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IBM Rational ClearQuest vs Jira comparison

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 Rational ClearQuest
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Defect Tracking (1st), Software Configuration Management (6th)
Jira
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
281
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Rational ClearQuest is designed for Defect Tracking and holds a mindshare of 22.0%, down 50.0% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 11.5% mindshare, down 21.9% since last year.
Defect Tracking Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Rational ClearQuest22.0%
Adminitrack13.7%
Panaya Test Dynamix12.2%
Other52.099999999999994%
Defect Tracking
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jira11.5%
Microsoft Azure DevOps10.0%
Codebeamer6.1%
Other72.4%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

it_user808977 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
It can be adapted to any process flow
ClearQuest is a Defect Tracking system with a highly adaptable state machine together with an easy to use API, which can do all of the functions available in the GUI. This simplifies integration and automation of many steps is why the organization still uses a much older version, as there are no…
Akhil Viswam - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Agile workflows have streamlined sprint planning and tracking for faster feature delivery
Jira has a very good interface and it is very easy to manage sprints, tasks, and epics. The main feature is the hierarchy, as features can be converted into epics and topics, allowing bigger tasks to be partitioned into smaller ones. The hierarchy feature in Jira helps the team significantly compared to other tools that have been used, such as Trello, which is mainly useful only for a waterfall model. For modern Agile practices, Jira is the most adapted tool in the industry. Another valuable feature is that Jira APIs have been used for data science projects to analyze tasks and get insights. This has also been very helpful in the project.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Customization level of the tool to meet client’s requirements, you can do almost all of the customizations for a project or ticket management system, and notification, hooks, and UI customization are very stable."
"In combination with a good Configuration Management plan, an organization can create an optimal level of administration and automation creating good traceability in your tasks."
"The combination of a highly flexible state machine together with a platform independent API enables possibilities to automate many steps that in many systems are manual."
"This enabled us to completely migrate from paper-based forms to electronic forms for a number of business areas."
"It can be adapted to any process flow and easily be integrated with other in-house tools using the ClearQuest API."
"The workflow feature with stateful record types and the ability to implement these rapidly in our project have been of value to us."
"The TAM provided good insight as to how we can more effectively perform troubleshooting, and scale down operational costs."
"It's an organized, collaborative, transparent way of working and that's really helped the organization overall."
"It's a really good product. I feel it really changed the way we work and at this time we're not looking to move to another platform."
"We have found the structure, functionality, and how Jira handles the tickets most valuable."
"It is very flexible, so we can do pretty much what we want with it."
"Our Premier Support engineer was extremely helpful with deployment."
"What I find valuable about Jira is that it's an ecosystem. Sometimes, it does not provide the best in class solutions, but it's so well integrated. You will not have many problems with integration."
"For QA, the most interesting for me are boards, backlog, and filters."
 

Cons

"The user interface could benefit from a more modern look and feel."
"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"It’s very expensive, especially considering that there are much more economical options out there."
"However, the user interface seems very static and the user experience was not the best."
"I would like to have a future-proof idea of the cost and the roadmap for my class."
"Its search and reporting can be improved. They are already nice, but they can be further improved."
"I have had problems with performance and unresponsiveness. All of a sudden, the performance slowed down, and I had a number of users that could not use the tool."
"There should be a way to integrate the mobile application or in some way, make it more clear because at first instance, I didn't understand how to use it."
"Atlassian has multiple tools and it becomes difficult for a customer to process everything differently. Atlassian should combine them and form a single solution for DevOps by including the Jira Confluence, Bitbucket, Bamboo, and others. This would be much easier for customers by purchasing a package, rather than purchasing bits and pieces. With Azure DevOps and other companies, it becomes easier to go with one company having multiple areas that they can cater to, but in Atlassian, the problem is that you have to select different solutions to have a full package. For example, to have document management customers have to purchase Confluence and for Git repository management they have to purchase Bitbucket, et cetera. There is always another add-on that you need to attach to have a complete solution in Jira."
"While it's very powerful, it's very complex sometimes."
"The main area for improvement is the high cost of the product."
"There is a difference between their cloud and their server versions. The next-gen project, which is an advanced feature that allows you to visualize the road map of your delivery over multiple products and over time, is not available yet for the sever version. It appears there in the list, but it's still not right. I've tried to use it many times and I am watching the device show their tracker, but it seems they intentionally want this to increase the utilization of the cloud instead of the server. It is really a nice feature and it's a shame that we don't have it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The license is yearly. It is a large, long-running program."
"The pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."
"The price of the solution could be lower."
"If you are using just Jira, it is cheap, but if you start to use it and you feel you need some more services or more functions, then you have to buy add-ons, which can make it expensive."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive. We pay annually for the solution."
"It's not very cheap. It's also not very costly. I'd rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing."
"It depends on the type of license. In terms of subscription, it is cheap, and it works pretty well."
"We have a corporate license, and it is probably based on the number of people."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
33%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
Insurance Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business108
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise151
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Jira?
Jira itself is fairly priced for the features it provides, but pricing is a bit higher than some alternatives, mostly because many plugins and add-ons are paid and licensed per user. So even if onl...
 

Also Known As

Rational ClearQuest
Jira Software
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Atos SE, STM, Regence BlueCross BlueShield
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.