Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs Jira comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 23, 2024

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 Engineering Lifecycle M...
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
12th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Jira
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) is 2.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jira is 23.7%, up from 23.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

Harold Pogue - PeerSpot reviewer
A complex deployment that is not stable, but is cloud-based
The team of 15 to 20 software engineers uses IBM Rational ALM and Jira for testing. They coupled different online packages together because the Duration Enterprise was impossible to use IBM Rational ALM did not help the organization and we ended up moving to another solution. The most valuable…
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

"It helped us contain critical things, like source code and several documents, which is very important to us."
"It is relatively easy to use and user-friendly once the setup is complete."
"The transition to a SaaS-based solution is a distinct advantage."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting of the CPU usage on the dashboard."
"You can customize the board according to your needs."
"It's easy to use."
"I would rate the stability of this product a nine out of ten."
"The word emulation and importing is good."
"When we run the Jenkins pipeline, the build is already automatically connected to Jira. We've been able to integrate the ecosystem we created using this automation tool."
"In terms of product management, Jira increases productivity and visibility into the product. Those are the top benefits this tool provides to the team. Also, it's accessible to the executives and whoever wants to sign on to Jira to see what's going on."
"Integrates with other components."
"Overall, the solution is very nice and has a variety of great features."
"It's a very complete product overall."
"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."
"Jira is easy to use and there are a lot of tools that are integrated with it."
"I like that Jira allows you to customize the flow for an agile process and adapt it to your own flow."
 

Cons

"The stability of IBM Rational ALM could be improved."
"The product must be more user-friendly."
"The GUI is a little bit outdated."
"There is not enough beginner support material in the form of FAQs or simple training to help you get started."
"The features should be more intuitive. If I'm looking for something, its location should be easy to locate."
"In the next release, we expect a traceability metrics configuration where we can configure the user stories. We also expect them to improve or simplify the query process."
"Some improvements to the user interface (UI) would be helpful, such as exposing more services to make it easier to customize to the needs of each customer."
"The stability of this solution can be improved."
"It would be ideal if Jira had future functionalities to integrate more easily with various aspects of code reviews."
"While it's very powerful, it's very complex sometimes."
"The way to configure it can definitely be improved. It is very difficult and complex to configure. Its configuration should be simplified."
"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."
"To improve Jira, providing proper documentation, examples, or snippets for scripting workflows would be beneficial."
"There needs to be a way to export a user story."
"The features are not intuitive. It would be good if there were templates."
"Atlassian has multiple tools and it becomes difficult for a customer to process everything differently. Atlassian should combine them and form a single solution for DevOps by including the Jira Confluence, Bitbucket, Bamboo, and others. This would be much easier for customers by purchasing a package, rather than purchasing bits and pieces. With Azure DevOps and other companies, it becomes easier to go with one company having multiple areas that they can cater to, but in Atlassian, the problem is that you have to select different solutions to have a full package. For example, to have document management customers have to purchase Confluence and for Git repository management they have to purchase Bitbucket, et cetera. There is always another add-on that you need to attach to have a complete solution in Jira."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution could be reduced. Many of our customers are not using all the features and this could be why our clients feel the price is too high."
"We have a contract, but I am not aware of the details."
"IBM Rational ALM has both monthly and yearly licensing options."
"This product is a little expensive and we had to pay extra to have them set it up for us."
"The solution is not cheap."
"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."
"When you get larger, the pricing becomes very, very steep."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. The product offers flexibility in pricing since it depends on the memory bits you have used."
"The price of Jira is reasonable."
"It is an affordable tool."
"The pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive. We pay annually for the solution."
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites solutions are best for your needs.
831,791 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
23%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
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 needs improvement with IBM Rational ALM?
The user interface requires significant improvement as it is overly complex. For business users with no experience in IT, it can be particularly challenging to understand the UI and create test cas...
What is your primary use case for IBM Rational ALM?
We use IBM Rational ALM as part of our overall application suite for our manufacturing company. It is used by our engineering team to capture requirements, perform testing, and manage defects. Spec...
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.
 

Also Known As

IBM Engineering Rhapsody, Rational ALM, MKS
Jira Software
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tennis Australia, WeCloud AB, Port Otago Limited, Logicalis US, Valmer, The Chevrolet Volt, Ashurst
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) vs. Jira and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,791 professionals have used our research since 2012.