Jon Evans argues JIRA fragments project vision, turning developers into ticket-completing machines who lose sight of the bigger picture
TechCrunch writer Jon Evans' critique of JIRA as fundamentally misaligned with effective software development. He argues JIRA 'encourages the disintegration of the macro vision' by fragmenting projects into micro-tasks that cause developers to lose sight of overall goals. The ticket-based system creates linear workflows that don't support organic development, struggles to represent cross-cutting infrastructure, and incentivizes completing individual tickets over understanding broader project goals. His solution: use prose documents for project vision, create concise 10-page project overviews, develop architectural documents explaining infrastructure, and treat running code as the 'source of truth' rather than tickets. Evans recommends using JIRA strictly for iterative development and bug tracking while maintaining holistic project understanding through written documentation that keeps both macro and micro perspectives aligned.
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