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IBM Rational ClearQuest vs Jira comparison

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 Rational ClearQuest
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Defect Tracking (1st), Software Configuration Management (8th)
Jira
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Rational ClearQuest is designed for Defect Tracking and holds a mindshare of 50.0%, up 25.0% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 21.9% mindshare, down 23.9% since last year.
Defect Tracking
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

it_user541326 - PeerSpot reviewer
Tracks change requests, problems, and physical asset management. I would like to see data type for floating point numbers.
Customer Service: Customer service has been adequate. Most of the times we've had any issues IBM has been able to provide a solution. We've dealt mostly with customer service representatives in Brazil. Technical Support: Technical support from IBM is pretty good since you can create a PMR with them and they’re very responsible.
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 combination of a highly flexible state machine together with a platform independent API enables possibilities to automate many steps that in many systems are manual."
"It can be adapted to any process flow and easily be integrated with other in-house tools using the ClearQuest API."
"Being able to automatize the deployment of the solution has been great."
"I've never had a bug or a bug message that I needed to open a ticket for."
"Reports, analytics, and a ton of widgets, they are great and intuitive. Perfect for an agile team."
"The ability to change and rewrite tasks is valuable. You can add a lot of columns, change the owners and the change the components."
"The traceability mapping feature is something that became very useful, especially during releases and bug fixes."
"We can query the tickets and create dashboards based on these queries."
"Jira is very user friendly, easy to install, and easy to access."
"The integration of other open source tools with Jira is very useful. It allows us to create documents and transcriptions, making it versatile beyond software development."
 

Cons

"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"Jira can improve by making methodologies better, such as scrum and agile. Additionally, improvements in Kanban boards are needed."
"They can maybe dumb down the directions for building the automation a little bit because to be able to build out the automation, I had to play around with it and learn what all the fields meant and what they were referencing. I don't have an IT background originally. My background is in biology, and I got into project management by chance. I am good at it, but I haven't really worked with coding languages. In terms of writing automation, it is easier for devs because they intuitively know what they're being asked, but as a PM who originally didn't have IT experience, it was a little bit daunting at first. It could also have an extra hierarchy to be able to allow tasks under stories. It could be the way it is set up at our organization, but currently, under stories, you can have sub-tasks, but you can't create a task. Being able to customize your hierarchy a little bit more would be beneficial because sometimes, the devs would say, "Well, here's a story, and now we need sub-tasks," but as we were building out the sub-tasks, sometimes we had to go a step lower to dig in a little bit more, and we couldn't do that."
"A lot of the user interface could be updated."
"I am unable to query based on the subtask and link by issue."
"I would like to see test execution modules."
"I'm mostly focusing on the requirements traceability with my thesis, the integration could improve for other tools. The companies are not only using Jira. For example, for the test cases or for the documents templates, we are using Polarion and we have been having some integration issues."
"I have noticed a problem with Jira in the Philippines. In the Philippines, there are only a few companies that offer local support, which is alarming."
"Grid: It is really strange that there is no possibility to edit an item in the grid. You need to go inside, and even then, not all items are editable, so you need to switch to edit mode. That's too many clicks and switches."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
"The basic price of Jira is reasonable, but for each plugin, we have to keep paying more. When you add it all up, it can be expensive. The main problem we face is we are forced to purchases plugin licenses for users who are not going to use them. For example, we have Jira licenses for approximately 450 people but if we only want a purchase a plugin for few people it is mandatory to buy the license for the 450 people who have Jira licensees. This is a problem because sometimes we need plugins for the product manager or for people in charge of the report, not everyone. For us, it can be very expensive in the end, they should alter this policy to allow plugins for only a set number of licenses."
"We make use of the solution free of charge."
"The pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."
"The price of Jira could be lower."
"The price of the solution could be lower."
"Jira and its solution off the shelf are cheap. It is cheap for startups."
"Worth the extra cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
29%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Educational Organization
50%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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 ClearQuest
Jira Software
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Atos SE, STM, Regence BlueCross BlueShield
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.