[fivre]

My struggles with Jira are more that the people who should be in charge of configuring it effectively and running it smoothly (team managers and PMs) often don't. I see a lot of stuff that's incredibly inconsistent and a lot of features that are used incorrectly (most prevalently using labels for EVERYTHING, usually using 4 different labels for the same purpose where say, a component or Epic would make more sense). Exacerbating that is that these ad hoc half workflows aren't communicated effectively, so the only people that understand the systems are their creators

Jira's complex, I get it, but lots of things are. Jira's docs are decent enough--certainly decent enough that following the tutorials will grant you an understanding of the various tools and their intended purpose--but people seemingly just don't read them. Some things just aren't going to be fully discoverable or clear through UX alone.

More galling is that these are usually the same people that then create shadow PM empires through Excel spreadsheets of their own design, which is just ugh. So much blame is heaped on Jira that's probably better blamed on ineffective management.

[jgust]

This, exactly. All complaints about JIRA boil down to poor administration, not the tool itself.