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IBM Rational ClearQuest vs Jira comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 (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 (2nd), Project Management Software (2nd)
 

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 50.0%, up 25.0% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 21.4% mindshare, down 23.9% since last year.
Defect Tracking
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

it_user541326 - PeerSpot reviewer
Tracks change requests, problems, and physical asset management. I would like to see data type for floating point numbers.
Customer Service: Customer service has been adequate. Most of the times we've had any issues IBM has been able to provide a solution. We've dealt mostly with customer service representatives in Brazil. Technical Support: Technical support from IBM is pretty good since you can create a PMR with them and they’re very responsible.
Saroj Ekka - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good repository integration, sprint board and easy to set up
There are some features and reports we need that are not there. For example, if I have to find out the capacity of the current sprint by user and compare it with the previous sprint, that visibility isn't there. We can know the capacity and what happened with the whole sprint, but not for an individual person to see where it's falling and how it's tracking. Report and analytics capabilities are important for a product manager. That visibility is important, so we use Jira. Some of the features are there, and I use my own Excels or other data things to compensate for that.

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."
"The most valuable feature is the feature of assigning. Whenever I have an issue, Jira doesn't stop at just letting me describe the issue. I can also assign the issue to a developer, and the developer gets notified about it. After he is able to work on it, he can update the status and revert back to me through the same platform. It really avoids a lot of communication over email and phone. This the feature that I really like about Jira. I always use Jira with my team."
"Jira offers tools for managing projects using Agile methodology. I think it is good to encourage the development team to use Jira, so that the organization benefits from the proper execution of projects on time. Basically, it helps our organization to execute in a better way."
"Jira as a structure has Confluence for documentation, and for what it is offering it is a strong suit with Atlassian."
"Workflow administration is an easy process, especially with respect to defects."
"It handles all of the issues that we need it to do."
"The sprint tracking is really helpful and very convenient."
"It is a good defect tracking tool. It has a lot of capabilities and functionalities. There are a lot of graphs and a lot of tracking. It can be sprint-driven if you want."
"Has a good dashboard with good tracking features."
 

Cons

"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"So at one point in time, they did a huge UI upgrade. At that time, I felt like they had changed something, so it was hard to figure out. Now that we are habituated, it's not an issue now."
"Its ability to perform true executive-level status reporting could be improved. There are a lot of benefits there, but there are also a lot of things they can and should expand upon."
"The documentation on how to create dashboards and take advantage of other features in the tool are areas where the tool has certain shortcomings."
"A lot of features, such as time tracking, are only available through the marketplace. If multiple users are working on a user story, we aren't able to pull out the reports. So, there are many things that they aren't offering. They are available only through the marketplace. That's not good for a product."
"In terms of the general Jira software, one element that is missing is budget management. Perhaps such functionality exists in add-ons, however."
"I would like to see test execution modules."
"There should be a way to look for specific comments. When we have thousands of comments on a Jira ticket, there is no way to look at the comments of a specific type. In the comments, if there is a way to put a tag, it would be helpful. For example, when there are a lot of lengthy discussions happening on a particular ticket, there could be a conclusion tag or something like that to indicate a conclusion. It would help in sorting the comments based on a certain category, such as conclusion."
"Sometimes the screens can be a bit too busy. There's often a lot of information on the screen. I think paring things down and applying some UX improvements might enhance the look and feel of the interface."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We have an enterprise license that includes cloud service and support."
"I don't feel that price is an issue."
"It is subscription-based, and we probably pay yearly. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of price."
"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."
"The license is yearly. It is a large, long-running program."
"The price of Jira is reasonable."
"Compared to the value Jira provides, it’s not that expensive. It has an yearly licensing cost."
"Worth the extra cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
30%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
Educational Organization
50%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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.
 

Comparisons

 

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.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Rational ClearQuest vs. Panaya Test Dynamix and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.