Yeah I've been defended Jira here in the past, too.
My opinion is that Jira reflects the organisation that manages it. It's basically a whole lot of customizable UI and permissions hanging off a user-defined state machine. You can set it up so that individual teams can fully administer their own projects, or you can go all the way in the other direction and have centralized, locked-down management where you beg some internal specialist Jira admin(s) to make your changes.
Also, in the last couple of years it's got a lot better. It's faster, there are options for simpler configuration, and more stuff out-of-the-box (assuming you're on Cloud, but isn't everyone these days?).
In detraction: configuring it can be a huge PITA. So many screens, concepts, and so much clicking. But when it's done it works, and I think most of the hassle is just inherent complexity from such a configurable tool (if you haven't Admined Jira: you can change almost anything).
Yes, we switched to Jira from a piece of abandonware (simple php based bug tracker) several years ago. Jira is kinda slow sometimes, but not horrible. And yes, like you said, once you get it configured it works great.
Overall, we are very happy with Jira and it's worth the cost for the value it brings to the organization (still hurts the wallet, but it's at least justified).
...and then Atlassian comes along and rug-pulls on-prem Jira.
We only have ~80 users, so 1000-user-minimum data center isn't going to cut it for us. And there is an on-prem requirement, so no cloud option either (wouldn't want to anyway). And for that, I bitch. Fuck Atlassian and everything they do to appease their shareholders before the customers.
My opinion is that Jira reflects the organisation that manages it. It's basically a whole lot of customizable UI and permissions hanging off a user-defined state machine. You can set it up so that individual teams can fully administer their own projects, or you can go all the way in the other direction and have centralized, locked-down management where you beg some internal specialist Jira admin(s) to make your changes.
Also, in the last couple of years it's got a lot better. It's faster, there are options for simpler configuration, and more stuff out-of-the-box (assuming you're on Cloud, but isn't everyone these days?).
In detraction: configuring it can be a huge PITA. So many screens, concepts, and so much clicking. But when it's done it works, and I think most of the hassle is just inherent complexity from such a configurable tool (if you haven't Admined Jira: you can change almost anything).
Overall, we are very happy with Jira and it's worth the cost for the value it brings to the organization (still hurts the wallet, but it's at least justified).
...and then Atlassian comes along and rug-pulls on-prem Jira.
We only have ~80 users, so 1000-user-minimum data center isn't going to cut it for us. And there is an on-prem requirement, so no cloud option either (wouldn't want to anyway). And for that, I bitch. Fuck Atlassian and everything they do to appease their shareholders before the customers.