Jira Align Reviews

Mainly, we use the solution to maintain our backlogs, scrum processes, and project management. So, we create the entire structure. It is a brief project management tool. Regarding backlog management, the solution includes features apart from using the product for the product backlog, sprint planning, experiments, and defect management.

Jira Align is an intuitive tool that features a roadmap view. This allows users to see the entire program they have set up, following sprint planning. The portfolio summary view provides a user-friendly interface for operational users such as the scrum team, the scrum master, and the product team. In addition, it provides a management dashboard for leadership to monitor progress. The tool enables viewing the entire roadmap for an epic, and users can drill down to the lowest level, the product backlog item.

My company is in the process of moving out from Jira Align. We are planning to transition to another tool called Planisware. Though there are no issues with Jira Align, Planisware offers its users a complete package in terms of portfolio management. Jira Align fails to provide its users with a complete package in terms of portfolio management. In short, Planisware offers many different facilities making it a more comprehensive tool. In a company, we can use Planisware for resource management, especially at a portfolio level. Though it is expensive in terms of licensing, our company has decided to move to Planisware.

I have been using Jira Align for five years. I don't remember the version I am using currently.

We have around 500 users using this solution in our organization. In our company, we are using the solution extensively. Also, we do not plan to increase the number of users since only specific people in our organization use the solution.

In our company, we have a different team who deals with Jira's technical support team.

Previously, we used Azure DevOps in our company. Azure DevOps was earlier known as VSTS. Also, we still use this tool in our organization. So, we use Azure DevOps for all our product backlog items and overall product backlog management at a lower level. We use Jira Align to manage epics and features.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Its setup process is not complex since it's an intuitive tool.

I don't remember how long it took to deploy the solution in our organization since we started using it around four years ago. We did not face any issues during its deployment phase. Regarding the deployment model, I would say that we are using the solution on the cloud. Also, I won't be able to explain the steps involved in the deployment process since a different team did it a long time ago. We have a team of around three or four three members to manage the deployment and maintenance process.

There are two types of maintenance processes. In pure maintenance, if you have an issue with the tool, then you raise a ticket, after which you work with Jira's support team to resolve the issue. And the second type of support that you require is from people who understand the technicalities of the tool and know where to set up certain things in the tools that can get the tool to provide privileges, user access management, and identity management. In our company, we have various pillars. So, each pillar will have a small team of one or two people. There will be a team of those providing support to the people in a particular team on how to use the tool, especially if there is any required setup or administration-related activities. Since it is not our tool and we weren't involved in the coding process of the solution, we need to reach out to Jira if we come across any defects or need to make any customizations in the tool. So, we formed a small team of two or three members to look into such issues and needs.

Jira Align is definitely worth the money.

Even though my company has an enterprise license for Jira Align, I am unaware of the solution's pricing.

I recommend the solution to those planning to go for agile project management since it has all the features. We use Azure DevOps and Jira Align in our company. A lot of maintenance happens if you have multiple tools. So, sticking to one tool is better. So if one has Jira Align, one should develop everything in Jira. However, Jira Align doesn't have code management in it. One should choose only one solution between Jira Align and Azure DevOps as an agile project management tool. Sticking to either one of the tools for a specific or particular project is better. There have been instances when a certain tool does not support a waterfall project model. In our case, we get involved in many deployment activities using different tools. Taking one tool into consideration, it might have limitations. Hence, a person needs to understand the nature of the project before selecting the tool and using the same one for the entire project. In short, it is better not to use Jira for everything since it is meant to be used only for those things for which it was developed. Using multiple tools might create syncing issues or integration issues for its user.

If you use Jira Align for agile project management, you will undoubtedly have a better user experience and more capabilities. On the other hand, if you choose to use Azure DevOps for the same purpose, you may have to make some compromises since it cannot manage agile projects as effectively. However, Jira Align is the recommended solution if you have a larger project with several integrated components and require portfolio summary or roadmap features. Azure DevOps can be a good choice for smaller projects that do not require much visibility. For instance, if there are several MVPs like, let's say, there is a road map of three years for a product. In such a case, Jira works out better from a project management perspective. If you have a support project where you mainly use Kanban or require an operational perspective without the need for extensive visibility for senior management, Azure DevOps is a suitable tool. This is especially true if there are more operational users on the tool than management users. The choice between Azure DevOps and Jira Align will depend on the type of work being done, project size and complexity, number of people involved, levels of management using the tool, and cost considerations. Since enterprise licenses are typically negotiated, Microsoft may offer better pricing due to its existing Microsoft 365 OS license. It is important to make an informed decision by considering the project requirements and ease of tool management.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use Jira Align for business strategies, collaboration, and reporting. The solution allows us to manage the various products and features delivered on that platform.

We use Jira Align for business strategies, collaboration, and reporting.

I have been using Jira Align for over seven years.

We are quite a big organization, and hundreds of employers use the solution in our organization.

I've not faced any challenges with the solution's configuration and initial setup.

Jira Align has price packages for different purposes. Users must do their own research and see if it fits their purpose.

Users have to understand their business objective before using the solution. Given the right training, it is easy for somebody to learn to use Jira Align for the first time.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

When we receive a new customer requirement, the sales and marketing team inputs it into Jira Align. Then, the design team creates a task in Jira Align and assigns it to various engineers, such as hardware, electronics, and software engineers. We track the progress of these tasks and regularly update their statuses in Jira Align.

This allows everyone to log in and follow up on the progress. Once the design phase is complete, we assign a plan to the production team to build the initial sample for qualifications and verification purposes.

Once we've received approval from the customer or the marketing team, we transition the status from design to production. Our production planning coordinator then utilizes Jira Align to release the work order, especially if we've received a purchase order from the customer.

From there, it's an operational process where the warehouse follows the demand, prepares the materials, and releases them to production for building the product. This represents the general progress of our workflow in Jira Align.

I joined the company because they had a large project, and as a startup company, they needed to scale up efficiently. My task was to review the current baseline, assess the team's capabilities, and propose solutions to increase production capacity. Upon observing the process in Jira Align, I realized we didn't need to invest heavily in expanding capacity.

Instead, we could improve by optimizing the current process, particularly focusing on reducing idle and queueing times. My proposal to the management team was to introduce a lean concept, combining similar processes and materials to reduce idle and queueing time. This approach would streamline operations and address customer concerns about turnaround time.

The most significant feature of Jira Align for our project management is its ability to track and share information with all team members. 

One feature that needs improvement is the tool's ability to change schedules automatically. Users can't simply drag and drop tasks to reschedule them without notifying the entire team. This lack of functionality can hinder project management control, as changes should be communicated transparently to all team members.

The solution cannot currently alert users when changes occur, which I believe is a function that it should provide. I hope that Jira Align will introduce AI functions to address this issue in the future. 

We hope to utilize it further to establish connections between the development, production, and sales marketing teams for better alignment. There seems to be a gap between product design and final mass-volume production, possibly due to cost constraints or missing models.

It should also improve the support. 

I have been working with the product for two years. 

I rate Jira Align's stability an eight out of ten. 

I rate the solution's scalability a six to seven out of ten. My company has 40-50 users. 

I rate the tool's deployment an eight to nine out of ten. The time it takes to deploy the solution varies depending on the project scope. Simple tasks like extracting data from Jira Align into Excel for reports can be done quickly and easily. However, deploying new processes may take a couple of weeks.

Typically, we deploy solutions with a small team of about three to five people from different functions within the company. This includes individuals from design, production, and IT who work together on the project assignment. So, not many people are required to participate in the deployment process. We have one resource to handle its maintenance. 

In our company, we've considered bringing in third parties to help with deployment but ultimately decided against it due to the associated costs. Instead, we've opted to develop solutions in-house, although it does take time to do so.

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. It's been helpful for internal process control and information sharing, particularly in data management. Every change is recorded, allowing us to track when and why changes occur. Additionally, importing and collecting data from the system is easy. 

Our use cases for Jira Align are particularly project-based. Whenever we go on a project, we utilize the solution, and at the end of the project, we drop that subscription. If needed, we go for a new subscription again.

Jira Align is an easy-to-use and user-friendly solution.

The solution’s stability could be improved.

I have been using Jira Align for four years.

I rate Jira Align an eight out of ten for stability.

More than 50 users are using Jira Align daily in our organization.

I rate Jira Align more than eight out of ten for scalability.

I rate the solution’s technical support a seven or eight out of ten.

Neutral

We also use Azure DevOps.

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

We implemented the solution through an in-house team, which had a couple of people.

We have seen a return on investment with Jira Align.

Jira Align is an expensive solution.

I am using the latest version of Jira Align. Jira Align is deployed on-cloud in our organization.

Overall, I rate Jira Align a nine out of ten.

We use Jira Align for project management, product planning, and reporting.

The most valuable features of Jira Align are its product roadmap and reporting.

Jira Align's user interface needs improvement because its user experience is really bad. It takes around a week to onboard any team member in Jira Align because it has a lot of nuances. The materials used to go through the Jira Align tool are time-consuming and academic. I have used Jira Align for eight years, but I had to keep doing many things with Jira for at least three months to understand everything.

Jira Align doesn't recommend anything. Jira Align should improve its AI offerings because it currently has zero AI. The solution's release notes, user stories, and templates are far more boring.

I have been using Jira Align for eight years.

Jira Align's technical support is very bad. It takes around three days for the technical support team to even reply to a customer on how to resolve some issues.

Jira Align is an expensive solution.

Jira Align is deployed on-cloud in our organization.

Overall, I rate Jira Align six and a half or seven out of ten.

The solution can be used to track and update testing progress. We can use it for test management, creating stories, and grading test cases and plans.

I have been using the tool to write test cases, prepare test plans, and create bugs. I like the way the UI functions.

The initial setup was a little bit complex. It involved many things.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The product is quite stable.

The product is scalable. More than 100 people are using the solution in our organization.

The admin team deploys and purchases the license. We use it whenever there is an account created in our name. We simply log in with our credentials and use the tool.

The tool is moderately expensive.

I recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

The solution helps me with real-time data visibility. 

The tool helps us to stick with the timeline and budget of our projects. It also helps me to identify dependencies and red flags and intervene wherever possible. I have found the key metrics tab also useful. 

The solution needs to improve its pricing. It also needs to provide an integrated view of how other tasks are to be tracked. It would be also useful to see the integration of Confluence, Teams, and Slack into the product. I want to be able to communicate directly with others while using the product. I am also not sure if the integration of third-party alternate workflow tools like SAP would be possible. 

I have been working with the product for two and a half years now. 

The product is stable and I would rate its stability a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the tool's scalability a nine out of ten. My company has more than 100 users for the product. 

The tool's customer support is responsive. 

Positive

The product's deployment was seamless. The tool's deployment completes within 30 minutes. We have a team of four to five people who are responsible to maintain the product. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. 

I mainly use Jira Align for planning apps in the department.

Jira Align's most valuable feature is the view of strategic control reports for high-level directors.

Jira Align's setup process could be more straightforward, and they could make training and educational documentation more accessible. In the next release, I would like to see an improvement to the navigation system.

I've been using Jira Align for two to three months.

Jira Align is stable.

Jira Align is scalable.

Jira Align's technical support is good but limited - there are people in my department with more experience.

The initial setup was of medium difficulty, and I needed to find support documents to complete it.

I would give Jira Align a rating of nine out of ten.

We are primarily managing larger portfolios. In this case here, I'm currently with a bank and this solution is used for larger portfolios of initiatives that are current within the bank. From there we're determining the course of action as it pertains to the work that is then performed by the individual departments.

Before we had no ability to even manage projects that we ran in Jira. These are software projects, including infrastructure work, and now everything is happening in one tool. The ability to use Jira Align now to bring these projects into a common portfolio is something that we otherwise had to do with spreadsheets prior to this.

There’s definitely the ability to manage larger initiatives that go across multiple projects. Otherwise, Jira in itself does not allow you to go across projects. You really have to manage several projects, however, you have nothing that aligns with them. You have to have Jira Align on top of Jira to have that capability.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

Maybe some of the terms and the connectivity could be improved. Jira Align in Jira, they share common fields in order to be aligned. These could be improved. Sometimes alignments are missing or they just disappear and we have to reestablish them.

I’ve been using the solution for two years now.

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn’t crash or freeze. The performance is good.

So far, the solution has been quite scalable. We haven’t had issues in that regard.

In our organization, Jira Align users are limited to about 25 people. In the case of Jira users, there are about 300, roughly.

There are plans to increase usage. It is, right now, used across most of the organization, although the teams have not adapted all processes, all Agile processes, yet. There will be continuous improvements as we go forward.

We’ve been very pleased with technical support so far. They have been helpful and responsive.

I also use Rally Software.

Similarly, since Jira and Jira Align are more intuitive., we prefer them Particularly, Jira is more widely used than, for example, Rally. Blueprint was a niche market product that really covered different aspects of the work. In this case, how do you manage individual documentation that you want to manage as part of a single project? That would be an enhancement to Jira, for example. Rally simply was just less intuitive.

The initial cost, particularly for Jira Align, appears to be higher. In the end, even Rally did not offer all functionalities unless you were including other products that were needed to perform the same function, therefore, the cost became equivalent.

The initial setup is very simple and straightforward.

I was not directly involved in the deployment and therefore can’t get into how long the process took or what specifics were involved.

The solution, in terms of maintenance, is handled outside. It is a fairly small team of maybe five people.

The setup was done in-house with the assistance of a vendor.

Overall, we're satisfied with the process. We did have some scenarios where work was assigned, where work was aligned with an individual's account, and when that person left, we were not able to access that one. However, that was more on the administrative side and those were unknown facts to us at the time.

We’ve seen an ROI. Since we prior did not really have a good solution and even prior solutions, were much more complex and less intuitive. When we used the product, we definitely saw an improvement. Some of the work continued to be managed in spreadsheets, which are now maintained in a single set of tools. We definitely saw at least 20% to 30% in work experience improvements, time management, and the simple ability to reduce waste time due to generating reports. Externally updating spreadsheets, we saw a lot of improvements in the way how we operate.

I don't have the licensing cost, however, I know Jira Align is much more expensive than Jira. I don't have the numbers as I don't know what the enterprise agreement is.

The operating costs would be there still, as you do need a team that has a general understanding of the application so the operational cost has to be included when considering what the total costs would be.

We are using whatever the latest version of the solution is. I don’t know the exact version number. We managed it as a SaaS. It’s managed by a vendor.

Jira and Jira Align are for larger development organizations and organizations that need to manage the portfolio work in a single tool are definitely a viable option.

I’d rate the solution eight out of ten. If you were to compare the solution with Rally, I’d rather use this and Jira together.

We generally use it for reporting. It's to have transparency, to get to the incremental values. We do have value streams built up on Align and we get the metrics, how the program works, or the dependencies, not just between the teams, between the programs, or between the portfolios.

What you have in Jira are the scalability and the agile approach. It's all about getting to all the stakeholders or the enterprise users so that they can see what is happening from the bottom to the top or from top to bottom and how it's happening. 

When it's all other agile tools, you could just view what each team is doing, and how the work is delivered within the team. However, it is going above and beyond the teams. When you are doing a scaled agile, when it all involves the whole enterprise, you use the Jira Align. It's a combination when you try to do the scaled agile combining the teams, combining the programs, and combining the portfolios, that is when the Jira Align is of most use.

We use Jira Align on top of Safe 4.0 right now. They're not supporting Safe 5.0 yet, however, they are using it as VR; I used it on top of the framework as Safe 4.0.

We brought it for a very big program. Before that, everything was all silos. The teams were independently working and there was a lot of dependency from one team to another team, which was either tracked in Jira in the roadmap, and it was all over the place. Once we bought the two and tried to combine the teams, depending on what their objective is or what they're working towards, combine the teams and make them into our programs and combine the programs and make into our portfolios, what we saw was a huge value-add. It was transparency. You could see the vision, and the transparency is what was the most beneficial thing - that, and dealing with the dependencies.

.For example, if you have so many teams working towards one goal, not everything can be understood, done in silos. You have to group them in a value stream so they can work towards that one value, and even when they're working towards that one value, you would see a lot of dependencies between the teams and between the programs. Managing that and delivering that on time is what when we push it towards a scale agile with the Jira Align as the thing that holds everything together is what we saw most beneficial

Of course, after that, you would get further enterprise agility, business agility, et cetera, when you start using it more and more.

The objectives are good. If you do use a scale agile, the concept of moving objectives and moving your team's work towards the objective is what is going to give you the most value. You plan around the program increments. That's what the program is about. You plan around the program increments, you do the inspect the workshop, you do the retrospective and all those things. However, for example, when a stakeholder doesn't understand the feature, or they don't even care about it, yet they have an objective or a theme, they move towards it. It makes the objectives very clear, and very obvious.

When you try to move work where the stakeholders know what it is and what they're moving towards, at the same time, when you break down the work, the team can understand what they're working toward. A program manager would understand what they have to deliver in a particular timeframe. That kind of split, you could see. There's great visibility there. 

I really appreciate that Jira Align gives the concept or the functionality of what is called a work tree or a roadmap, which brings it all together and gives you a view of what the company or team is moving towards and who is contributing to what. The OKR experience is great.

There are fewer customization options in Jira Align due to how it was designed.

For example, in Jira, you can combine stories and you can create an epic. However, in Jira Align, they combine the stories and call them features you can combine features and call them capabilities. You can combine capabilities and call it epic. It's structured differently from Jira.

You just cannot buy Jira Align and just started using it. You can, however, the most beneficial thing comes when you start using Jira, and then integrate it with Jira Align, and bring in all the work done together as the actual work is done in Jira, and Jira Align is just a representation of that work.

It's the naming convention that everyone is struggling with. Jira is more widely used and has a bigger customer base. They shouldn't change the terminology if people need to use Jira in order to get the most out of Align and then have the two different naming designs. It's very confusing.

The UI needs work. We are part of the pilot team who are testing the new UI. Jira Align is trying to change the UI so that it is just like Jira. We didn't like it as the UI makes the functionality kind of change. If you have never used Jira Align and you are a brand new customer who used Jira, the sales pitch would go better.

There are lots and lots of reports and it's very hard to understand exactly how we can use all of them. It's quite dense. They need more documentation.

I started using the solution in 2020.

They have done a lot of work fixing bugs and making all types of enhancements. They are working to make everything more functional for agile. 

The stability is very good. Our company was very mature and they have 800 programs in it and ten big portfolios. Jira Align does handle everything with no issues. We don't often have big performance problems. However, for example, if you try to load the roadmap for one big portfolio, it does take time. That is understandable as it's loading huge amounts of data. Other than that, it is actually good.

It is very good at scalability. It's not complete scalability, however, Jira getting integrated with Jira Align is great and it scales that way. If Jira Align is open to getting integrated with other team levels, and managing the work tools, then it would be easier. Right now, to use the Jira Align, either you have to use it as a silo, or you should have Jira in the backend. You cannot have other tools. A lot of enterprises would have other Azure tools or Microsoft tools, from which they manage the team's data, and they would be hesitant just to move to Jira Align as they are using some other tools which cannot be integrated. 

Right now, we have more than 5,000 users on the solution. On Jira, we likely have more than 20,000 users. Not everybody needs to be on Jira Align. It is being used extensively, however.

The support was good. They recorded all of the training sessions, for example. They really helped us learn the tool early on and were very supportive. 

In terms of ongoing support, we do have weekly calls where we go over support tickets, issues, bugs, et cetera. We have regular productive TAM meetings. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution. 

I was not part of the deployment. That said, looking at it, it seems to be very user-friendly and would not have been a hard setup. I'd rate it a four out of five in terms of ease of setup.

The deployment took more than two months. It's not full-time and we didn't rush through it. We didn't do it enterprise-wide either. We had a lot to consider and we were being strategic. Likely, if you were aggressive, you could do it in a couple of weeks. For us, bringing in the scale agile concept did take a lot of time. Once we figured that out, there was just connecting and creating and mapping the states and all of that was pretty straightforward. There's pre-work to be done, however, it's worth it to take your time. 

We do have a solution architect from Atlassian that helped us with the setup. It wasn't a hand-in-hand implementation. there were training sessions. 

The person who helped us and ran the training was very supportive and very pleasant to work with. What they taught us via training was about Atlassian, however, the setup was so specific to our company, that without having an extensive background in our organization, they really didn't have the capacity to go beyond training. We'd have questions like "what if we did this, or that?" and they would have to circle back to a program manager to get the answers. That said, they did cover all of the topics. 

I can't speak to the exact pricing. 

We are customers and end-users.

We are using the most recent version of the solution. We're using an enterprise edition cloud.

I'd advise users, if they have Jira, to just go for Jira Align. Just start off with a small number of full licenses. You don't need to have a lot of full licenses just to implement Jira Align. With us, we could actually see what's happening in the organization. The silos disappeared. People can see deliverables and objectives more clearly. It helps bring a lot of motivation.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten, having never used any other enterprise agility tools.