Why Good Developers Hate "Just Processing Tickets"

This article is part of the Developer Survival Kit.

Developers are not ticket machines; they are problem solvers. Learn how to reclaim your autonomy and deliver real value instead of just shuffling Jira statuses.

Whenever someone from the dev team asks me in a refinement or a daily what we are actually trying to achieve with a ticket, I’m happy every time—even if I know it means a bit more work for me to answer that question. I know exactly why the developer is asking me.

Apparently, however, such a question is not popular in all companies. In many organizations, the ticket is the law and Jira is the judge.

No wonder developers are frustrated. They have every right to be!

The Misunderstanding: Tickets = Work

Tickets are meant to make work visible. They are supposed to help plan, prioritize, and coordinate things.

The problem begins when tickets replace the work instead of supporting it.

A ticket is not a problem. A ticket is a representation of a problem—usually highly simplified, often stripped of context.

Those who develop software don't work on tickets. They work on problems, connections, and consequences.

What actually drives good developers

In my opinion, good developers want to understand why something is being built. They want to be allowed to make decisions instead of just executing instructions. They are very interested in feedback—especially from real users of the system. And they want to finish things, not just pass them on.

They don't optimize for "busy"; they optimize for "done." And that's exactly where the friction arises.

How ticket processing destroys work

In many companies, a silent role change occurs: problem solvers become status managers. This can often be seen through the following symptoms.

Tickets are handed over instead of solved together. There is no time for discussion, planning, or architecture.

Responsibility ends at column or status boundaries. Asking a question about a ticket is rather unwelcome. A ticket didn't become "Ready" through a conversation, but because it’s sitting in "Up Next." For exactly this point, feel free to check out my Deep Dive.

Context is lost with every handoff. Because talking or thinking about tickets is discouraged (as it's supposedly "more efficient"), context is lost every time a ticket changes hands.

And then, of course, there's this: Success is measured by how many tickets were "pushed through." The holy cow: "Velocity." In some companies, even lines of code (yes, I’m looking at you, Microsoft). Why is this frustrating? Because story points don't work.

The system rewards activity, not impact. Yet impact is what we actually want!

Let's look at the typical flow of work. A ticket moves from "To Do" to "In Progress" to "Review" to "Done." So far, so good. But very, very often, a ticket spends its time waiting.

Waiting for reviews. Waiting for decisions. Waiting for other teams. Waiting for releases. Good developers feel this very clearly. And they notice: I'm getting slower, even though I'm constantly working.

It's not a dev problem – it's a system problem

When external pressure is applied to the team, developers often lose all patience—and I can relate to that! What outsiders often don't understand:

This is not a sign of unwillingness. It's not "they don't want to." And it’s certainly not a generational problem.

It is a system design problem.

Systems optimized for ticket processing rather than the work itself tend to fragment responsibility. These systems promote handoffs instead of collaboration between people. They separate thinking from executing. They optimize local utilization instead of looking at the overall flow.

In such a system, good developers suddenly seem "difficult." In reality, they are just trying to work professionally.

What works instead

The solution is rarely a new tool or another framework, even if the "Digital Transformation Bubble" likes to see it that way.

What helps are usually very down-to-earth things that are actually quite obvious.

What's wrong with working together at the board instead of passing tickets on? Isn't the idea of a User Story exactly that? We tell a story?

Work should be sliced so that it is finishable. Spike Stories and the SPIDR method are proven approaches that help immensely not just to develop code, but to deliver it to the user.

Conversations should be more important than ticket descriptions. "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" from the Agile Manifesto is not a dusty old joke; it is meant dead seriously. No one should hide behind processes.

When we talk about flow above, I feel that while developers know exactly what it means, the environment doesn't see it or doesn't want to acknowledge it.

My tip: If you want to understand why you're not getting finished despite constant work, check out my Flow Physics Simulation. There you can see live how WIP limits accelerate your team.

In short: It should be a goal for everyone that we think less in ticket logic and more in problem-solving logic, and that we build our systems around this logic.

The shift in perspective

When good developers don't want to "just process tickets," it's not because they are difficult, but because they take responsibility seriously.

And perhaps that is exactly a signal that the people are not the problem, but rather the system in which they are expected to work.

Equip yourself for change
The fact that you have no desire for mere ticket processing is a sign of professionalism. To change the system, you need the right tools in your everyday life:

🎯 Step 1 (Clarity): Mastering Refinement: Slicing Tickets the Right Way
⏰ Step 2 (Focus): Reclaiming the Daily: Tactics instead of Confession
🛡️ Step 3 (Protection): DoD: Your Shield for Quality
🏠 Back to Overview: The Agile Survival Kit for Developers

Know the feeling?
Write to me on Mastodon or share this text with your team—often you’re not alone with this frustration!