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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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
12
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 (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Requirements Management category, the mindshare of IBM DOORS Next is 8.4%, up from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jira is 15.8%, down from 16.7% 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

"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 traceability matrix helps to view things better. It comes with different linking rules."
"One of the most valuable features is how you can tailor the modules."
"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."
"It's web-based, so you don't have anything to install."
"The most valuable features are the baselines and links."
"The "Link by Attribute" feature is useful for making links without needing to use the web interface manually."
"As far as maintaining our requirements so that we can have copies of them, it's good. I can print it out if necessary."
"The most valuable features are the versioning of requirements and the possibility to reuse them."
"I think one of the most powerful features in Jira is the customization of fields and workflow."
"I've never had a bug or a bug message that I needed to open a ticket for."
"Jira improved our team collaboration by providing visual visibility and transparency. Everyone could see what tasks were being worked on and the progress made. The development team updated task statuses, making tracking progress and planning sprints easy. If there were any impediments or challenges, we addressed them. This process helped us track our progress."
"The solution works well and does what it needs to do."
"I have found the tracking, project and task management most valuable in this solution."
"Jira is great for story management."
"It has an easy UI that can easily plug-in to every level."
"The most valuable feature is managing software development."
 

Cons

"Be very careful how you load your DNG server. There are limits to the number of artifacts a server can handle."
"IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation is not a very user-friendly product."
"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."
"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."
"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 not working on it every day it is not very intuitive."
"It offers a bad user experience and the usability is poor."
"Could offer an improved user experience."
"Test case management could be more user-friendly. When we add or update test cases, there should be a better way to organize them within the dashboard."
"The challenge which I frequently see from Jira is the label. When you search for a label sometimes, it suddenly disappears. If there's a mismatch due to all-caps or lower case, you won't be able to find it. It won't even come up as a recommendation or suggestion. That's something that can be really frustrating, as people create labels in their own specific ways and then no one else can find anything."
"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."
"The following definitely need improvement: UI, speed, and mobile app functionality."
"The release of a MailServer feature within Jira would be beneficial."
"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."
"The Jira dashboards could be more useful. The dashboards have good widgets but the comparison of data over time or extraction of trends from the data is not easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of maintenance is €20,000 to €30,000 ($22,000 to $33,000 USD) and there are no additional fees."
"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."
"JIRA's pricing is very economical. I would say that JIRA is a great deal more economical than Microsoft."
"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 pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."
"We have an enterprise license that includes cloud service and support."
"I don't have the number, but I sure wish Jira was less expensive. Its price point should be a little lower, and it should be more flexible for users who are just ticket viewers."
"I think the starter pack of three users, up to five users, is free. So you can try it out."
"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."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten. It's paid yearly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
22%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
53%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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?
I cannot discuss the product's price since it is meant to be confidential and kept between our company and IBM. If the product price were not reasonable enough, our company would not use IBM Ration...
What needs improvement with IBM Rational DOORS Next Generation?
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 ...
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: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.