Atlassian ALM vs Jira comparison

How to use Atlassian to manage application lifecycle: Atlassian builds software to pull together all the elements of application lifecycle management. Product management, developers, Q/A, dev ops, and business stake holders all have their own ways of interacting with application lifecycle management and Atlassian splits up the process into a few buckets.

1) Collaborate to plan and envision work

Atlassian's Confluence is a collaboration platform for building and driving consensus. Call stake holders in to give approval, comment on, and share pages and integrate with the rest of the development toolchain.

2) Build and track roadmaps

Atlassian's JIRA Software offers incredibly flexible project management with custom workflows, plugins, and high visibility rollups through JIRA Portfolio. Issues can be embedded right in confluence, or be used to kick off new branches in version control. Keep everyone on the same page with project progress. 

3) Track and deploy code

Atlassian's Bitbucket is the world's most robust Git solution. The ability to deploy multiple-nodes with failover, global mirroring for super fast clones, and powerful code review control set it apart from competition. Bitbucket also has a mature plugin and hooks system that allows extensions and connection to a suite of CI software. 

4) Support and Iterate

Track support requests, bugs, and route users in the right direction with JIRA Service Desk. With the same custom workflow engine as JIRA Software, a tight integration with the rest of the stack, and a knowledge base function make it a powerful addition to the ALM stack. 

5) Tie it together

ChatOps helps tie every part of the ALM together. Get stake holders in the same room to manage a project, teams in the same page to manage their work, or plugin automated members to report on CI status, pull requests, page changes in Confluence, or bug reports. Like every piece of Atlassian's ALM there is a mature API for extending plugins and everything can be hosted behind your own firewall. 

Jira is a powerful cloud- and subscription-based application lifecycle and issue management solution. It is designed to aid users both in project management and in resolving any issues that arise at any point in the software development process. It is especially concerned with easing the ability of developers to collaborate. 

Jira Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Jira include:

• DevOps lifecycle visibility and planning. Jira provides application developers with tools that enable them to track and visualize where they are in the development process. This means that a DevOps team can measure their progress at all times. Jira’s roadmapping feature also enables a DevOps team to work more efficiently by setting goals for their projects, keeping them on track. Additionally, they are able to track whether they are meeting the goals that they set for their projects.

• Regular product updates. Atlassian is constantly updating Jira so that it is continuously evolving into an ever more powerful and user-friendly solution. Users can be sure that the product that they are using is always being tweaked so as to provide them with the best possible project management solution. 

• Flexibility. Jira enables users to customize their workflows and dashboard so that the solution is operating in a way that best matches their needs. Jira can also integrate with more than 3,000 other applications and integrations. Organizations can use it to expand their project management and DevOps capabilities in many different ways. 

Jira Features

• Security capabilities. Jira is equipped with a number of useful security features. It gives administrators the ability to restrict access to certain tools so that only users who are authorized to complete certain tasks have access to the tools related to the completion of that task. Users can also set default permissions so that only particular users can work on new projects or particular projects.

• Real-time notification feature. Users can set Jira so that it offers them notifications that contain critical information in real time. It can send users email notifications when pressing issues have been updated. They can also set it to notify them about tasks that may be due, or other similar events.

• Activity log. Jira has the ability to track any and all changes that are taking place within the software framework. Users can keep a close eye on everything that is going on. This promotes a high level of visibility and can be leveraged to aid developers in their collaboration efforts. 

Reviews from Real Users

Jira is a powerful solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its workflow engine and its highly customizable dashboard. 

Bharath R., the tool implementation and project management lead at a financial services firm, writes, “I feel the strongest feature of Jira is its workflow engine. It empowers us to automate our workflows within our organization. It's the one characteristic of Jira which I think can help any organization, be it in any domain.”

Uday J., a staff engineer at a computer company, says, “Another thing that I like a lot about Jira is that in the dashboard, you can plug the modules that you want. You can enable certain sections. For example, you can show trend history, open Jira tickets, etc. Some of the managers have created a dashboard for each engineer.”