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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 (7th)
Jira
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
277
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (1st)
 

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 22.9%, down 35.7% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 13.3% mindshare, down 22.9% since last year.
Defect Tracking Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Rational ClearQuest22.9%
ISC Software JCL Checker13.2%
Adminitrack13.2%
Other50.7%
Defect Tracking
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Jira13.3%
Microsoft Azure DevOps10.3%
Codebeamer7.7%
Other68.7%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

it_user808977 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
It can be adapted to any process flow
ClearQuest is a Defect Tracking system with a highly adaptable state machine together with an easy to use API, which can do all of the functions available in the GUI. This simplifies integration and automation of many steps is why the organization still uses a much older version, as there are no…
Akhil Viswam - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Agile workflows have streamlined sprint planning and tracking for faster feature delivery
Jira has a very good interface and it is very easy to manage sprints, tasks, and epics. The main feature is the hierarchy, as features can be converted into epics and topics, allowing bigger tasks to be partitioned into smaller ones. The hierarchy feature in Jira helps the team significantly compared to other tools that have been used, such as Trello, which is mainly useful only for a waterfall model. For modern Agile practices, Jira is the most adapted tool in the industry. Another valuable feature is that Jira APIs have been used for data science projects to analyze tasks and get insights. This has also been very helpful in the project.

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."
"I have found Jira to be scalable."
"The agile framework works well, and I pretty much live by that. Everything, such as sprint management, is laid out."
"Some of the features that are most important to me of JIRA Agile are the sprint planning, being able to write user stories and being able to use task management."
"We love the bulk edit feature. Jira also integrates well with Bitbucket."
"The dashboard and reports tracking and the setup updates quickly, I am very impressed with those features. Additionally, it is user-friendly."
"Being able to automatize the deployment of the solution has been great."
"The solution helps a lot with scrums."
"The most valuable feature is managing software development."
 

Cons

"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"We haven't seen Jira's progressive area so far, and we are not sure what it might do in the future."
"Adding applications is very expensive."
"From a very software-centric or a lead developer standpoint, there should be the ability to work at multiple levels. You have epic stories and use cases or epic stories and tasks. It would be nice to be able to have multiple levels of stories and multiple levels of epics work with it. It's lacking a little bit there, and this is the big thing for me because it makes it difficult to do a real sprint when you're limited to one story per epic. It's really hard to isolate tasks at multiple levels to match the type of use cases you normally do. That's the biggest difficulty. Other than that, they've been improving year to year, and every version seems to have a level of improvement."
"I am not sure if Jira can be integrated with our ERP. We have our ERP for the cost estimates or measurements. It would be nice if we can check or view a plan with the real cost. Currently, we have to do a double check of costs. It would be better to be able to integrate it with Jira."
"The reporting part is a little bit difficult for me. It is not so easy. There should be a simpler way to track the efforts of our team. For example, in an Excel sheet, there is a feature for filtering. It would be much better if we can use something like that. Currently, for a complex query, we need to use Jira Query Language. Using Jira Query Language every time is not efficient for me."
"The solution needs more integrations with Azure DevOps OnPrem."
"The plugin management needs a lot of work."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Jira and its solution off the shelf are cheap. It is cheap for startups."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive. We pay annually for the solution."
"I don't deal with licensing in my current consultant position."
"Its price is good and similar to other products. It is about five or six dollars per user."
"The license is yearly. It is a large, long-running program."
"Compared to the value Jira provides, it’s not that expensive. It has an yearly licensing cost."
"We have a corporate license, and it is probably based on the number of people."
"We used to be on a perpetual license provided by our clients."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
33%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business105
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise150
 

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?
Jira itself is fairly priced for the features it provides, but pricing is a bit higher than some alternatives, mostly because many plugins and add-ons are paid and licensed per user. So even if onl...
 

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.