In my experience, both as a user and a poor-schmuck once tasked with customizing it, Bugzilla is far from "excellent". It gets the job done, but if you're willing to spend the money, you probably won't be disappointed.

(That's not to say all commercial systems are better than Bugzilla, but the one I'm familiar with definitely was. I just can't remember its name right now.)

savar:

Me:

Fist. Awesome! But they should have put it on a wooden table

Wooden table jokes are lamer then FDR's legs.

*Gasps!*

Too soon?

:)

Outlaw Programmer:

(and in theory communism works)

Nice. That is my usual line. "sure that works, in theory. Then again, communism is GREAT ... in theory"

Stupidumb:

Can anyone recommend any free bug tracking software? Using Excel to track bugs is a pain.

Bugzilla, but it sucks.

Marnen Laibow-Koser:

That's adorable. Sounds like this designer has an interesting sense of humor. I particularly like the Atlassian logo. :)

It's the actual JIRA logo.

Great WTF, I really liked the Google ad I got on this page: "Do-It-Yourself Graphics. -- SmartDraw"

Jim:

That's why we have status meetings, also gives a chance to raise issues directly, instead of entering them into some tool where it goes unnoticed. This way, one can also stress the urgency of certain issues.

Right, because frequent status meetings take way less time than the 30 seconds involved in adding/editing a case, and couldn't possibly have any negative effect on productivity. Plus, raising all issues through status meetings carries the added benefit of never having any part of your work record or priorities documented, which is excellent when it comes time for a performance review and/or somebody comes to you with an "urgent" request and you need to explain why you can't finish it in the next 30 seconds.

Yep, issue tracking is useless, and status meetings rock. Oh, and programmers are also more productive in open cubicle farms, and all you ever need for a functional spec are a couple of pieces of paper submitted by users with one or two scribbled paragraphs. And performance optimization is a waste of time. Most importantly, a project is deemed successful as soon as the first version ships.

Right?

Ubersoldat:

The Real WTF is that they use a paid tool when you have excellent OSS bug tracking software out there... bugzilla anyone?

No, because don't forget, all open source software is written by sanctimonious, communist moochers.