Jira Reviews

The adaptability of the Scrum and Kanban boards for other uses, with careful use of the customization features.

It has simplified our PM work tremendously, as we switched from VersionOne. We have much more buy-in from dev teams and we see a marked difference in productivity.

Ease of administration and customization. It is really clunky in this area. Also, permissions are nice, but they need more refinement so a project admin has more capability and less reliance on the system administrators.

We have been using this solution for approximately four years.

There were issues with deployment. Because we use it on-premises rather than in the cloud, for regulatory reasons, we are often behind, but not for long. Apart from that, our PlatOps team always runs into problems, though I cannot speak directly to those issues.

There weren't terrible issues with stability, but it is easy, when customizing, to make a mistake that will "break" JIRA for all users. It takes a lot of care.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

Customer service is excellent, although they are only available via email.

Technical support is excellent, because they are responsive.

We used VersionOne and it was simply too powerful, so to speak. It was bulky, expensive, and simply became a mess with so many users. VersionOne isn't a bad product at all, but our IT department just isn't big or complex enough for an "enterprise" product.

We implemented it ourselves.

Our ROI is very good. Almost all licenses are taken and it is even being used by the rest of the business, outside of IT.

The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you.

We evaluated Asana and even Trello, as we were trying to simplify. But those solutions, among others, were too simple.

Ensure that your admins learn by first installing to a QA server for experimentation, if you are doing it on-premises. As for those learning it in the cloud version, create dummy projects, categorize them as such, and be careful about how many changes you make at once.

The configurable workflows and boards make it easy for us to execute and oversee our own unique process. The portfolio feature allows you to conceptualize your roadmap and experiment with various scenarios before committing to execute. Once you learn how to configure the system, it is extremely powerful.

JIRA has created visibility for our IT organization that did not previously exist.

There are some minor quirks, such as zero-point stories not appearing in the portfolio scope. We often poke stories at zero points because we have a very small group that needs outside help from time-to-time. We need to track these stories without impacting team velocity, so we poke them at zero.

These stories will not appear in the scope/schedule in the portfolio because the system interprets zero points as zero scope, even though the issues are open, assigned to the release and assigned to a Sprint. It would be nice to be able to see them in the schedule.

We have been using this product for three years.

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would give technical support a rating of 5/10. I have only asked two questions in the support forums. One was answered very quickly and the other was never answered.

I previously used CA Agile (a.k.a. ‘Rally’). My company decided to switch to JIRA because we were already using it for bug tracking. Once the Agile/Portfolio features were released, we decided to use JIRA for all IT project planning and tracking.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. One thing I personally don’t like is how the system, by default, assumes that all projects will have a different workflow and screen configuration. This adds complexity in my opinion. It should assume that there is a default workflow and configuration across projects and then allow you to copy and customize the defaults.

It is very cheap if you forego the local instance and stick to the cloud.

We evaluated Microsoft TFS and Targetprocess. Neither had a Portfolio planning feature, which is why we decided to stick with JIRA.

Establish a basic project management methodology and workflow first, with clear roles and responsibilities, and then use this product to execute. It is only as effective as you are disciplined in your sprint planning and execution.

Perfect for keeping track of large amounts of bugs, tasks queries and releases for fixes. 

The SaaS does the job it is supposed to: helps you keep track of your projects. What I like most is the ease of adding users and the obvious nature of what they need to do -  drag and drop is always a win. 

It is cross methodology so Scrum, Kanban... it doesn't matter, you can use JIRA.

I like how it shows the sprints remaining. Being able to instantly see where you are in a project and what is coming up is invaluable. 

Also, the ability to link a programme of projects is very helpful. I can see where all of the teams are with their individual projects but also how they fit into the overarching business plan for the year.

In reality, it's allowed me to raise and keep track of 700 tickets (bugs, queries, tasks etc) effectively. I can track what tickets are in UAT and which ones are coming out in the next software release. It's very simple. 

It allows all of those involved in a project, to see what stage their deliverables are (depending on what you allow people to view, they can see all deliverables from all teams)

Keeping everything in one central place with it obvious as to who is responsible for what, is a fantastic thing. 

It gives programme managers an overview of how a slew of projects are going. This also provides information for Exec meetings/Board meetings - visuals are always helpful to instantly show people what is happening with a programme of improvements.

Basically it allows me to see what is happening very quickly. 

I have no areas of improvement that I would push. JIRA does what I need - it allows me to assign tasks and to update my project. Any problems that I have found have been more to do with people entering with a lack of details - rubbish in = rubbish out. But that is the same with all apps.

I've used JIRA for over a couple of years, in three organisations, so I have some experience of how different places use it.

SaaS so nothing to deploy really. 

There's been the odd amount of JIRA downtime (not self hosted) and sometimes tickets that can't be accessed. 

I've not had need to contact the customer support team so I suppose that is a good thing.

Easy to configure, very fast to configure, extremely powerful workflows and schemes, integrates with other Atlassian tools as well as 3rd party tools.

Collaboration and software development lifecycle were the 2 keys that JIRA served great for. We have multiple organizations in the company already using JIRA for tracking projects.

Better JIRA Agile integration and more functionality related to JIRA Agile plugin

JIRA: 10 years

We didn't encounter any deployment issues

We didn't encounter any stability issues

We didn't encounter any scalability issues

9/10

8/10

Remedy, Bugzilla, Clearcase, TestTrack and Rally have all been replaced with JIRA with my leadership

Straightforward

In-House

60%

10 years ago 2K initially and 1K for additional plugins. recently 10K for the Atlassian Suite and additional plugins.

HP QTP, Serena Business Manager, Rally

It rocks simply.

The ability to keep stories, bugs and documentation in one application is a valuable feature, as is the ability to easily create swim lanes for organizing work.

As everything is within one application, it is easy to write end-of-sprint reports.

It worked fine for my requirements.

Stability: we encountered occasional timeouts.

I have used this product on and off for about seven years.

I did not encounter any deployment issues.

We encountered occasional timeouts.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

I did not need to contact customer service.

I did not need to contact technical support.

I have not used any other solution, before this product.

The setup was very straightforward.

We have implemented this product in-house.

This product is easy to set-up. There are many add-on applications to assist you further to manage all requirements such as Confluence for document control, Capture for testing, etc.

Customization of workflow is a key valuable feature. JIRA comes with a few default workflows, however you can create highly customized workflows depending on your needs.

Tracking more items in JIRA allows for more transparency of projects; centralized access to latest issues, risks, tasks, etc.

Improvements for Cloud version. One such item is available of nested user groups, which is available on server version. Managing a large number of users on Cloud version is extremely challenging due to lack of this capability. I wrote my own command line admin tool in order to manage users more easily.

I have used it for two years and was the main admin also.

We used the Cloud version, due to external access needs. Cloud version deployment is just configuration.

With more users and more projects, administration becomes more difficult. Administration is very manual. Thus, I had to write my own command line tool to automate some of my administration.

Customer service is good. Response to support requests were fairly quick.

Technical support is good.

Initial setup is straightforward. A large user base and/or large number of projects requires more planning and strategy, so that you can re-use common workflows, rather than create new configurations for every project (think of abstraction is object-oriented programming).

Pricing is based on the number of users. Cloud is cheaper, but choose in-house (server) version if you can, as it has more features and is more secure; overall very affordable.

We looked at RedMine (open source), but features were limited, and it is not very user friendly. Other options such as BaseCamp and Asana were not really comparable products, in my mind, even though they come up on many comparison websites.

JIRA is tool. As with any tool, it needs to be in the hands of the right person to be used effectively. The administrator and/or trainer in your company should be very competent with JIRA, as they will be leading the effort. JIRA is powerful, but what truly makes it a powerful tool is integration with other Atlassian packages and third-party software. JIRA should almost always be used in conjunction with Confluence. There are many integrations available such as GitHub and many other applications.

Multiple features make this product a delight to use. Using this for backlog prioritization is the key to either kanban or scrum processes. JIRA does a great job of articulating the story and adding elements to the story to help in the prioritization. If you are overseeing multiple projects, it allows you to easily follow the teams progress.

Another feature is the ability to incorporate add-ons. It’s great to have for those one-off processes you need. For example, the integration with Confluence.

Working in a dev shop that is 100% scrum, this tool is invaluable in its insights to how the process is working. Are the stories written well? Is the team executing on the highest priorities? How is the team executing sprint by sprint? All these can be found easily within JIRA, either with their out-of-the-box reporting, or the ease with which search queries can be downloaded to CSV to manipulate in a data visualization tool.

The reporting out of the box is minimal; I would like to see a report-building capability out of the box. Teams have access to more than a dozen out-of-the-box reports with real-time, actionable insights into how their teams are performing sprint over sprint. Examples include Burndown, Sprint, Cumulative Flow, Epic , release, Velocity. However most will find these reports too simple and want some sophistication. Luckily Jira gives the ability to export results where you can work offline with them in a tool like Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel or other preferred data parsing tool. For additional spend you can purchase their reporting plugin.

I have used this application for approximately five years over several different roles: product management, development manager and delivery manager.

We deployed on premise. The amount of time to deploy was simple for a trained technician. Would highly recommend if installing on premise to shy away from any customizations in workflows; will make upgrades a pain in the future. If you considering using this, I would recommend the cloud option first.

No issues with stability.

Like any application installed on premise, you must be monitoring server and application logs to ensure the right level of performance. Scaling up is easy.

Most of their customer service comes from the community. Robust community of evangelists who respond rather quickly. As the application is highly stable, contacting customer service has been few and far between. Responses came thru within expected timeframes and were helpful, even if pointing to already published articles.

I would rate their technical support high.

I've also used Microsoft TFS (Team Foundation Server) for another development team that was .NET based. Used both Jira and TFS at the same time, though for different project teams.

Atlassian built their reputation on building applications that were easy to install and using a community model to improve. The setup of JIRA was straightforward, just as the documentation indicated. Us technology people have a hard time reading thru user guides, but these were easy and quick.

It was implemented by one of our developers.

Development teams, especially scrum teams, need some type of tool. For geographically dispersed teams, the ROI has a quick payback period, less than three months. Geography could be the dev team in one city and the product team in another.

Look to their cloud offering first; get using it quickly. Be wary of some of the add-ons, as there are cost components to them; if you need them, add them in.

As indicated above, we used Microsoft TFS. We tried to have a JavaScript team use TFS, but it didn't really fit into all the other ALM tools a JavaScript developer uses, so we quickly scrapped TFS and moved back to JIRA. The same was true for a .NET team; tried to have them use JIRA, but it was difficult to break the Microsoft eco-system. Not impossible in that case, just a culture shift you want to address carefully.

Review all your use cases for the tools to see if Atlassian matches up nicely to those you need; makes integration easier when all are from one provider. Be sure you understand what you are licensed for and what costs extra. For example, do you need portfolio management? Because, if you do, it's an extra cost.

JIRA gives you all the features you need for organizing your work within one team and across teams in a very efficient and structured way. It is more than just a ticketing system and more than just a project management tool.

It is very user-friendly and very structured which makes it very easy to ask people from non-technical departments to come and join you within JIRA projects.

The amount of plugins is astounding, and many of them have a surprisingly high quality. While some are free, some other plugins are very expensive, but at the same time worth the money (at least this is what I think).

JIRA could be basically used to organize the work of a whole company, which is why it is so valuable.

JIRA helped us to work across teams and sites, while staying efficient and reducing communication overhead to a minimum. Since it plays very well with other Atlassian products, you can make sure that other members of the staff find JIRA issue related information much faster than in the traditional way (e.g. asking, search engine etc.).

JIRA is written in JAVA and therefore a bit hard to trouble-shoot. It also is very expensive once you have a lot of users. And since it is very flexible, it can also lead to situations where you loose overview of permissions, custom issue types etc. It also takes too long to create your own custom fields and issue types since you have to work yourself trough many layers of abstraction and features. But this is a well-known downside of flexibility and openness.

I have been using JIRA for more than 2,5 years.

No, deployment and upgrading was always straightforward.

Sometimes, it seems that JIRA gets a little slow. But is is very hard to say if the network connection, the underlying system or JIRA itself is the one to blame.

Not yet.

I used a heavily modified version of Sugar CRM, which was basically a custom solution. Never again.

The initial setup was very easy.

Since JIRA gets really expensive when having a lot of users (and maybe plugins), you should try to avoid letting everyone in by default. Maybe it is better to only give those users access who really could benefit from this product.