Random stuff

I started to use JIRA and GreenHopper for scheduling, estimating and logging hours for personal projects and tasks somewhere around December 2009. It has now proven to be valuable tool for that. Before that I have had a bunch of different experiences with different softwares. I’ve used several different online and offline TODO-programs, Calendars, Wikis, etc. Of course that is kind of a wide variety of different applications that are meant for different uses but for task estimating and tracking it seems that JIRA is the thing. Although I think it is worth mentioning that I wouldn’t use it without GreenHopper Agile plugin anymore. I have plenty of professional history with JIRA anyway so it was easy to get going with it.

Now I have actually started to timetable my personal tasks at home etc. to quarters so that I have some kind of clue what I have planned to do even that I would not do that. =D Anyway the best part about that is that I can see if I have overbooked myself and can postpone things. Actually one of the very first things I noticed that when I am really being honest estimating the hours I would use for a task and put them in the line, I realize that I think I can do almost double the things that I really can and even when I estimate the hours I still underestimate the time they take. Being able to track that has an serious impact on stress levels and prevents the “everything is due at the same time and my walls fall on me when I lie awake feeling like tied with handcuffs inside a coconut”-phenomena. And those are probably the first and maybe the only reasons you should use some kind of hour estimation/task tracking at work. It helps you. When you know how and why you use it, it will not be an evil plan from your boss to track your breathing but a tool for you. _{(Of course it does not hurt to know how much time was used on which things and micromanagers tend to ditch the processes anyway as they do not want to get their micromanagement tracked.)}

Let’s take a small scale company with couple of guys working. They have excellent communication as they work together in a small office and they think that they can handle every issue with a small chat. That far it works well if the chemistry is in synchronization between the guys. But estimating hours might be a painful thing to do; in most cases the guys just decide that we do X and Y in T time. It goes by gut-feeling or the guys break it down to smaller pieces and estimate. Anyway in this way the estimating and communication may still work. Even calendar is used and they mark that milestone Z should be ready in T time. So far so good. If the guys did all this they are already reaching the basics (simplified it a bit though.) But this is not the stage where the stress pours in.

The stress pours in when a) the estimations do not hold b) goals are not met c) unknown factors arise. The guys will possibly meet a, b and c by the time of T in some form – it may be now harder to go back to estimations, see the whole picture and see that yeah: Here it went wrong or that thing X takes too much time and can be dropped. Disagree? Yes, it can be done but the difference in using tracking tools is that you get a new pair of goggles which give you a future vision to see the wall before you hit it. It is always a less painful experience to say I was wrong and we have to adjust the sails a bit instead of hitting the wall and then turning. Also fast turns are more stressful than slight and peaceful turns. If you’re in the IT-industry you probably have the picture there. =D

Also having a system that gives you a bit more versatile view on the big picture of an project that is ongoing may help with an adhoc-hog. If the adhoc-hog can be given a even a glimpse on how the “small things” that he tend to drop in affects the development he might reconsider in some cases. Of course this is not possible with all the breeds. Task tracking systems are not really tools for dropping tasks in randomly so there has to be some guidelines.

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JIRA & GreenHopper

Pros:
- Easy to use
- Enough plugins (not plenty but enough)
- Solid and simple to customize to your own needs
- Cheap for my level of usage (as I have up to 10 users-license)

Cons:
- The Agile plugin (GreenHopper) has some problems working with Sprints (Moving issues forward from sprint to an another needs duplicating issues per sprint if you want to keep time tracking on track.)
- JIRA needs the Greenhopper to be good so why is it sold separately?
- takes 500M of RAM to run. / Java application