> Does anyone really like their project management software?
I've been a JIRA user for 10 years+. Flirted with Redmine, Asana, Trello, Pivotal. Recently Atlassian pushed me over the edge, and I've started migrating my projects to YouTrack. Really impressed so far; been using it with one project for about 4 weeks. I haven't come across a "how do I..." yet that doesn't have an answer.
They ditched the version summary report in version 7. That's really core to efficient navigation of sprints if not using Jira Agile. The product manager who I complained to clearly isn't thinking about the needs of non Jira Agile users.
After trying dozens of personal productivity tools for web/mobile/desktop (and writing my own Asana clone[1]), about 2 years ago I settled on Trello. I use it every single day, many times a day. I find it's the perfect balance of flexibility and simplicity for me. Plus it's free.
Having said that, when I've tried using Trello with teams, I tend not to like it nearly as much.
I think the Hard Problem with team productivity tools is optimizing for both individual organization and organizing individuals. I've never found a tool that's good enough at both for me to be fully satisfied.
I think the real problem is email. It's this antiquated technology that doesn't fit into the modern software as a service tools everyone uses to get things done. Email worked in the world of desktop apps but the snail mail paradigm email emulates is antithetical to the real-time fast paced team collaboration everyone is trying to achieve.
Yet nothing manages to replace email, we depend on email above all else and what happens is that important information about tasks leaks into email from project management software and there's no easy way for this kind of software to fold email into what they're trying to do. Email doesn't play nice with anyone, it doesn't even play nice with email servers and email clients. Yet we all use it. I doubt anything will replace email. 200 years from now space ships on their way to Vega will be sending IMAP mail messages to planet Earth.
This is exactly why I created Donald (http://getDonald.com). So many clients just default to email and don't use whatever project management system you ask them to. Sometimes even your own team defaults to email above all else.
I agree with you that email is a utility at this point that isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I think it's a matter of successfully integrating and organizing email alongside other apps/systems, and I do think that's possible.
JIRA for QA/Ticket management/Sprint planning
Confluence for Wiki/documenting
Slack for team comms
Trello for higher level business planning (org, not projects)
Has worked very well over here (300+ sized business)
Does anyone really like their project management software?