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IBM DOORS Next 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 DOORS Next
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Jira
Ranking in Application Requirements Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Project Management Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Requirements Management category, the mindshare of IBM DOORS Next is 8.5%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jira is 15.7%, down from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Requirements Management
 

Featured Reviews

Roger Trackwell - PeerSpot reviewer
An industry-leading tool to demonstrate traceability between requirements, with valuable features for tailoring modules and managing several thousand requirements
The biggest thing is that it shows cradle to grave traceability between the initial parent requirement and the lowest level, or what we call a CID, a critical item development spec. You can establish your verification plans in DOORS, and then as you get test results, you can put them in DOORS as a link or as a pointer to where that specific test resides on a company database. Then you can also write compliance rationale and add a column for coding, like pass, fail, green, yellow, red, meets, does not meet, partially meets, or whatever scoring criteria you want to use. Like I said, the best thing about it is that it provides you that visibility of your verification, allowing you to know how close you are to your pre-production activities, prototyping, go ahead, or whatever it is.
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

"One of the most valuable features is how you can tailor the modules."
"It's web-based, so you don't have anything to install."
"As far as maintaining our requirements so that we can have copies of them, it's good. I can print it out if necessary."
"My company contacts the solution's technical support, and they are good and responsive."
"IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation is easier to expand to build a backend with several servers, so you can also use it to scale up to several hundreds of users without major problems."
"The "Link by Attribute" feature is useful for making links without needing to use the web interface manually."
"The most valuable features are the baselines and links."
"There are many good features with DOORS. The solution has a concept of streams and baselines, as well as a concept of components. A component is a subproject inside a project."
"The most valuable feature is the full integration between Work management, Source code management, and Test Automation."
"Jira has been a good l tool for collaborating across large groups of people. The JQL feature is powerful and easy to use."
"It is very flexible, so we can do pretty much what we want with it."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is its ease of use. I don't need to train anyone to use it, I just give them access and they can use it to add comments, move their issues, change the status, monitor, read, and so on."
"There are a lot of different plugins for Jira. Unfortunately, we did not test so many and the big pain point for us is the rigorous handling and the roadmap of Jira. We have a portfolio and structure plugin and we have our story map plugin in Jira"
"We have around 2000 plus users, so scale wise, there are no issues. We can easily scale up with multiple users."
"The most valuable feature of Jira is the integration with all the different Atlassian tools. They all integrate very easily."
"We like team collaboration and cross-functional collaboration."
 

Cons

"As a web tool, DNG can be difficult to use if the server is loaded or your network connection to it is saturated."
"The only additional feature would be if it had dynamic linking to other MBSE tool sets or industry-leading tools."
"It offers a bad user experience and the usability is poor."
"Both the data storage and reporting for this solution need improvement."
"It does have a tendency to condense the requirements. It kind of puts them in a tree format. Sometimes those trees are a little difficult."
"There is room for improvement in the APIs that they have exposed for integration."
"IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation has room for improvement compared to other tools like Polaris and Jama Connect. These tools offer more flexibility and options for developers, which IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation lacks. For example, you can define your link rules in Jama Connect, but you can't do that in IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation."
"When you are in Jira or Confluence, you have some freedom in how you type in text. That's also a weakness of Confluence, however, as it opens the doors to sloppy work. In DOS Next Generation, the text is very rigorous, but it might be difficult for people who don't have the discipline. Having a way to quickly enter requirements could help. It might already be in there, but I don't know. I don't have enough experience with the tool yet."
"It would be ideal if the solution could be available as a mobile application."
"The features are not intuitive. It would be good if there were templates."
"An area for improvement in Jira is that it's not designed for test management. To use it for test management, you need an add-on or several add-ons, e.g. Xray or Zephyr."
"It should have Behavior Driven Development (BDD). There should be an option to add macros to help with that. A lot of people are using it now, and it would be nice if there was a way in there to be able to generate the BDD of commands whenever you're creating a story."
"We would like to see the integration of a lite-version of Confluence, just to manage some of the templates and documents."
"The solution should be more user-friendly and include integration with different tools."
"The solution could improve by having its own tool for quality lifecycle management."
"If CI/CD is integrated with it, it would be better. I've used Azure DevOps before, and it's nice to have everything, such as CI/CD Repos and other things, integrated. Jira has fewer integrations. Azure DevOps has an easier interface, and it has got everything in one spot. I don't have to jump around in different applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You are going to need a beefy server and a fat network pipe to it in order to make DNG and its companion tools work well for users."
"If the product price were not reasonable enough, our company would not use IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation."
"The price of this solution is very high, and it increases year after year."
"Users can buy a three-year license for about 12,000 Euros."
"The cost of maintenance is €20,000 to €30,000 ($22,000 to $33,000 USD) and there are no additional fees."
"We currently have ten users, and it is free for ten users."
"I don't feel that price is an issue."
"We are using the enterprise license which is nice because it ensures that we always have the latest versions of Jira software."
"I understand JIRA is quite expensive."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis, and it is based on what you use."
"I don't deal with licensing in my current consultant position."
"When you get larger, the pricing becomes very, very steep."
"The price is quite competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
23%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
52%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?
The tool's most valuable feature is displaying requirements in a tabular format. This means you can see everything laid out in columns and rows. It is more aesthetic compared to other tools. The tr...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?
The pricing is considered unreasonable, and there is speculation that IBM may not be putting much effort into further development, possibly treating it as a cash cow.
What needs improvement with IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?
There is a need for improvement in user experience, as the UI is too complex and outdated. Updates should be more frequent to ensure security and functionality, especially in addressing vulnerabili...
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 DOORS Next Generation, RDNG, Rational Requirements Composer and IBM RRC
Jira Software
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Major health insurer
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DOORS Next vs. Jira and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.