Name: Jira
Brand: Atlassian
Rating: 4.1 (282 reviews)

it_user147237

Product Development Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 19, 2014

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I like the agile board functionality, dashboards & JQL. I would like to see JQL extended to return other types of info.

Pros and Cons

"I recommend JIRA Agile to anyone looking for a mature, easy to use and customizable issue tracking system, especially in the context of large, geographically distributed teams."

"I would like to see JQL extended to return other types of information than just sets of issues."

What is most valuable?

Coming from projects that rely on Agile / SCRUM, one of the essential features in JIRA is the support for these methodologies, represented by the Agile Board functionality. This is the place where our team interacts with JIRA as part of the daily routine by updating tasks, estimations and adding relevant comments. This is also where Sprint planning takes place and where support for Sprint retrospective and analysis is offered in the form of reports like the burndown chart or the velocity report.

How has it helped my organization?

With the introduction of Agile, the need of having a common, synchronized view on the project tasks assignment, their completion status and the effort spent became critical for a geographically distributed and self-organizing team. Instead of spending time on e-mail exchanges or longer meetings, JIRA provided instant access and a unified view to all the required information, enabling the team to properly apply the Agile / SCRUM methodology and become more efficient in the way they communicate. Being instantly notified when an issue is changed by someone working half way across the globe and being able of giving immediate feedback is a tremendous capability.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see JQL extended to return other types of information than just sets of issues. To give a simple example: a COUNT-like operator to determine the number of issues that match a given criteria. Today this is possible through JIRA's REST API or by writing custom plugins, but it would be nice to have it out of the box directly via JQL.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using JIRA for more than two and half years in several different software development projects.

Buyer's Guide

Jira

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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

None so far.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

None so far.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

None so far.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service: I actually found all the information I needed on the Atlassian documentation pages and forums and never ran into the need to call the Atlassian customer service.Technical Support: Excellent so far, considering the fact that the existing documentation gives almost all the required answers without the need to call or e-mail support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

In a previous project we have used Microsoft's .NET framework and the suite of support technologies like Team Foundation Server (TFS). TFS contains an issue tracking system fully integrated with Visual Studio and the only extra thing needed was the equivalent of an Agile board. This we found in the form of Telerik's TFS Work Item Manager and Project Dashboard, which offered similar functionality to JIRA's Agile Board.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup required a bit of thinking on how to organize and when to use the different types of JIRA issues, what fields are relevant in the context of our team processes and what kind of dashboard information is required, not only for the team but also for the stakeholders. This is not so much JIRA related as it is process-related. Once all of this is agreed upon, JIRA makes things easy by selecting for example Agile SCRUM as methodology, configuring the appropriate issue screens and workflows, defining the relevant filters and adding widgets to the dashboards.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I believe this goes together with my earlier comments. The day to day cost of using JIRA is minimal, since each team member shares the responsibility of keeping issues up to date so that the overall status is in sync with the real project status. There are also the occasional changes to JIRA board, issue or dashboards configuration driven by the evolution of team processes, which is a normal consequence of being an Agile team.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend JIRA Agile to anyone looking for a mature, easy to use and customizable issue tracking system, especially in the context of large, geographically distributed teams. I also believe it is important not to spend excessive time trying to configure it to cover every process and situation from the very beginning, but to focus on the essentials first and then adapt as the project evolves.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user6912

Owner with 51-200 employees

Mar 6, 2014

Pros: Flexible, Open-ended, Useful default values and fields. Cons: Deep and complex, it takes a while to familiarize

Want Project Management Tool?

I tried OpenProject.org and got frustrated with its performance (because it's Ruby-based ?) and skimpy features. That was what pushed me to go ahead and spend the princely sum of $30 (one time) for JIRA, and two modules (Agile, and Stash, which is a Git web UI), and what deal I've got myself.

JIRA is a platform. And because it is a platform, it is open-ended at what we can use it for. And it's written in Java, deployed in a Tomcat instance, and it gives *me* the choice of which database to use. Kudos for the development team for not strapping customers with MySQL.

Installation

As painless as Wordpress, which is very good. Have a database created (I use PostgreSQL) with its user and password to fill into the web-based installation wizard, and also your SMTP out server settings.

Setup

It takes a bit of reading to get started but given the number of facilities and features available, that's to be expected. Some kind of best-practice steps would be helpful. The most challenging aspect of installation is to get JIRA and Stash to work together. I want both JIRA for Kanban boards, and Issues-tracking, and Stash as a front end to my own Git repository. After bouncing back and forth establishing 2Legged OAuth-based permission, I finally can see my code commits from JIRA, as well as access the Issue from Stash. That is really neat!

Work Tracking

I used JIRA previously in one of the project with my client. We got into the habit of keeping track how many hours I've worked on a particular task by using JIRA, and we got synchronized enough to base our billings on it. Having two measurements is really useful at the end of the project to see the Estimated vs Actual hour. It helped me to estimate more accurately.

Overall, a mature tool that is supported by robust and features that make sense, once we've overcome the complexity and use it for some time.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user335340Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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Dec 17, 2015

JIRA has been developed primarily as an issue and project tracker out of the box, you can use JIRA for requirements management in conjunction with Confluence. Issue Level Requirements

You're able to create a JIRA issue type specifically for requirements with it's own workflow, custom fields and reporting. Subtasks offer a quick way to add and manage your requirements, and you can link related requirements together or with feature requests. I hope this helps.

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it_user6381

Manager of Infrastructure at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

May 5, 2013

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JIRA is good once you've gotten the project started.

Pros and Cons

"Excellent documentation and support."

"Generally, customization, granted that it is done only at system productions state, is hard and time consuming."

Valuable Features:

Maintained by a big company. Simple installation process. Extremely customizable. Front-to end exposure (repository, issue tracking, feature management, etc.). Enormous user base with lots of exposure. Add-on plugins. Excellent documentation and support. We can take advantage of the 10 user certificates of confluence and green hopper. Will be good to use when the project is going to start.

Room for Improvement:

Generally, customization, granted that it is done only at system productions state, is hard and time consuming. Most of functionality that is not required for use of system, cannot be deactivated; you need to dig through all superfluous stuff, in many cases. Even though JIRA documentation is immense and solid, filled with tutorials, you really need docs, to use JIRA, the system is so complex that you need to read docs almost for every customization task and even then, some views are hard to understand.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user116970Works

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Jul 23, 2014

Sorry, Meant bulk change on the tools menu

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it_user795

Senior Manager of QA at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Sep 16, 2012

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JIRA is a versatile tool with good support and is cost effective.

Pros and Cons

"The pricing is also excellent and they offer flexible subscription plans."

"The workflow and layout can be confusing and takes a while to get used to."

Valuable Features:

Large user base. Great for tracking defects but that's not really all it can do. It is used for tracking "issues" in general. Issues can include Defects, Change Requests, Requirements, User Stories (Agile), Sprint Planning (Agile), Progress Tracking, etc. The pricing is also excellent and they offer flexible subscription plans. Great technical support being a commercial product. Quite stable as hardly seen any downtime in the few years I've used it in different companies.

Room for Improvement:

The workflow and layout can be confusing and takes a while to get used to.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user1227

Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Jul 20, 2012

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Project management and bug tracking tool suitable for small to medium organizations. Supports a large number of 3rd party plugins

Pros and Cons

"Jira is one of the best bug tracking, issue tracking and project management tools available in the market."

"Jira is not a highly customizable platform, all you can do is use various plugins and widget to fulfill your needs and if you need more than that, then you might have to look for other project management tools."

Valuable Features:

Jira is one of best applications used for bug tracking, issue tracking and project management work. It has very good API integration features and supports a large number of plugins like for supporting Crucible, SVN, CVS, Bamboo build integration etc. It can be very easily integrated with other tools provided by the Atlassian. It has a great feature for showing up updates on comments through email notifications. It also supports configuring basic visibility levels for different sections.

Room for Improvement:

Jira is not a highly customizable platform, all you can do is use various plugins and widget to fulfill your needs and if you need more than that, then you might have to look for other project management tools. It is also known to occasionally run out of memory. Customizing the Jira settings and configurations is a bit difficult and complex for first time users. Jira is primarily suitable for small to medium organizations only.

Other Advice:

Jira is one of the best bug tracking, issue tracking and project management tools available in the market. It can be easily integrated with various 3rd party plugins related to project management, source code control systems, code review systems etc. Jira user interface is not very good, but is pretty decent. It is primarily suitable for small and medium organizations

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user474846Customer Relations Advisor at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

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Jul 6, 2016

JIRA is great, but it can be overwhelming for new hires. It's also overkill for smaller operations. We used it for 2+ years before finally understanding we weren't using it to it's full potential... But it is great.

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it_user1158

Developer at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Jul 15, 2012

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Excellent Project Management platform for bug/issue tracking with support for SVN, CVS, etc. integration.

Pros and Cons

"Having used JIRA for the last 2 years, I can definitely say that having this tool with you is a big plus when it comes to project management."

"The inbuilt search functionality is quite buggy and lacks even the basic features."

Valuable Features:

- A very good project management platform which can be used for issue tracking, as well as bug tracking. - Can be very easily run on in house servers as a hosted solution. - Can be very easily integrated with various source control platforms like CVS, Git, Mercurial, Subversion etc. - Due to its plugin architecture, it can be very easily integrated with various software IDE's, like Eclipse. - Has support for integrating with various cloud based tools provided by Atlassian.

Room for Improvement:

- The inbuilt search functionality is quite buggy and lacks even the basic features. - You'll end up struggling when searching for a particular JIRA item, if you don't have the JIRA number. - There's no regexp support, and you can't do arbitrary AND/OR/NOT queries. The search feature needs a revamp. - The product lacks stability, as it occasionally runs out of memory. - The user interface is far from perfect.

Other Advice:

Having used JIRA for the last 2 years, I can definitely say that having this tool with you is a big plus when it comes to project management. Plugin architecture and support for the popular version controls systems like SVN, CVS, etc., which makes it even better. Although, there is still room for improvement in areas like user interface and the search functionality which doesn't support arbitrary AND/NOT/OR queries.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user1023

Director of IT at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Jun 28, 2012

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Features great, extensibility not bad, the price good. If you are looking for an issue/bug tracking tool, and want a little more than the open-source alternatives, Jira is a great choice.

Pros and Cons

"Jira has been designed with a focus on task achievement, is instantly usable, and is flexible to work with."

"At first, the documentation is typically light on needed information, is buggy, or is a little old."

Valuable Features:

- Jira is used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management. - Jira has a powerful API, which means you can easily import or mash up your data with another system if need be – you haven’t locked yourself in! - Jira has been designed with a focus on task achievement, is instantly usable, and is flexible to work with. -you can create individual issue level security schemes, and specify the visibility of comments and work logs.

Room for Improvement:

-At first, the documentation is typically light on needed information, is buggy, or is a little old. In general I found that I needed to do a bit of searching between the Jira documentation, issue tracking system, and the forums in order to get the information I needed, and it still didn't answer all of my questions. For the rest, I took a look at existing plug-ins to see how they had solved the problems. -I have found that Jira's customization can be very confusing in terms of configs and work flows, issue types, custom fields, etc. One should be confident and willing to do a lot of homework when taking on the implementation of anything other than the out-of-the-box functionality.

Other Advice:

Jira is a bug and issue tracker primarily intended for software development. We use Jira internally to track all engagements within our team; as well as track bugs and issues for the web apps we develop. Jira is a very customizable product. It has a built in field builder that essentially lets you choose what fields you want to capture for your project. You can configure Jira’s custom fields at a system-wide, project specific and/or issue type level. Jira’s reporting component (or ‘filters’) make it easy to extract the information you want out of the system in several formats. Finally, Jira’s workflow features make it easy to define screens, based on business processes you might have.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.