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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 February 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 22.6%, down from 23.3% 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

"The tools for requirement capture we have found very useful."
"Everyone in a team can work on the same platform and share the same information."
"The integration with Git works well."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting of the CPU usage on the dashboard."
"It is relatively easy to use and user-friendly once the setup is complete."
"It's easy to use."
"You can customize the board according to your needs."
"The solution is customizable."
"The solution's most valuable features revolve around the dashboard view, which has a burndown chart indicating progress."
"The two features that have been most valuable have been backlog management and sprint planning and tracking."
"Internally we use Jira for our own implementations and capturing requirements and our customers are using the whole tool for the whole software development life cycle. They're using it for the full life cycle of the product."
"Powerful features including a good reporting capability."
"Jira queries can be used for different types of deployment automation processes."
"We can integrate a lot of tools with the solution."
"It's very flexible. I can define workflows and custom fields and dependencies between issues and projects. And every project can have a custom configuration with my fields, my names for fields, my validations, and my workflows. It's very customizable."
"Perfect for keeping track of large amounts of bugs, tasks queries and releases for fixes."
 

Cons

"IBM Rational ALM should remove the features not used by the customers and keep this product as lightweight as possible."
"The stability of IBM Rational ALM could be improved."
"I would like to see better reporting features. The out-of-box reporting is - I don't want to say limited - but the focus is on the Scrum and Sprint reports. We need more reporting features regarding the history of the work, tracking it more deeply."
"I think nowadays people are getting into Jira and other tools. What is happening is, this solution is becoming more traditional, whereas Jira and other tools are more attractive for the new users to learn and start using because of the graphical interfaces."
"The GUI is a little bit outdated."
"The reporting functionality needs to be improved."
"The features should be more intuitive. If I'm looking for something, its location should be easy to locate."
"The interconnectivity between packages is a major support problem and can be improved."
"We'd like to see Jira have more integration with a development ID."
"The solution's stability could be improved, and it could be made more robust."
"Some of the customizations are definitely a little challenging."
"Sometimes it takes time to load the data."
"The documentation on how to create dashboards and take advantage of other features in the tool are areas where the tool has certain shortcomings."
"The features are not intuitive. It would be good if there were templates."
"There should be a way to integrate the mobile application or in some way, make it more clear because at first instance, I didn't understand how to use it."
"In general, although we use JIRA, we never really learned how to use it properly. The learning curve of the solution is high. It has a lot of power, and yet we don't understand its capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a contract, but I am not aware of the details."
"This product is a little expensive and we had to pay extra to have them set it up for us."
"IBM Rational ALM has both monthly and yearly licensing options."
"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."
"The solution is not cheap."
"We are a regional research and education institute. We're using the free license provided for educational institutes."
"It is subscription-based, and we probably pay yearly. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of price."
"The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you."
"There are other solutions that are free making this solution seem expensive in comparison."
"We have a corporate license, and it is probably based on the number of people."
"For very small companies, if you have less than 10 individuals, it is $10 a year for each of the products. When we were a part of the enterprise and had more than 10 people using it, or before they came up with this solution for small companies, it was $2,500 a year for the license for Jira and Confluence, and I believe something like $600 a year to perpetuate the license. I can't remember if it was $600 or $2,500 annually. It was for up to 25 people at the time, and this was in the early 2000s and mid 2000s."
"I am not sure about the pricing, but I know its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
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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.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.