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IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs Jira comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Engineering Workflow Ma...
Average Rating
6.6
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (10th)
Jira
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
267
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Engineering Workflow Management is designed for Enterprise Agile Planning Tools and holds a mindshare of 0.9%, up 0.9% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 23.5% mindshare, down 23.9% since last year.
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

Suvajit Chakraborty - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good traceability elements but UI needs improvement
There is room for improvement in the UI. The UI has to improve a lot compared to the competitive tools, like Atlassian Jira, for example. It's very easy to use. It is easy to manage and easy to use. Anybody can learn it right quickly and start with it. But IBM ELM is something where somebody has to have good knowledge, training, and understanding and then only start using it. But there's a big known knowledge curve for IBM ELM. But once that is there, it's normally; organizations do have their own internal team to basically manage it IBM ELM portfolio, the tool chain. So if they have internal teams who are doing it for quite some time, not something new, then it is definitely better. But if there's if somebody is starting new, definitely there is a knowledge curve time it can take at least a year or maybe a couple of years before they can start realizing the benefits.
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

"We can track the status of test cases (passed or saved) in a single view. Based on releases and other attributes, we generate various reports and extract metrics from the data."
"All of the features work together to provide a powerful holistic solution - from the dashboard all the way through to security."
"Good for managing stories, sprints, hydration and releases."
"Traceability reporting is inbuilt and includes all your requirements."
"Work distribution among team members and accountability for completion with a clearer picture."
"It was an all-in-one solution for source code, integrated source control, defect tracking, and project planning."
"Agile templates give us a standard methodology for every Agile project. Also, the ability to create our own object types and linkages to features/epics allows us to enhance the verification of feature readiness."
"The most valuable features of the solution are highly customizable reports and visibility for all the higher management."
"Offers a common language set so we can bring people into projects and get them up and running almost immediately."
"With the help of Jira, tasks are less likely to remain stagnant for a long time. We always see them somewhere on the board."
"Integration is good."
"We can create multiple boards for the same product backlogs."
"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."
"Overall, the solution is very nice and has a variety of great features."
"The most valuable feature of Jira is that it's a well-known tool that many people are familiar with."
"We have found the structure, functionality, and how Jira handles the tickets most valuable."
 

Cons

"We have encountered issues with stability. We have seen where the entire system kind of goes for a toss when certain people use certain types of queries, which are very costly. Then the system kind of slows down a bit, and we have to monitor it."
"The solution is very heavily vendor dependent."
"Teams need clearer pictures of resource availability in charts and dashboards along with plans."
"Lacks ability to customize and reporting can be slow."
"Some administrative tasks are difficult to perform. These could be simplified."
"It's becoming less relevant. For example, Maven has evolved, and in its later versions, there are plugins for integrating with source control systems, such as Git-based systems. Support for these plugins is diminishing."
"If you have multiple projects on one server, the tool becomes very slow, and some reports take longer to load."
"The tool should improve its pricing."
"They are not supporting in-house servers anymore and I think I've got until January to port this to something else."
"JIRA still has their own backtracking tools. It should have a better visibility into HPE UFT. Most people use functional testing tools, like QTP. They need to improve their integration to make it seamless."
"I would like to see more integration available with more tools."
"The part when it comes to the testing area is a bit hard to handle. The screen is too small, you can't really read what you're typing in, and it's only for the testing area. It looks like they have pressed in more than the UI system could handle to display it properly."
"Sometimes the solution doesn't communicate well with other platforms. It's quite difficult to integrate things and make the data flow from A to B, to Jira, and then back to other areas."
"The CACD solutions on JIRA has some plugins, but they are not easily understandable or workable."
"Jira lacks easy capacity calculation compared to TFS, making it harder to know how much work to allocate to each specialist."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing: The solution cost is high and should be brought down to increase competition."
"It's an expensive investment to make, so the decision should be driven on individual requirements."
"It is not a free tool. We use a token-based licensing model, which is specific to IBM. The cost per token is around $115-$120."
"I've heard IBM Engineering Workflow Management is more expensive than other tools."
"It's not very cheap. It's also not very costly. I'd rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing."
"We have a corporate license, and it is probably based on the number of people."
"It depends on the type of license. In terms of subscription, it is cheap, and it works pretty well."
"As a company, we get a subsidized price, and it's lower than what's quoted on their website."
"If you are using just Jira, it is cheap, but if you start to use it and you feel you need some more services or more functions, then you have to buy add-ons, which can make it expensive."
"The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you."
"We are using the enterprise license which is nice because it ensures that we always have the latest versions of Jira software."
"There are no additional costs to the standard licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
21%
Government
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
Educational Organization
50%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Engineering Workflow Management?
We can track the status of test cases (passed or saved) in a single view. Based on releases and other attributes, we generate various reports and extract metrics from the data.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Engineering Workflow Management?
I've heard IBM Engineering Workflow Management is more expensive than other tools. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with IBM Engineering Workflow Management?
It's becoming less relevant for us, as we move to cloud-based and more contemporary cloud-based SCM systems such as GitHub. As new JDKs have been released over the years, tooling support in new rel...
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?
The product is quite expensive. It costs approximately 1.2 million rand per year. It's a fixed price, depending on the modules that you get. You have specific tools, that's what you pay for. I rate...
 

Also Known As

IBM Rational Team Concert (IBM ALM), IBM RTC
Jira Software
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Telstra Corporation, Visteon, Atos SE, Panasonic Automotive Systems, IBM Global Technology Services, CareCore National, JTEKT Corp., ItaÒ BBA, Avea, CACEIS, Danske Bank Group, APIS IT
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs. Jira and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.