[peterwwillis]

To answer your concerns: 1) What you've heard is probably accurate. 2) It probably will add paper-filling work. 3) They will definitely enforce using Jira in some kind of way, but not necessarily a strict way.

How you should handle this: acknowledge that it's just a complex tool, and like any complex tool, how you (and others) use it determines the experience. Yes, there will be an up-front cost to onboarding. But it doesn't have to go horribly.

As your team gets trained on it, you will probably quickly experience pain points. Document them and constantly measure the effect of them on your team's output. Implement workarounds as necessary and measure the effects. Provide the results to management along with your recommended fixes. In theory you should end up with 1) "We tried it your way, and this is how it went", 2) "Then we tried it our way, and this is how we improved it."

This provides a method to work around problems, and a solid argument to upper management to modify their use of the tool. Make sure the argument makes it clear that your changes are in line with the business's objectives, or probably nobody will care if it's painful for your team.