Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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

"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 is user-friendly and offers many features."
"​One of the valuable features is traceability from requirements to test cases."
"Jira's integration with our workflow is deep, and we rely on it heavily for software development."
"Integration is good."
"I have found the tracking, project and task management most valuable in this solution."
"Jira is very useful for project management for internal projects."
"It improved communication, as it was a popular tool, and most people enjoyed using it."
"Jira's most valuable features are ease of use, simple to understand, and highly flexible. Additionally, you can use kanban or scrum which is a benefit."
 

Cons

"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"The only thing that JIRA doesn't for us is release management in a way that I can create a list of versions easily."
"To improve Jira, providing proper documentation, examples, or snippets for scripting workflows would be beneficial."
"It would be ideal if Jira had future functionalities to integrate more easily with various aspects of code reviews."
"My main concern is the administration of projects, especially user groups, and this requires root access rights but there is no concept of layered admin rights."
"I struggle with Epics, how they are implemented in JIRA, because they don't work like any other Story, I see a list of Epics, but although I can order them, there are some mismatches with how the Epics are used compared to what Scrum expects, or what Story mapping expects an Epic to be."
"I would like our clients' IT group to be able to have oversight without setting up agents. We're managing tickets, and I'd like their IT group to see everything we're doing without having to set them up as agents. There should be a better way of managing their users. I've got such requests, but Jira is expensive, and it is difficult to pay an agent fee for somebody else to view these tickets. Currently, the only way in which I can do that is by setting a user up as an agent, and it becomes cost-prohibitive. They need to do a better job on ticket viewers."
"In JIRA, it's a bit complex in terms of what advanced search queries we use. Sharing them is also a problem. Because TFS is on the cloud, we can easily save that query and share it with our team members."
"The dashboard reports can be improved. Its dashboard reports are good, but you cannot have complex reports. They are currently very basic. For instance, we can only choose two columns for a dashboard, so it is not friendly enough."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"We feel that the product is a good value for the cost."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive. We pay annually for the solution."
"To try this solution, use their cloud offering to get familiar. After that, it's in my view worth the money."
"It is not too expensive. It is just comparative to other tools like Microsoft Teams."
"Almost everybody uses JIRA nowadays because it is the most cost-effective solution."
"The price of Jira is reasonable."
"The price of Jira could be lower."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Defect Tracking solutions are best for your needs.
882,103 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
34%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
Insurance Company
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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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.