What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for all issue reporting. The business uses it and we use it in IT as well. Any issue, anything from the help desk to software issues use Jira. It can house test plans, test sets, test executions, and provide some reporting. It's the reporting that's important for us.
How has it helped my organization?
The product has formalized the workflow process for reporting tracking and stacking and processing issues. It's also added some formal approvals, just for the purpose of formalization of a process workflow.
What is most valuable?
If you're using it in an agile shop, the traceability between epic story's test case defects is very helpful.
I like that all of the team members on an agile team can use it. No one is in a separate application.
The stability is good.
The product can scale, so long as you have storage.
What needs improvement?
The reporting needs to be better. Being able to do some test management would be useful. In the tool, it would be ideal if they could give you some out-of-the-box reports for things like requirement coverage and regression and things of that nature.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution off and on for about four years. I used it when it first came out to do some evaluation and we implemented it at a startup. That was when it first started. I've probably only really used it for about eight months on a daily basis.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have had no downtime, and therefore I don't have anything to say that would be negative. It seems to be quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
As long as a company has the money for storage, it's scalable to any size. A small company can use it or an enterprise-level company can use it. It works for both.
Currently, we have less than 1,000 users in our organization using the solution.
Jira is extensively used in our organization.
We do plan to increase usage as well. The company purchased it so that it would be scalable. There's not a solid plan right now to add measurable users or increase the size, however, we know that it's available and that's what we were looking for - something that is scalable. The plans are to grow and as that growth happens, either organically, or via the purchase of other financial entities, we can grow the size of the database application and the number of the users.
How are customer service and support?
I did not personally use technical support. I have worked several months with the people who have, and they say that the support is very good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
If the company used something previous to Jira, it was before my time. It possibly could have been Sharepoint, however, I was not with the company at that time.
How was the initial setup?
The solution was implemented before I came to the company.
That said, my understanding is that the company tried to use as much out-of-the-box functionality as possible and it was quite an effort. They spent quite a lot of time formalizing workflows and things of that nature. In the end, it was very well thought out.
We do have a team for maintenance and what takes the most time with any upgrade is going through the changes, the enhancements, the defect fixes, and things like that. The actual time that it takes to physically update it is pretty minimal. However, going through the documentation and meeting with the team to make sure that we have testing covered prior to upgrading is work. We have a test environment prior to pushing it to production. That's what really takes time. It's not the physical update. An update might take two and a half hours and there's a lot of data in there.
What about the implementation team?
My understanding is the company used professional services from Jira and also got some training and stuff of that nature.
What other advice do I have?
We're just customers and end-users.
We just upgraded the solution. We are on the latest version.
I'd advise potential users to make sure that they talk to the people who are going to be testing and make sure that they know, what metrics they need before they pick a tool, any tool - even if it isn't Jira.
I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Thanx for sharing valuable info