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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

"It can be adapted to any process flow and easily be integrated with other in-house tools using the ClearQuest API."
"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."
"In terms of the general way that the tool functions, it seems like it's a pretty good fit-for-purpose for what we're trying to do. We've never thought about replacing it with another technology."
"Kanban board: The board is easy to use and visually impressive to non-IT users, who found it easy to relate to."
"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."
"We love the bulk edit feature. Jira also integrates well with Bitbucket."
"The most valuable feature is project management."
"With the help of Jira, tasks are less likely to remain stagnant for a long time. We always see them somewhere on the board."
"I feel the strongest feature of Jira is its workflow engine. It helps us 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."
"Its integration with Bitbucket, Confluence, and other things is most valuable."
 

Cons

"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"Sometimes it takes time to load the data."
"The GUI should have much better features like more graphical illustrations. There are some cases or benchmarks that we are trying to capture into a dashboard GUI's graphical summary, but unfortunately JIRA is not able to do that."
"My main concern is the administration of projects, especially user groups, and this requires root access rights but there is no concept of layered admin rights."
"The filtration could be better."
"I want Jira to have more plug-ins, which will allow for more free plug-ins that help with the area of reporting."
"The way to configure it can definitely be improved. It is very difficult and complex to configure. Its configuration should be simplified."
"The reports in Jira can be improved, especially for test reports. I find it difficult to customize and integrate for different testing purposes."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is much higher than other similar solutions available in the market, and as such, the vendor should think about a price reduction to make this product more affordable."
"The tool's pricing is expensive. The new pricing is indeed quite expensive compared to what it was a few years ago. Last year, when we intended to renew our subscription, we found the pricing considerably higher."
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
"We are using the enterprise license which is nice because it ensures that we always have the latest versions of Jira software."
"We had a perpetual license but have changed to a subscription."
"It's not very cheap. It's also not very costly. I'd rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing."
"It is very cheap if you forego the local instance and stick to the cloud."
"Our client handles the licensing aspect. They have not yet purchased the premium version."
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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.