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IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs Jira vs Microsoft Azure DevOps comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is 3.9%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jira is 17.4%, down from 23.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure DevOps is 12.9%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Jira17.4%
Microsoft Azure DevOps12.9%
IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM)3.9%
Other65.80000000000001%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

Juergen Albrecht - PeerSpot reviewer
Combining tools for effective data analysis while customization and integration need improvement
The most valuable feature is how IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) allows me to present to the customer what the actual software, even hardware, will do. It helps them gain an impression of the complexity of the functionality and find an easier way to decide whether to implement it. A picture says more than one thousand words, which is why I work with the combination of ELM and the specification of DOORS. The automation capabilities I built use column-based scripts for analysis to search, fetch, and transfer information. When I open modules, it automatically analyzes the changes since the last opening by me.
AmitUbale - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient project management that's comprehensive and and helps with time efficiency
We use Jira primarily for project management within the organization. It helps us manage tasks, bug management, and tracking tickets effectively. We assign tickets to individual team members and track them easily For project management, Jira has helped facilitate efficient task segregation and…
Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates agile transformation with potential for enhanced intuitiveness
What I liked about the solution is that it offers numerous features that are not available by default unless you are agile. Transitioning from the traditional Waterfall model to an agile methodology was challenging for us. Until 2020, our team predominantly worked with the Waterfall approach, using local tools like ServiceNow. We had a few team members who were familiar with Agile ISO, but none had experience with Azure. Therefore, we pursued Azure certification at the AZ-900 level. Our company organized a training session with a certified Azure expert, which was extremely beneficial for adopting best practices during the initial three months. This preparation helped us get accustomed to the new tool, as transitioning to a new system invariably requires time. Managing a pipeline of deliverables became significantly easier with this solution. We utilized it for stories and integrated change management with Azure DevOps. Eventually, everything related to the environment was organized there, enabling us to follow up and track progress with our technical engineers on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. Reports were automatically generated and sent to management, offering them insights into our progress concerning the predefined roadmap.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy to use."
"The cataloging is a very valuable feature. For a lot of enterprises, they end up not knowing which applications do specific features. The cataloging helps with this. It's not that verbose, but it still gives you allowances to put in more detail."
"You can customize the board according to your needs."
"One of the key advantages of IBM Rational ALM is its workflow capabilities, which enable seamless collaboration between development and production teams and ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the progress and readiness of the solution. Additionally, the solution is good for integration."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting of the CPU usage on the dashboard."
"The transition to a SaaS-based solution is a distinct advantage."
"The tools for requirement capture we have found very useful."
"Everyone in a team can work on the same platform and share the same information."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is a quite powerful user tracking system."
"We have found the structure, functionality, and how Jira handles the tickets most valuable."
"It provides very good visibility and traceability. You can clearly see each and every part of a process. It is also user-friendly and robust. It is working well, and there are a lot of add-ons or plug-ins out there that you can use."
"I like that Jira allows you to customize the flow for an agile process and adapt it to your own flow."
"It is a stable solution, and we have had no issues with stability."
"The most valuable feature is Jira Align, which is a plugin that helps you to understand the progress that is made against each epic."
"It's really smart how they connected third-party vendors into their own marketplace. You can create and add apps. Anybody can do it."
"In terms of scrum teams, I find that usually, the product backlog depends on charts and especially reports like Sprint Reports. I find the reports to be very useful."
"We use all the DevOps features and services, like reports, Boards, Pipelines, Artifactory, etc. The interface is interactive and intuitive. The platform visuals and workflow are straightforward in Azure DevOps."
"We can track everything from the requirements stage to the production stage."
"They have been lately adding features to the services on a regular basis. Every two weeks, they are adding functionality to Azure DevOps Services to match it with what Azure DevOps Server or on-prem would offer. So, we continue to get more robust functionality. My favorite right now is that they are starting to open up the API availability within Azure DevOps Services. Another thing that I like about Azure DevOps is that you can use it with any of the products that are on the market. You can integrate it with Jenkins and other open-source products to complete that fully functional CI, CD, CT, CM, and CS pipeline. It continues to enhance."
"The CI/CD pipeline setup is more user-friendly. You can manage various stages, and there are over 400+ plugins available for each stage."
"It is a cloud-based system. So, it is stable and scalable."
"The user interface is very friendly."
"Stable and scalable solution for work planning and code collaboration. It's fast, and it offers a good user experience."
"Two of the most valuable features include the integrated project management suite, which consolidates source code and project management in a single location, and its powerful reporting capabilities."
 

Cons

"The stability of this solution can be improved."
"The directory designer manager is uncivil. The design manager is clearly really unstable."
"One of the complaints from users is that they have to click buttons too many times for just a simple task. Changing this would lead to a better user experience."
"The stability of IBM Rational ALM could be improved."
"IBM Rational ALM should remove the features not used by the customers and keep this product as lightweight as possible."
"Of course it would be related to customer experience. The solution is not user friendly at all. It needs an expert to use it, although the reporting feature was okay."
"I would like to see better reporting features. The out-of-box reporting is - I don't want to say limited - but the focus is on the Scrum and Sprint reports. We need more reporting features regarding the history of the work, tracking it more deeply."
"Improvement is needed in bridging DNG and Rhapsody and vice versa for better data exchange from both sides with some trigger technologies."
"The user interface and views on different devices should be improved."
"There are some minor quirks, such as zero-point stories not appearing in the portfolio scope."
"For me, the solution is too complicated as it has too many features. It would be nice if they could streamline things."
"The Jira dashboards could be more useful. The dashboards have good widgets but the comparison of data over time or extraction of trends from the data is not easy."
"Jira can improve by making user management better. It is not easy to have visibility of who has the right to do what. Only the administrator has this visibility but there should be the option for other users too."
"One thing that I don't like about Jira is that when you do an export, it only allows a thousand issues. So the export feature needs to be better."
"I don't know whether there is a Jira problem or a test risk problem, however, sometimes, we face issues on fetching the reports."
"We haven't seen Jira's progressive area so far, and we are not sure what it might do in the future."
"When converting to DevOps, it was difficult to map."
"The portfolio is one area where DevOps has room for improvement. Built-in reporting and visualization also could be better. We're using Power BI and Tableau to compile more complex reports and dashboards. Azure DevOps has some out-of-the-box reporting capabilities, but they're very simple. It's usually okay on the team level, but if you have to run a complex report, it's difficult and insufficient, so we use Power BI as an extension."
"The UI could be improved."
"I would like to see DevOps have the ability to give us something with a compatibility or traceability matrix."
"While reporting in Azure DevOps is a robust capability, there's always room for enhancement, particularly in providing more granular reports."
"I think that they have some menus there that are not very well placed."
"Some of the queries, the way they're built, need to be looked at. We need better query tools."
"Being more technology-agnostic through ease of integration would be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution could be reduced. Many of our customers are not using all the features and this could be why our clients feel the price is too high."
"IBM Rational ALM has both monthly and yearly licensing options."
"We have a contract, but I am not aware of the details."
"The solution is not cheap."
"This product is a little expensive and we had to pay extra to have them set it up for us."
"The tool is expensive."
"It is certainly a long-term solution for our company and for previous companies that I have worked for. They have these long-term term licenses, but I'm not sure if they really pay on a yearly basis. They are certainly using it for a really long period and for a lot of users."
"As a company, we get a subsidized price, and it's lower than what's quoted on their website."
"The price of Jira is reasonable."
"We currently have ten users, and it is free for ten users."
"We have a corporate license, and it is probably based on the number of people."
"The price is quite competitive."
"If I compare Jira's licensing model with that of other products, I think that the other products have a much better licensing model."
"Licensing cost per user is approximately $11 to $15. We have about 400 users, but not all are active. We have around 200 to 300 active users."
"There is a licensing fee of $6/user per month."
"It's a good tool, quite rich, it has a lot of features, and quite a lot of analytical capabilities which are built on top of it so that you can see how your projects are going and all that stuff. It's a good tool."
"The solution is expensive."
"The majority of the components are reasonably priced."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The licensing costs are reasonable."
"As the cost structure is per user, I would recommend paying the cost structure based on the amount of data you use rather than the number of users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
23%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
12%
Transportation Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business103
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise149
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with IBM Rational ALM?
Improvement is needed in bridging DNG and Rhapsody and vice versa for better data exchange from both sides with some ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Rational ALM?
Most of my primary use cases involve the combination of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) ( /products/ibm-en...
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 d...
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 a...
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 lic...
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvement...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Valuable features for project management and tracking in Azure DevOps include a portal displaying test results, check...
 

Also Known As

IBM Engineering Rhapsody, Rational ALM, MKS
Jira Software
Azure DevOps, VSTS, Visual Studio Team Services, MS Azure DevOps
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tennis Australia, WeCloud AB, Port Otago Limited, Logicalis US, Valmer, The Chevrolet Volt, Ashurst
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Alaska Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Columbia, Skype
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlassian, Microsoft, Nutanix and others in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites. Updated: September 2025.
869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.