Im not sure why you are describing my example of PRs needing tickets to be 'heavy process'.
Especially since Im pushing for engineers being able to create quick ad-hoc tickets within 30 seconds.
Especially since Im pushing for engineers being able to create quick ad-hoc tickets within 30 seconds.
You've got two choices, either you sneak the comment block change into your PR, despite it being irrelevant and make the documentation update blocked by the bugfix/feature. Or you need to open Jira, make a ticket etc etc. I know you say it's 30 seconds, but it's not. It's at least two minutes, but it's not even the time that makes it annoying. It's the fact that you're doing something that you(the people timmytokyo describes) think is entirely pointless.
I ended up writing a janky git hook that would check if the branch name I was pushing had a jira-id in it, and if it didn't it would use the Jira API to make the ticket, grab the id and push the branch again with the id in the branch name. The fact that the entire thing can be automated, makes the entire thing pointless in my mind.
The thread gives me very strong vim vs emacs vibes :).
Hold on, so we should stop running tests in CI too?
The other difference is that CI tests do actually run automatically. If you had to go into github and press "run tests" every time you make a PR, that is a waste of time.
But sure, if there was a server side hook that automatically created Jira tickets for PR's without tickets, then the entire thing is less annoying. I still think that's a net negative since it creates noise in Jira, but it's not as bad as forcing engineers to do automatable work.
I agree that my wording was not perfect, hopefully the extra explanation makes my point clearer.
Instead of trying to convince everyone that they should feel the way you do, maybe try to understand why others feel the way they do.
Is there already a ticket and are you working to update the app? Then update the documentation. No ticket necessary.
Are you redoing the whole set of docs to make the steps for new engineers to create their stack? Then please lets have a ticket to define the scope and audience.
Trust me that I do understand that there are many orgs that have arbitrary hurdles in place, like who can create / prioritize a ticket. My experience is, if engineers are empowered / encouraged to create and prioritize their own tickets, then its not a hurdle at all.
Many people - now including me - are plainly telling you that it is a hurdle for them. No amount of reframing this is going to alter someone else's experience.
I can only imagine what software these types of organizations produce too. Probably a million little steps to do anything in the UI.
You just nailed the problem here. If the process is set up that an engineer cannot create / prioritize / close trivial tickets themselves, that is indeed true friction.
If you multiple that "just 30 seconds" by several trivial things you encounter each day that aren't part of your assigned lot, it adds up. Those new tickets show up in your list of tickets, so now you have several line items that have to be walked through during sprint planning or daily standup so everyone knows what's going on.
It's true that perhaps other devs want to know about that ticket to update some documentation, but it may be such a minor change that it seems silly to have to do a song and dance about it during standup so everyone has full context. And often, not everyone needs to know about every little change that is made anyway.
Then, when you look at the work to be done, the large list of trivial tasks makes it hard to see the 1 or 2 really important tasks that you're really working on.
I think the dividing line here between pro-ticket vs. not is based on how much you trust your fellow devs to the right thing and how much trust you have overall in your team as an organization. If you have little trust that people will do the right thing, you'll probably want to create a ticket for everything to make sure it doesn't go astray. Unfortunately, for those with more experience and better judgment about what is the right thing to do, they'll just feel constrained by the whole thing as it removes agency.