IBM DOORS Next vs Jira comparison

IBM and Atlassian are both solutions in the Application Requirements Management category. IBM is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.3, while Atlassian is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.4. IBM holds a 8.9% mindshare in ARM, compared to Atlassian’s 15.4% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Atlassian users who would recommend it.

IBM DOORS Next

Read 13 IBM DOORS Next reviews

3,570 Views
1,247 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Jira

Read 274 Jira reviews

3,516 Views
2,431 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

IBM DOORS Next

Jira

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Jira and IBM DOORS Next compete in the fields of project management and requirements management, respectively. Jira seems to have the upper hand in pricing and support, making it attractive for cost-sensitive businesses, while IBM DOORS Next is preferred for its comprehensive features, valuable for teams focusing on detailed requirement management.

Features: Jira offers superior tools for task tracking, agile development, and project management including Kanban and Scrum boards to boost team productivity and workflow management. It also provides robust API support for customization and integration. IBM DOORS Next provides strong capabilities in requirements management, traceability, and collaboration that cater to complex engineering projects, ensuring precise compliance and data management.

Room for Improvement: Jira could enhance its offering with deeper integrated requirement management solutions, better support for non-software development industries, and improved user interface customization. IBM DOORS Next may see improvements in ease of use, particularly concerning newcomers, making training less time-consuming, and could further develop its interaction with other software management tools to streamline projects.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Jira supports both cloud and on-premises deployment, allowing easy integration across diverse workflows with comprehensive support and documentation. Its swift deployment capabilities are beneficial for teams seeking immediate solutions. IBM DOORS Next, with its strong on-premise deployment, ensures data security while providing extensive training and support, emphasizing tailored solutions for complex environments where data integrity is crucial.

Pricing and ROI: Jira offers a cost-effective entry with scalable pricing suitable for smaller teams, providing a quick return on investment for agile-focused teams at an attractive licensing cost. Conversely, IBM DOORS Next requires higher initial investment, which potentially yields significant returns for organizations prioritizing long-term value in managing complex requirements and fostering collaboration through its premium features.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM DOORS Next vs. Jira Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM DOORS Next vs. Jira

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

IBM DOORS Next

Ranking in Application Requirements Management

5th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Jira

Ranking in Application Requirements Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

274

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Project Management Software (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Requirements Management category, the mindshare of IBM DOORS Next is 8.9%, up from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jira is 15.4%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Requirements Management

Featured Reviews

Roger Trackwell

System Engineering Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees

An industry-leading tool to demonstrate traceability between requirements, with valuable features for tailoring modules and managing several thousand requirements

The biggest thing is that it shows cradle to grave traceability between the initial parent requirement and the lowest level, or what we call a CID, a critical item development spec. You can establish your verification plans in DOORS, and then as you get test results, you can put them in DOORS as a link or as a pointer to where that specific test resides on a company database. Then you can also write compliance rationale and add a column for coding, like pass, fail, green, yellow, red, meets, does not meet, partially meets, or whatever scoring criteria you want to use. Like I said, the best thing about it is that it provides you that visibility of your verification, allowing you to know how close you are to your pre-production activities, prototyping, go ahead, or whatever it is.

Read full review

Saroj Ekka

Technical Delivery Lead at Applied Materials

Offers good repository integration, sprint board and easy to set up

There are some features and reports we need that are not there. For example, if I have to find out the capacity of the current sprint by user and compare it with the previous sprint, that visibility isn't there. We can know the capacity and what happened with the whole sprint, but not for an individual person to see where it's falling and how it's tracking. Report and analytics capabilities are important for a product manager. That visibility is important, so we use Jira. Some of the features are there, and I use my own Excels or other data things to compensate for that.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It's web-based, so you don't have anything to install."

"There are many good features with DOORS. The solution has a concept of streams and baselines, as well as a concept of components. A component is a subproject inside a project."

"The "Link by Attribute" feature is useful for making links without needing to use the web interface manually."

"IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation is easier to expand to build a backend with several servers, so you can also use it to scale up to several hundreds of users without major problems."

"As far as maintaining our requirements so that we can have copies of them, it's good. I can print it out if necessary."

"My company contacts the solution's technical support, and they are good and responsive."

"One of the most valuable features is how you can tailor the modules."

"The most valuable features are the versioning of requirements and the possibility to reuse them."

More IBM DOORS Next pros

"The most valuable feature is that it has different APIs available, with good services, and it is completely by the books."

"The solution is very scalable and flexible."

"The product provides high flexibility to create new workflows quickly."

"In our organization, we use Jira for project management and usually use the Scrum project type. We might adjust the workflows and stages to better suit our needs, but we mostly use the default functionalities it offers to manage our projects."

"Offers a common language set so we can bring people into projects and get them up and running almost immediately."

"It is user-friendly, and you can manage your project according to the methodology you want. It is also easy to configure."

"I enjoy working with (and can recommend) Jira for a number of reasons. The best features are that it is friendly and provides good visibility. It's to the point and very effective."

"I can use Jira Query Language (JQL) to write queries to see the stories that are there for the current sprint. I can also sort them by assignment. I also use Jira is for burndown charts, which give an indication of how efficiently the squad is performing. I also use the Active Sprints function and a feature called Planning Poker."

More Jira pros

Cons

"IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation is not a very user-friendly product."

"It offers a bad user experience and the usability is poor."

"When you are not working on it every day it is not very intuitive."

"Be very careful how you load your DNG server. There are limits to the number of artifacts a server can handle."

"I have come to the conclusion that if you are considering migrating from DOORS to DNG, don't! Instead of spending 100's to 1000's of hours doing migrations, invest those hours in a DXL programmer to make DOORS do what it isn't doing for you now."

"There is room for improvement in the APIs that they have exposed for integration."

"As a web tool, DNG can be difficult to use if the server is loaded or your network connection to it is saturated."

"It does have a tendency to condense the requirements. It kind of puts them in a tree format. Sometimes those trees are a little difficult."

More IBM DOORS Next cons

"One major issue that I, and even our business stakeholders, have noticed is related to Epic Link. When Epic Link's background color is a dark color, it effectively becomes unreadable. I wish there was a way for us to change the text color of Epic Link in the Issue Navigator view."

"We would like to see integration between Tempo and Jira."

"It would be good if we can grant access based on the roles. This is something that Jira can look into. Currently, anyone with Jira access can access everything. Being able to define access based on the roles will give us more flexibility in managing Jira. I would like to have more reports in Jira. Currently, eight or nine reports are there. You can use Screen Test to get more reports or data from Jira, but you will have to get more add-ons, plug-ins, and stuff like that. It would be good if they can increase the number of reports."

"Lacks field-level permission in the cloud version."

"There could be some improvements in the project management and portfolio level features."

"The user interface could be improved from a user experience standpoint."

"There's been the odd amount of JIRA downtime (not self hosted) and sometimes tickets that can't be accessed."

"Improvements in Jira for the next release could include adding AI tools for dashboarding, making it easier to report insights, and enhancing business intelligence capabilities. It should also improve on-prem support. As far as I know, Jira's on-premise support is being discontinued. From last year onward, they stopped providing on-premise licenses and now only offer cloud support. This shift happened gradually, and I believe they now only offer cloud licenses."

More Jira cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Users can buy a three-year license for about 12,000 Euros."

"The cost of maintenance is €20,000 to €30,000 ($22,000 to $33,000 USD) and there are no additional fees."

"You are going to need a beefy server and a fat network pipe to it in order to make DNG and its companion tools work well for users."

"The price of this solution is very high, and it increases year after year."

"If the product price were not reasonable enough, our company would not use IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation."

"The tool's pricing is reasonable."

"The pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."

"The price seems reasonable to me. It's very similar to Splunk."

"The license is yearly. It is a large, long-running program."

"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. The product offers flexibility in pricing since it depends on the memory bits you have used."

"The licensing cost for Jira is typically around seven dollars per user, though it may vary depending on regional variations. This cost is for a subscription-based model rather than a one-time purchase. I rate its pricing a seven out of ten."

"Worth the extra cost."

"I understand JIRA is quite expensive."

More Jira pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

22%

Aerospace/Defense Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

50%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?

The tool's most valuable feature is displaying requirements in a tabular format. This means you can see everything laid out in columns and rows. It is more aesthetic compared to other tools. The tr...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?

The pricing is considered unreasonable, and there is speculation that IBM may not be putting much effort into further development, possibly treating it as a cash cow.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?

There is a need for improvement in user experience, as the UI is too complex and outdated. Updates should be more frequent to ensure security and functionality, especially in addressing vulnerabili...

See all answers

Is Jira better or would you go with Micro Focus ALM Octane?

Hi Netanya, Basically , it all depends on the use cases for your environment and the business needs. Hope the below data may be relevant to you for identifying your needs and deciding on the approp...

See all answers

Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?

Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Jira?

We operate under a nonlimited license with Jira, allowing a number of users to access it with a single enterprise license.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM DOORS vs IBM DOORS Next

Compared 36% of the time

Jama Connect vs IBM DOORS Next

Compared 21% of the time

Polarion Requirements vs IBM DOORS Next

Compared 17% of the time

3SL Cradle vs IBM DOORS Next

Compared 5% of the time

Helix ALM vs IBM DOORS Next

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM DOORS Next Competitors

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Jira

Compared 15% of the time

IBM DOORS vs Jira

Compared 11% of the time

OpenText ALM Octane vs Jira

Compared 8% of the time

Polarion ALM vs Jira

Compared 6% of the time

Rally Software vs Jira

Compared 6% of the time

More Jira Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM DOORS Next

April 2025

Download IBM DOORS Next product report

Buyer's Guide

Jira

April 2025

Download Jira product report

Also Known As

Rational DOORS Next Generation, RDNG, Rational Requirements Composer and IBM RRC

Jira Software

Overview

IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next (DOORS Next) is a requirements management (RM) software designed to help organizations manage engineering project requirements throughout the development lifecycle. It offers a central location for capturing, defining, and organizing project requirements, facilitating collaboration among stakeholders like engineers, system designers, and customers. Key features include requirements traceability, version control, and impact analysis. DOORS Next improves efficiency, enhances communication, reduces risks, and aids in better decision-making through clear traceability and version control. Compared to its predecessor, DOORS 9, DOORS Next is a web-based version with a modern interface that integrates with other IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) tools, while DOORS 9 offers a wider range of features in a non-web-based format.

IBM

Jira is a powerful cloud- and subscription-based application lifecycle and issue management solution. It is designed to aid users both in project management and in resolving any issues that arise at any point in the software development process. It is especially concerned with easing the ability of developers to collaborate.

Jira Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Jira include:

DevOps lifecycle visibility and planning. Jira provides application developers with tools that enable them to track and visualize where they are in the development process. This means that a DevOps team can measure their progress at all times. Jira’s roadmapping feature also enables a DevOps team to work more efficiently by setting goals for their projects, keeping them on track. Additionally, they are able to track whether they are meeting the goals that they set for their projects.

Regular product updates. Atlassian is constantly updating Jira so that it is continuously evolving into an ever more powerful and user-friendly solution. Users can be sure that the product that they are using is always being tweaked so as to provide them with the best possible project management solution.

Flexibility. Jira enables users to customize their workflows and dashboard so that the solution is operating in a way that best matches their needs. Jira can also integrate with more than 3,000 other applications and integrations. Organizations can use it to expand their project management and DevOps capabilities in many different ways.

Jira Features

Security capabilities. Jira is equipped with a number of useful security features. It gives administrators the ability to restrict access to certain tools so that only users who are authorized to complete certain tasks have access to the tools related to the completion of that task. Users can also set default permissions so that only particular users can work on new projects or particular projects.

Real-time notification feature. Users can set Jira so that it offers them notifications that contain critical information in real time. It can send users email notifications when pressing issues have been updated. They can also set it to notify them about tasks that may be due, or other similar events.
Activity log. Jira has the ability to track any and all changes that are taking place within the software framework. Users can keep a close eye on everything that is going on. This promotes a high level of visibility and can be leveraged to aid developers in their collaboration efforts.

Reviews from Real Users

Jira is a powerful solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its workflow engine and its highly customizable dashboard.

Bharath R., the tool implementation and project management lead at a financial services firm, writes, “I feel the strongest feature of Jira is its workflow engine. It empowers us to automate our workflows within our organization. It's the one characteristic of Jira which I think can help any organization, be it in any domain.”

Uday J., a staff engineer at a computer company, says, “Another thing that I like a lot about Jira is that in the dashboard, you can plug the modules that you want. You can enable certain sections. For example, you can show trend history, open Jira tickets, etc. Some of the managers have created a dashboard for each engineer.”

Atlassian

Sample Customers

Major health insurer

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.

Buyer's Guide

IBM DOORS Next vs. Jira

April 2025

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