Ask HN: Hard and deep tech – why are Jira and Confluence the go-to PM tools?
Genuinely curious for folks working in hard tech and deep tech (industries like aerospace, aeronautics, maritime, nuclear, biotech/pharma, etc.) -- why are Jira and Confluence still the prominent tools for project management?
Atlassian was built for software workflows, so I get why software teams rely on it. But for hardware/ops-heavy teams, it always felt like an odd fit to me.
My take for why hardware/ops teams still use it are below but I'm curious to hear other people's opinions.
1) Regulatory + data security requirements (ITAR, export control, validated systems, etc.) box teams into whatever their org already approved years ago.// 2) Heritage + inertia. Jira/Confluence have been around forever, most companies already use them, and no one wants to be the person who tries to introduce something new.// 3) “At least everyone knows how to use it.” In mixed orgs (prime <> supplier <> test house <> customer), Jira/Confluence are the lowest common denominator tools people can agree on, even if they're a bad fit.// 4) No one wants to adopt or pay for another system. Hardware teams already juggle spreadsheets, slides, GSE databases, readiness trackers, etc. Jira and Confluence are “good enough,” so they stick.
If Jira and Confluence aren't a great fit for hardware/ops work, what would a better tool actually need to do? And what would make adoption difficult?
why is gcc used by people when llvm is obviously better? why is OpenBSD used when FreeBSD gets more eyeballs? Why do people still use Oracle rather than postgres.
Why isn't justice equal everywhere, and all mankind strives to equalise for the pain and suffering?
Why does god let the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 happen?
Look: what a company uses, is what the initial tech staff bring to the table, or what future tech staff convert to, or what a C-suite enacts as a KPI before walking. It has almost nothing to do with "x is a better tool" and a hell of a lot more to do with "y cost me my job at fooco, I'm never recommending it again" or with "we get an SLA with z" or even "we can hire more juniors with competency if we continue to code in this dead language java because thats what the local college teaches in"
Yeah, I agree most tooling decisions come down to inertia, org history, and who was in the room early on. What I’m trying to tease out is whether there’s something specific to hard/deep tech that makes this even stickier.
In my experience, the moment you’re dealing with hardware-defined timelines, shifting configs, shared facilities, or multi-org ops, Jira/Confluence fall over pretty fast and people end up juggling a pile of side spreadsheets and slides just to keep things aligned.
self-hosted redmine, gitlab & a wiki will get you the same
but big projects have money to burn