Why I don’t use Jira and Confluence at all for my software development? Part 1

It seems that Jira and Confluence are used everywhere within the software industry. As an owner of several commercial software products, I don’t use Jira or Confluence, have never had the need and do not see any benefits from them.

On 2022–11–10, DHH posted an insightful comment on LinkedIn based on the public financial figures (“losing boatloads of money”):

“These companies (Asana, Monday, Smartsheet, and ClickUp) can’t even make their own businesses work, yet they’re trying to sell you software to run yours.” — DHH

Some of the above software, such as ClickUp, marketed themselves as a “Jira Replacement”. By the way, Atlassian’s share was doing very poorly last year as well.

As an Australian, I naturally have a feeling of closeness to Atlassian, an Australian-originated company, and I have witnessed its growth. My first contact with Atlassian engineers was at CITCON 2009. Atlassian, as the sponsor, gave some marketing talks, of course. It was a really good marketing strategy to go directly to programmers. Later, I received an invitation to join Atlassian, but I declined because I never liked the idea of digital versions of user stories.

Manage user stories in Jira is Wrong!

Jira was much better (and cheaper) than the infamous Rational United Process (RUP) as a digital project management tool. Jira’s rapid growth in replacing over-complicated RUP comes as no surprise to me. However, after mastering test automation and continuous testing, I realised that this kind of digital project management tool is of no use and can even make things worse.

As you know, the essence of Jira is managing user stories. Let’s see what Kent Beck, Father of Agile, wrote in his classic book.

According to Kent Beck, “the computerised version of stories” never worked. I know that many readers who are using Jira daily would strongly disagree. Kent Beck is correct (frankly, you compared to Kent, …) because most people did not understand the version of “working (well)” in Kent’s view. I agree with Kent Beck, but only after I mastered test automation. Therefore, I don’t use Jira (and Confluence) at all for my own software development.

Jira ≠ Agile

There is no doubt that Jira has been extremely successful in the agile space. In my last test consulting project, I found the team’s ~50% time was spent using Jira/Confluence, rather than working on their own product. It sounds mad, doesn’t it?

A fake agile coach might spend the majority of their work time on Jira, which is vastly different from the first (real) agile coach I met in 2005. He, a world-renowned programmer, spent most of his time on test automation.

You might have seen the below slide by Andy Hunt, a co-author of the Agile Manifesto.

Common sense: Jira ≠ Agile. Jira is Atlassian’s commercial software, not yours.

Over the years, Jira added more terms such as “Epic” and more features such as “burn charts”. Do they really matter to real SDLC? Programmers introduce regression issues all the time, and one issue might offset your perfect plan (in Jira) by days or weeks.

Without Jira, how can I do …?

Many IT professionals, who willingly or unwillingly work with Jira or alike daily, might wonder, “How do I do my work if there is no Jira?”. The short answer is “You will find better ways”, same as those farmers who lost their land after the industrial revolution.

1. User Stories

Write down on physical index cards. After doing that, you will understand the term “User Story Card” and its great benefits. By the way, it was where the real “User Story Card” came from. Somehow the meaning has been distorted by Jira.

Check out my article: User Story Card Clarified.

2. Estimating user story points

“User story points” is a silly idea, and its creator has already apologized for this invention. Check out the quotes from many agile authorities in this article, Estimating User Story Points is a Waste of Time.

3 . Burn Charts and Viewing progress

If we agree “User story points” is a bad idea, according to several co-authors of the Agile Manifesto, the so-called “Velocity/Burn” charts are surely meaningless.

4. Defect Tracking

People who use Jira for defect tracking link it to user stories (by the same token, Confluence). If you do Agile properly and use physical user story cards, then defect tracking is a totally independent activity that might be in another tool or no need at all.

Check out my article, Why Don’t I Use Defect Tracking? No Need, I do real Continuous Testing.

In Part 2, I will answer some common questions on this topic.

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The original article was published on my Medium Blog on 2022-11-24