My company is a startup transitioning to 100 people. Most are hardware engineers.

Project 1, I set it up and had under 10 engineers:

1. hosted bitbucket.

2. google docs.

3. kept requirements to a minimum in google sheets

I joined project 2 halfway through (setup by others). About 40 engineers:

1. Enterprise bitbucket, JIRA, Confluence and Bamboo

2. Gitlab CE for system level issues

3. IBM Rational DOORS for requirements. Traceability required.

4. Windows fileserver hosted by us because its "Not in the cloud". No more google docs.

Software guys are happy with JIRA, hardware guys happy with gitlab but there is not transparency in between. DOORS's gotta go. The fileserver, with word_final_v2.doc's causing issues. Often files are on personal volumes and shared by slack (in the cloud but nobody noticed).

I checked some options to replace DOORS and add some other tools for verification and change management. Along the way, JIRA emerged as the only option that was a single system. It seemed good to use the same tools as our software group and maybe Confluence can help our documentation. Reporting seems good.

Project 3/standard tools:

1. Enterprise bitbucket, JIRA, Confluence and Bamboo

2. Requirements/Test 4 JIRA. Maintained by only a few people (so I am confident it can be implemented well)

3. Begrudgingly keep using the windows fileserver for other files.

I wrote a script to migrate to JIRA. Red flag 1: there are many scripts to migrate from JIRA to gitlab, but none in the other direction. Red flag 2: any forum post about JIRA is full of complaints. The more I use it, the more the UI seems inconsistent. All of that said, JIRA still looks like the best option and the dashboards do what was a manual job in gitlab.

What I actually want to ask HN is, are there some lessons learned about trying use JIRA and Confluence (or similar tools) in interdisciplinary teams? Any tips to keep the 1-2 times per week users happy?

user:	katsukare-
created:	January 13, 2019
karma:	7