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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 (7th)
Jira
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
278
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 21.4%, down 35.7% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 12.6% mindshare, down 22.6% since last year.
Defect Tracking Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Rational ClearQuest21.4%
Adminitrack13.4%
ISC Software JCL Checker11.8%
Other53.400000000000006%
Defect Tracking
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Jira12.6%
Microsoft Azure DevOps10.3%
Codebeamer7.4%
Other69.7%
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

"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 most valuable feature is that it has different APIs available, with good services, and it is completely by the books."
"The initial setup was pretty straightforward."
"We use it for capacity planning. We need to gauge and assess whatever is coming to our pipeline and then everything comes to the pipeline, appears as a pic, and then based on that, we create the story points and we take it from there."
"Being able to automatize the deployment of the solution has been great."
"Our company follows the Agile methodology for software development, and this product is one of the best tools for companies that do so."
"Great for tracking my development team's productivity."
"In terms of the general way that the tool functions, it seems like it's a pretty good fit-for-purpose for what we're trying to do. We've never thought about replacing it with another technology."
"The user story map is excellent. The features can be composed into stories and they can be allocated to each of the sprints in a program increment. It allows you to see all that in the user story map, and you have various dashboards to see the stories in various views. You can see them as a backlog view, for example, or you can see as an actual sprint view."
 

Cons

"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"Of course, the price could always be cheaper."
"The help desk and services management features are in need of improvement."
"The permissions can be challenging to get right."
"I am unable to query based on the subtask and link by issue."
"Jira's collaboration and integration with other apps and tools could be improved."
"The thing I don't like is that it is hard to decide which dropdown options should be selected. When we try and submit it, it will state that there are certain mandates in place. It won't allow us to submit the form unless we fill out all the details."
"In terms of needed improvements, it would be appreciated to have more reporting capabilities in Jira, such as easily exporting capabilities to show how tasks are in progress and how the team is performing well or poorly."
"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 price seems reasonable to me. It's very similar to Splunk."
"There are no additional costs to the standard licensing."
"As a company, we get a subsidized price, and it's lower than what's quoted on their website."
"The cost is about $10 per user, per month."
"The license is yearly. It is a large, long-running program."
"The pricing is much higher than other similar solutions available in the market, and as such, the vendor should think about a price reduction to make this product more affordable."
"Our client handles the licensing aspect. They have not yet purchased the premium version."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
36%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business106
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise150
 

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.