Prompted by Hamlet’s The Unwisdom of Crowds post in New World Notes I finally decided attempt to take an in-depth look at Jira. I can say that after approximately 10 minutes of slow page load times and unclear click stream paths to get anywhere that I found the site to be disappointing.
Granted, the slowness may be due to the difference between “my hasn’t been updated in years” work computer versus my desktop at home, which gets updated every 6 months. I’ll take a look at Jira again when I get home, but my overall impression is that it is clunky and could be more intuitive to users of all levels.
I would not consider myself a luddite in this field, but when it comes to websites I am a strict form over function type of person. I want to be able to go to the website and find what I am looking for in the most efficient way possible. If I can’t find what I am looking for efficiently then I will most likely not use the site again. I also manage our database at work for a variety of functions I have little or no patience for slow, clunky, inefficient, non-intuitive databases. In my past two jobs, I have spearheaded the process of moving from said clunky outdated databases to a much more efficient ones.
My overall feeling is that the clunkiness of Jira is probably keeping away many people who would contribute to the process.