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reviewer1486575 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Business Analyst at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
I think it is quite a valuable tool and platform to streamline tasks, make project plans, and manage the release events.
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are that it is good for tracking the issues and it provides for the usage of Confluence."
  • "It is a bit harder for management or the business partners. I used to search the Atlassian Community online for some troubleshooting issues and I think there were some issues that seemed to not be a big problem for other similar applications, like Microsoft Teams, that were not considered by Jira."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for Jira is for requests for tracking the software development.

We use Jira for the process, especially for password tracking. We're the issue management team for development. We are quite new, so I was very interested in ITSM documentation provided by Jira. But, I needed time to readjust that to our organization as per the line of business.

Overall I think it's helpful, but I need some time to absorb all the knowledge.

How has it helped my organization?

People have different opinions about whether it has improved our organization. I think it is quite a valuable tool and platform to streamline tasks, make project plans, and manage the release events.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are that it is good for tracking the issues and it provides for the usage of Confluence. The documentation is another supporting part for development. I didn't go that deep, so that's what I see as the end user.

In general, it's very convenient for people that work in the software development business.

What needs improvement?

In terms of what could be improved, it is a bit harder for management or the business partners. I used to search the Atlassian Community online for some troubleshooting issues and I think there were some issues that seemed to not be a big problem for other similar applications, like Microsoft Teams, that were not considered by Jira.

So I hope those will be considered soon. I think for some, the help documentation has been hard to track, so that I had a bit of difficulty finding the solutions. I'm the end user. I'm not the problem solver.

Buyer's Guide
Jira
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Jira. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
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For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Jira for less than a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It does have some bugs or glitches sometimes. Like with Confluence, it always has some glitches, like the last edits I made minutes ago. It happens sometimes.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I don't know about the scalability. I just use the very basic one. 

Only our IT people are using it. It's easier for IT people to understand it than anyone else.

How are customer service and support?

We have our technical support from our vendor. They are very supportive.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No, we didn't use another solution previously. We used to manage those processes manually, like the spreadsheet. That's why we would like to switch to the Atlassian platform for some automations and for a mature platform to help us.

What about the implementation team?

We had our vendor help to set up originally. Later, we made some customizations by other means. But because this is still at a very early age for us, it's a bit random on previous customizations. There were some blockages for people to understand from different perspectives. But I think so far the business people may not understand those procedures because it was originally designed for the coders and for the software development business.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are using the Community license for Jira since we are a not-for-profit organization.

What other advice do I have?

I think the technical support and the customization of the line of business are the most important points for me as a BA. I don't think the license for a business is low. 

We think - so far so good. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Jira an eight out of 10.

Nothing is perfect.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user1363851 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Security and Resourcing at Vancity
Real User
Enables us to do capacity planning but reporting and JQL create issues
Pros and Cons
  • "We use it for capacity planning. We need to gauge and assess whatever is coming to our pipeline and then everything comes to the pipeline, appears as a pic, and then based on that, we create the story points and we take it from there."
  • "A more organized hierarchy is important. Reporting and JQL create issues for me. They do not completely cover the reporting part that I need to report in terms of my capacity to plan. In the same token, there is no record at this very moment to provide me with one export with epics story points, tasks, or issues and their sub-tasks at the same time."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for capacity planning. We need to gauge and assess whatever is coming to our pipeline and then everything comes to the pipeline, appears as a pic, and then based on that, we create the story points and we take it from there. With that, I am able to create a kind of gauge, estimate, and forecast our capacity planning for the next two weeks. We use it to create peer reports.

What needs improvement?

A more organized hierarchy is important. Reporting and JQL create issues for me. They do not completely cover the reporting part that I need to report in terms of my capacity to plan. In the same token, there is no record at this very moment to provide me with one export with epics story points, tasks, or issues and their sub-tasks at the same time. So I have to do multiple exports to just create the sub-tasks and sub-tasks are not being reported. If I wanted to export this and recreate this in another platform like Azure DevOps, I would have a problem right now.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Jira for four months. 

How are customer service and technical support?

The support person I contacted was not skilled enough to provide me the answer so it's up in the air.I'm just doing multiple exports. 

What other advice do I have?

Jira as it is, is a very nice tool. For capacity planning and resourcing, I think it is not built for this and we are trying to make use of it in that area.

I would rate Jira a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Jira
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about Jira. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Head Of Portfolio Management at King's Business School
Real User
Facilitates team collaboration, but the reporting needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the Burndown Chart to see work that is outstanding."
  • "The reporting needs to be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for Agile project management and BAU work delivery in sprints / DevOps.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution has helped with team collaboration and task delivery.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the Burndown Chart to see work that is outstanding.

What needs improvement?

The reporting needs to be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

Eighteen months.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
RTE (Release Train Engineer at ASML
Real User
Our agile teams work with this tool for project management

What is our primary use case?

Team level agile project management.

How has it helped my organization?

Agile teams work with this tool. However, scaled agile support of this tool is limited.

What is most valuable?

  • Dashboard possibility
  • JQL query
  • Workflow management.

What needs improvement?

Tree view of linked issues.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer909060 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
The product is a better way to manage progress and see the status of different tasks. Stability-wise, it is slow and hangs.
Pros and Cons
  • "It benefits us because we have globally located teams. Our team members work in different geographies, so the product is a better way to manage progress and see the status of different tasks"
  • "There is a difficulty viewing all the attachments because they are shown in one place. I would like attachments to be shown at the comment level."
  • "Sometimes, it is slow and hangs. We faced some stability issues where JIRA was down for a day. Also, we have lost some of our comments made in the JIRA because of downtime."

What is our primary use case?

We are working in the safe channel process in the IT part of the bank. It is a good experience overall, but the look and feel for the user is not good.

How has it helped my organization?

It benefits us because we have globally located teams. Our team members work in different geographies, so the product is a better way to manage progress and see the status of different tasks. Otherwise, it is not possible to work in different geographies.

What is most valuable?

I can drag and drop to the different statuses. I can go into the task and change it, then I can directly drag and drop it from one status to another.

What needs improvement?

There is a difficulty viewing all the attachments because they are shown in one place. I would like attachments to be shown at the comment level. Right now, if I attach something, it will go into a single attachment pool for the task, not at the comment level. I.e., If I want to attach the new version of a document, it creates confusion because I have to remove the existing attachment.

When writing comments, there are not many options for formatting. We were expecting formatting something at the level of Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Document.

When creating a task, there is no place to add our estimation.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Sometimes, it is slow and hangs. We faced some stability issues where JIRA was down for a day. Also, we have lost some of our comments made in the JIRA because of downtime.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I don't have any issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

We haven't used it.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not have a previous solution.

What other advice do I have?

I would tell a colleague looking for this type of solution to look at Microsoft TFS and VSTS. 

Most important criteria when selecting vendor:

  • A well-known vendor for the software.
  • A good reputation.
  • Compare what other companies are using.
  • The look and feel of the user interface.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Senior Test Engineer at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Our product technicians can use the JIRA module to manage tasks by creating PRDs and user stories

What is our primary use case?

Managing our entire product development life cycle, as well as all test cases and test runs. That include at least 4 developers, 2 business analysts and 2 testers, all working on sprints. 

How has it helped my organization?

Before JIRA we had to create our PRDs, our product definitions requirements in another feature, then using another tool to organize the combine with all the JIRA tasks.

Now with JIRA Tasks, our product technicians can use the JIRA module to manage tasks by creating PRDs and user stories in JIRA, or even in Confluence (another product from Atlassian). Then, our PBAs, our business analysts, use Confluence to create all the definitions, which we can then use to create user stories in JIRA using the combine module.

What is most valuable?

The most important is the Agile management, because we use Agile in our everyday tasks. Also, the task manager is important.

What needs improvement?

Right now, the Task Management feature and Confluence are separate from JIRA itself. So, we have this problem where sometimes these modules don't talk to each other the way we expect them. So many times, links created automatically from new tools apart from another tool which didn't work, therefore you have to manually go into the task, even though the link is right there.

Another example, in JIRA you create a test sessions with user stories, then buttons from the user stories can automatically change the status of a test session from started, completed, or paused, which doesn't work. Therefore, there is a problem there: inter-module conversations.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's pretty stable. It doesn't go offline very often.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It works great for scalability. We have many users with more users coming. Our current users are on the road and can work.

How are customer service and technical support?

Right now, we have a technician, a specialist, in another country that works closely for JIRA. So, we don't have technical support directly with them.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used just Excel sheets. JIRA was a major improvement for a variety of reasons listed in other answers.

How was the initial setup?

Even though, JIRA was a new thing at the company that I worked for, it was pretty easy to setup. The product is fast, so you don't have any frustration with installation. Account creation was pretty easy, too. Not too complicated.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We tried Microsoft, but it only supports task management. It doesn't support creating test sessions the way we like to them. Also, it doesn't support product definition the way JIRA supports us and Microsoft's general interface is a whole mess, so we prefer JIRA.

What other advice do I have?

Learn every module you use (a lot!) before jumping to other modules, like we did, with JIRA Testing and Atlassian Confluence, because the conversation between those modules can be troublesome if you don't know exactly what it wants.

The product helps us a lot. It can handle the main features that it's supposed to in a proper manner, so we don't have any frustrations in our daily activities.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Resource Manager / JIRA System Admin
Vendor
Fairly easy to use for users but steep learning curve for admins.

What is most valuable?

<ul> <li>Customizable workflows</li> <li>Agile / Scrum compatibility and offerings</li> <li>Granular access/security settings</li> <li>Large selection of add-ons</li> <li>Ease of use </li> </ul>

How has it helped my organization?

Since our service is customized to each client, the ability to customize workflow for each project's specific needs has improved productivity simply by streamlining our efforts.

For how long have I used the solution?

We switched to JIRA this past February. So 7 months.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

There is a steep learning curve for administration. While the tool is fairly easy for our users to understand and use, what it takes to set up the system to MAKE it easy for end users is fairly complex. There is a large amount of information to know and many interdependent layers.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We did not encounter any stability problems due to the JIRA itself. The problems we ran into were server-based and improved significantly after upgrading our server.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Not yet. =)

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: I would give it high marks. From an account service standpoint, all of my questions and requests have been replied to quickly and thoroughly.Technical Support: Medium-high. It mostly takes the form of Q&A within their Atlassian Answers forum that then leads to links of posted documentation on their Confluence pages. So there is a wealth of information and people able to offer advice and help. But it has a very "self-help" feel when trying to track down answers.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did previously use a competing solution. We decided to switch based on several factors: cost, (lack of) support from the previous tool, and mostly we felt the strengths and weaknesses of the prior tool did not match up well with our needs and processes.

How was the initial setup?

It was complex, but in a good way. We used a vendor called Service Rocket to help us through the process and they were magnificent. We spent several weeks with them as they got to know our process and needs to help tailor the setup solution. So it was complex in that we spent a lot of time closely examining our processes and workflows to make sure the solution fit accurately.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at numerous other products. Some were more well-traveled offerings like Rally, AtTask, Clarizen, and Basecamp. Others were newer to the game like 10,000ft.

What other advice do I have?

The most frustrating part of implementing a new management system is "you don't know what you don't know", so it's easy to miss which questions to ask or requests to make. JIRA has a LOT of knobs and levers to pull and is many layers deep in it's setup. If you're not intimately familiar with its offerings, I highly suggest using a consultant or vendor to help step through the implementation. I also suggest being specific in needs and wants. We’ve found JIRA is flexible enough to adapt to our needs more often than we have to adapt to its offerings.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Owner with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Pros: Flexible, Open-ended, Useful default values and fields. Cons: Deep and complex, it takes a while to familiarize

Want Project Management Tool?

I tried OpenProject.org and got frustrated with its performance (because it's Ruby-based ?) and skimpy features. That was what pushed me to go ahead and spend the princely sum of $30 (one time) for JIRA, and two modules (Agile, and Stash, which is a Git web UI), and what deal I've got myself.

JIRA is a platform. And because it is a platform, it is open-ended at what we can use it for. And it's written in Java, deployed in a Tomcat instance, and it gives *me* the choice of which database to use. Kudos for the development team for not strapping customers with MySQL.

Installation

As painless as Wordpress, which is very good. Have a database created (I use PostgreSQL) with its user and password to fill into the web-based installation wizard, and also your SMTP out server settings.

Setup

It takes a bit of reading to get started but given the number of facilities and features available, that's to be expected. Some kind of best-practice steps would be helpful. The most challenging aspect of installation is to get JIRA and Stash to work together. I want both JIRA for Kanban boards, and Issues-tracking, and Stash as a front end to my own Git repository. After bouncing back and forth establishing 2Legged OAuth-based permission, I finally can see my code commits from JIRA, as well as access the Issue from Stash. That is really neat!

Work Tracking

I used JIRA previously in one of the project with my client. We got into the habit of keeping track how many hours I've worked on a particular task by using JIRA, and we got synchronized enough to base our billings on it. Having two measurements is really useful at the end of the project to see the Estimated vs Actual hour. It helped me to estimate more accurately.

Overall, a mature tool that is supported by robust and features that make sense, once we've overcome the complexity and use it for some time.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user335340 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user335340Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant

JIRA has been developed primarily as an issue and project tracker out of the box, you can use JIRA for requirements management in conjunction with Confluence. Issue Level Requirements

You're able to create a JIRA issue type specifically for requirements with it's own workflow, custom fields and reporting. Subtasks offer a quick way to add and manage your requirements, and you can link related requirements together or with feature requests. I hope this helps.

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Updated: December 2024
Buyer's Guide
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