One of the benefits to living in San Antonio is being able to easily drive to Six Flags. I am a huge fan of roller coasters. There is something about the mix of the fear and adrenaline that makes them so dang fun…for a while. Being a Season Pass holder, while the doors are open, I could choose to go to Six Flags every single day if I want to, but after an entire summer of going every weekend, I begin to ask myself, is it worth going in the first place?
Sure the adrenaline is great for the first couple of weeks, but let’s be honest, there are more negatives than positives when going to Six Flags. Parking is a nightmare, the food and drinks are overpriced, unless you pay for the membership, and you have to Stand in line for hours sometimes in order to ride a 60 second ride.
Many organizations share similar feelings when it comes to Atlassian’s JIRA products. They tell us why they want to move on, and it’s mostly because their processes are too mature for the product. So again, “Why do organizations leave JIRA?”
JIRA stumbles with mature ITSM processes.
From our experience, JIRA is great for those who aren’t responsible for evolving their IT Service Management processes. Can JIRA handle these processes? Maybe, but it takes a bit of hard work through an integration from JIRA’s marketplace that makes them useable. It’s like buying a $50K smart car and outfitting it with $100K in accessories to make it handle like an all-terrain vehicle.
JIRA was developed originally as a bug finder, not as a ticketing system, and it tends to show. Jon Evans – a columnist for TechCrunch describes JIRA as “Incomplete and lacking vision of the bigger picture.” Evans claims that the process of breaking down work into small tasks and assigning them to the team members makes their focus shift too much to the ‘micro’ side and forget about the ‘macro’ one. Without the context, he writes, everyone cares only about their own issues, so the teamwork becomes just running the tickets through the board, and the resulting code is far from optimal.
This kind of mentality goes a long way not only in the internal agent experience, but the experience of the end customer as well. If the agents only focus on their own tickets, and not the larger picture, how does that effect the end user experience? That customer will not feel unique in your well oiled machine, they will feel like a number, and over time it will show.
In fact, Randall Reed, President & CEO at Dataseti has been in the ITSM, ITOM and ITAM space for about 25 years and compares JIRA to a house of cards. Looks nice on the outside, but ready to go at any minute. He only believes in products that are capable at every level and/or doesn’t break the bank, which is why Dataseti doesn’t offer it.
Well what should we do instead? Luckily enough a comment from Jon Evans’ article JIRA is an Antipattern hits the nail right on the head –
“Defining a process that works for the company first, then picking out the right set of tools to support this process and enabling access to high-level project data for all engaged parties are the key action points leading to a successful software development project.“
Jordan Janis
Many companies forget to define a process before jumping straight into a new tool, then they find out that said tool doesn’t fit with the direction of the company, or more important, what they desperately need. That is why Dataseti is dedicated to making that a priority when working with businesses. Our Advisory Services and Process Consulting, with 30 years of experience, will help you positively transform your IT organization by examining every facet, inspecting every turn and prescribing actions with a full and comprehensive report upon delivery. Once we have that report, we work with you to choose a tool that handles the processes most important to you.
If you are interested in hearing more about Dataseti’s IT Process Consulting, feel free to visit our Contact US page today!
Thanks for reading, and keep an eye out for Part 2 coming soon!