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Jira Align pros and cons

Vendor: Atlassian

4.0 out of 5

41 reviews
92% willing to recommend

622 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Jira Align enhances cross-team communication and project management by offering dashboards, reporting, defect tracking, and automation. It supports third-party plugins, customizable entries, and quick task updates using codes. The roadmap and program board provide strategic control. However, complex workflows, lack of integration with external schedules, synchronization issues, challenging setup, and increased licensing costs present drawbacks, impacting productivity and budget planning for tech buyers.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Jira Align helps manage communication and tasks across teams without overlap.

It offers valuable features like customizable entries, velocity and reporting visibility, and the ability to track dependencies.

Effective cross-team collaboration is enabled through seamless integration, story creation, and dependency tracking.

Jira Align provides flexibility and valuable roadmap and reporting features, assisting in project planning and execution.

The initial setup is straightforward, making it a valuable tool for business strategies, collaboration, and reporting.

CONS

Jira Align's workflows can be complex and hard to navigate, particularly with double and multiple menus challenging for new users.

There is no integration between Jira records and the overarching schedule, maintained separately in Microsoft Project.

Jira Align's synchronization with Jira is slow, and often data does not map well, limiting customization options.

Jira Align requires improvements in its licensing model, as recent changes have increased costs without clear communication.

Price packages for Jira Align vary, so careful research is necessary to determine if they suit user needs.

Jira Align Pros review quotes

AS

Principal System Analyst at Fidelity investments

Jun 7, 2022

The OKR experience is great.

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Global SAP Program Manager (Testing)/Release assurance manager at Schlumberger

Mar 30, 2023

Jira Align is an intuitive tool that features a roadmap view...The initial setup was straightforward...Jira Align is definitely worth the money.

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Tonia Spight-Sokoya

Program Support for Third Party External SPM Lead Business Execution Consultant/PMP PM at Wells Fargo

Mar 22, 2024

It's easy to set up.

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VP of Infrastructure at Credit One Bank

Jun 27, 2022

The initial setup is very straightforward.

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Agile Consultant at benzne

Mar 12, 2024

Jira is one of the most widely used tools in the market, and it has a vast amount of data already stored in it. Jira Align is crucial in orchestrating this data and providing valuable views and insights. However, it's essential for tools like Jira Align to offer configurable features. While complete customization might not always be feasible for enterprise-level tools, configurable features allow organizations to drive transformation accordingly.

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Business and Functional Specialist at Danske IT and Support Services India Pvt Ltd

Jul 17, 2023

Jira Align has been quite a helpful tool for us because, without it, we would be juggling with all our story points or our backlog items, which would be difficult to manage.

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SR

Srinivasan Rengarajan

Chief Technology Officer at Ongil Private Limited

Nov 16, 2021

Velocity and reporting provide good visibility, burndown charts, and particularly velocity measurement.

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reviewer1512726

Project Manager at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Jun 23, 2021

The most valuable features are the ability to customize the entries and to update them quickly. Since the new version they released, we started utilizing the customization features to create specific codes and symbols for our teams that were not available before. For example, in team A each person had their own symbols and we had our own demarcation. When our project or task was completed, we had a code that we could enter online that let the main project managers know that it was time to remove it.

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CX

Director, Operation at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees

Feb 5, 2024

I joined the company because they had a large project, and as a startup company, they needed to scale up efficiently. My task was to review the current baseline, assess the team's capabilities, and propose solutions to increase production capacity. Upon observing the process in Jira Align, I realized we didn't need to invest heavily in expanding capacity.

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Customer Manager at DXC

Apr 30, 2022

The reporting structure is great.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 41)

Jira Align Cons review quotes

AS

Principal System Analyst at Fidelity investments

Jun 7, 2022

There are fewer customization options in Jira Align due to how it was designed.

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Global SAP Program Manager (Testing)/Release assurance manager at Schlumberger

Mar 30, 2023

Jira Align fails to provide its users with a complete package in terms of portfolio management.

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Tonia Spight-Sokoya

Program Support for Third Party External SPM Lead Business Execution Consultant/PMP PM at Wells Fargo

Mar 22, 2024

Other companies that are competitors of Jira and Confluence, they are able to create their active directories for the vendors that don't come in internally.

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Free Report: Jira Align Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Jira Align. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.

824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

VP of Infrastructure at Credit One Bank

Jun 27, 2022

Maybe some of the terms and the connectivity could be improved.

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Agile Consultant at benzne

Mar 12, 2024

I've encountered limitations in using Jira Align for certain aspects, particularly in implementing OKRs. Jira Align's highest hierarchy is Epic, which may not always align perfectly for specific initiatives. Additionally, while Jira Align offers functionality for tracking OKRs and generating dashboards, I've found that it lacks in some areas. As a result, we've explored alternative solutions that better meet our needs in these areas. Its Kanban feature is also limited.

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Business and Functional Specialist at Danske IT and Support Services India Pvt Ltd

Jul 17, 2023

Someone who is new to Jira or doesn't have many years of working experience in Jira Align gets easily lost because everything looks the same in the product.

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SR

Srinivasan Rengarajan

Chief Technology Officer at Ongil Private Limited

Nov 16, 2021

Lacks sufficient reporting capabilities.

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reviewer1512726

Project Manager at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Jun 23, 2021

One of the biggest issues I found in the new version was once we clicked on one of the tasks that were specifically for our group and went to look at the other portfolios in other areas we had to browse all the way back to the beginning. If you click the back button, it would not work, it stayed the same place. Additionally, if you click on page B, but then you wanted to go back to page A it would not go back to page A. You would have to browse back to the portfolio and then find your group again and open it. This was the only issue that I had with it and I am not sure if it is a Jira issue or it was because of the way the site was laid out.

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CX

Director, Operation at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees

Feb 5, 2024

One feature that needs improvement is the tool's ability to change schedules automatically. Users can't simply drag and drop tasks to reschedule them without notifying the entire team. This lack of functionality can hinder project management control, as changes should be communicated transparently to all team members.

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Customer Manager at DXC

Apr 30, 2022

It would be helpful if they had something for capacity planning that was simpler to understand.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 40)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

Value Stream Management Software

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Jira Align

GitLab vs Jira Align

ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management vs Jira Align

Rally Software vs Jira Align

Polarion ALM vs Jira Align

JIRA Portfolio vs Jira Align

Digital.ai Agility vs Jira Align

Planview AgilePlace vs Jira Align

IBM Engineering Workflow Management vs Jira Align

Targetprocess vs Jira Align

Jile vs Jira Align

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