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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 (2nd), Software Configuration Management (8th)
Jira
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Application Requirements Management (1st), 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 33.3%, up 26.7% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 20.5% mindshare, down 24.0% since last year.
Defect Tracking
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

it_user808977 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can be adapted to any process flow and easily be integrated with other in-house tools using the ClearQuest API."
"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."
"The design of the interface is clean and not too busy visually."
"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."
"The integration between Confluence and Jira, along with Jira's ticketing system, is a valuable feature the product offers its users."
"The scrum dashboard is the product's most important feature. It provides an overview of tasks, who is working on what, and the status of each task."
"Kanban board: The board is easy to use and visually impressive to non-IT users, who found it easy to relate to."
"It's very flexible. I can define workflows and custom fields and dependencies between issues and projects. And every project can have a custom configuration with my fields, my names for fields, my validations, and my workflows. It's very customizable."
"It is a complete solution. It has more features as compared to other tools, especially the open-source one that we use. It is also easy to administer."
"Kanban boards are most valuable"
 

Cons

"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"The reporting needs to be better."
"Of course, the price could always be cheaper."
"Its UI can be improved a little bit. I know this a business tool and not a commercial tool, but it could be a little bit more interactive like the HP ALM/Quality Center, which provides you the results of graphs and gives you a lot of visual representations. I feel Jira lacks a little bit in this aspect."
"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."
"In terms of the general Jira software, one element that is missing is budget management. Perhaps such functionality exists in add-ons, however."
"I don't know if it's the way it's deployed in the organization, but the interface we are provided is not as customizable as other tools. The multi-language report is not enabled in our installation. I don't really know if it's something related to the tool or our installation."
"Slow when integrating with other components."
"The performance is not so good sometimes. I know that fully depends on the implementation and the IT environment of Jira or the version of Jira installed. The performance is sometimes not so good. I would like to have a better response time from the Jira server. And it fully depends on the administration side of the Jira."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Almost everybody uses JIRA nowadays because it is the most cost-effective solution."
"I don't have the number, but I sure wish Jira was less expensive. Its price point should be a little lower, and it should be more flexible for users who are just ticket viewers."
"I think the starter pack of three users, up to five users, is free. So you can try it out."
"I understand JIRA is quite expensive."
"The tool is expensive."
"There are no additional costs to the standard licensing."
"When you get larger, the pricing becomes very, very steep."
"The basic price of Jira is reasonable, but for each plugin, we have to keep paying more. When you add it all up, it can be expensive. The main problem we face is we are forced to purchases plugin licenses for users who are not going to use them. For example, we have Jira licenses for approximately 450 people but if we only want a purchase a plugin for few people it is mandatory to buy the license for the 450 people who have Jira licensees. This is a problem because sometimes we need plugins for the product manager or for people in charge of the report, not everyone. For us, it can be very expensive in the end, they should alter this policy to allow plugins for only a set number of licenses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
30%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
Educational Organization
25%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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

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.