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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
276
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 22.9%, down 35.7% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 13.3% mindshare, down 22.9% since last year.
Defect Tracking Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Rational ClearQuest22.9%
ISC Software JCL Checker13.2%
Adminitrack13.2%
Other50.7%
Defect Tracking
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Jira13.3%
Microsoft Azure DevOps10.3%
Codebeamer7.7%
Other68.7%
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…
Nathan Akimoff - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at 2Help
Has customized workflows to fit internal processes and improved overall team organization
I don't have a particular customization or integration that's been especially valuable for my team, but I experienced integrating Jira and QuickBooks, which was very challenging, but it really impacted the efficiency of the whole company. I have been working with Jira for over 12 years, and I've seen it grow every year. It's a powerful product, but lately, I think Atlassian has been adding too many simplified features that look nice but don't offer the same level of flexibility, and made some fields not available through the API, which is kind of frustrating. If I could make one suggestion, it would be to focus more on improving API integration and automation tools, not just the design.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It can be adapted to any process flow and easily be integrated with other in-house tools using the ClearQuest API."
"Jira improved our team collaboration by providing visual visibility and transparency. Everyone could see what tasks were being worked on and the progress made. The development team updated task statuses, making tracking progress and planning sprints easy. If there were any impediments or challenges, we addressed them. This process helped us track our progress."
"Jira's collaborative features, such as comments, notifications, and real-time updates, facilitate better communication."
"I found it super useful, as it is customizable for different teams and users."
"Scaling the product wouldn't be difficult."
"With the help of Jira, tasks are less likely to remain stagnant for a long time. We always see them somewhere on the board."
"Jira is very user friendly, easy to install, and easy to access."
"I've never had a bug or a bug message that I needed to open a ticket for."
"It allows you to do a lot of stuff, and the functionality is pretty rich. It integrates well with other products, like GitLab, that we are currently intensely using at the company."
 

Cons

"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"I am unable to query based on the subtask and link by issue."
"From a very software-centric or a lead developer standpoint, there should be the ability to work at multiple levels. You have epic stories and use cases or epic stories and tasks. It would be nice to be able to have multiple levels of stories and multiple levels of epics work with it. It's lacking a little bit there, and this is the big thing for me because it makes it difficult to do a real sprint when you're limited to one story per epic. It's really hard to isolate tasks at multiple levels to match the type of use cases you normally do. That's the biggest difficulty. Other than that, they've been improving year to year, and every version seems to have a level of improvement."
"Jira's collaboration and integration with other apps and tools could be improved."
"If they want Jira to be the one-stop shop of the view of all of your deliverables, not just from a defect tracking perspective, but also from a requirement perspective, a code perspective, and a testing perspective, it needs to pull out more data and work better as an integration tool."
"In Jira, say on the team, no matter the methodology, it doesn't matter what I'm practicing, if I am using the tool for a while and I've compiled some sort of history. If I want to change my workflow, say my team is today using to-do in progress done, and tomorrow, I decide I want to use to-do in review and done, and I apply that new workflow, I have just now effectively lost all of my histories in terms of reporting."
"The plugin management needs a lot of work."
"It can have a more high-level view of portfolios. It has quite detailed views, but I would like a high-level view of portfolios. We want to integrate Jira with Microsoft Active Directory, and I don't know how easy or hard it is going to be. I don't know if Jira supports this. We are starting that integration in the last quarter of this year. I hope to find all the required tools for this integration."
"It should have Behavior Driven Development (BDD). There should be an option to add macros to help with that. A lot of people are using it now, and it would be nice if there was a way in there to be able to generate the BDD of commands whenever you're creating a story."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"We are on an annual license and could be less expensive."
"The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you."
"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."
"It is not too expensive. It is just comparative to other tools like Microsoft Teams."
"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."
"It does not cost that much."
"I am not sure if the client is using a commercial version. I think it is on a per-user basis, and it is around 15 Canadian dollars for a user, but I'm not sure. It also has a free version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
34%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Insurance Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business105
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise149
 

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.