Jira

Benefits:

Jira is the great tool when comes to administratering the custom workflows. We were able to define and automate most of the workflows tasks thus reducing lots repetitive manual efforts. As an administration, we have so much of knowledge base available from Attlassian. Out of the box, we get generic yet useful workflows and features which can onboard most of the software and agile projects instantly.

Drawbacks:

Able to import and export workflows from one instance to another Jira instance is missing.

In sum:

Great experience working with this tool and transforming the business workflows. Its valuable tool for any organization for managing all the business workflows.

Benefits:

My organisation uses Agile software development to do product development, it would be appropriate for me to say every one of us uses this software right from the developers, to QAs to designers to Product Managers to even the senior management. Everyone has their own work areas inside JIRA. It is difficult to say in few words what JIRA is, it is a complete suite for a software development company and I'd suggest you try out JIRA no matter the size of your team. My main work areas and familiarity are the backlog, story management and issue reporting. JIRA acts as the single source of truth with its easy to use Epic and Story feature which makes the life of a product owner very comfortable. The development teams are then able to do their story estimations and sprint planning all in the same place. I would highly recommend you to try JIRA even if you are a startup or a big software house.

Drawbacks:

JIRA has a learning curve (at least for me, coming from a non-technical or project management background) but with a bit of training (can be done by yourself) it is not that hard to get up and running. Initially, I struggled to find my way around the software and also didn't know how to use some features and tools. But when you get accustomed to the UI, you will realise the power of JIRA.

In sum:

JIRA was a bit tough at first to pick up, but soon you understand how it works and its features, your workflow becomes very smooth. However, I would like if JIRA had fewer technical terminologies or quick help features in case you get lost inside. They gave a tour when they introduced the 'new issue view' and you can still find it useful in the "Actions" tab on the right top of the screen. JIRA is a must if you are in the IT industry.

Benefits:

I have used Jira at a number of SaaS companies over the past 6 years and have found it to be easy to use for the most part. It is highly customizable and easy to implement; we migrated our current process from Pivotal Tracker to Jira with relative ease. In comparison to other similar products I have used in the past, it exceeds the competition in flexibility, integration opportunities, ease of use and implementation, as well as configurability.

Drawbacks:

I find myself running into minor bug-type issues somewhat regularly; like being unable to imbed an image in an item description at creation and only being able to do so in the edit view. Also have experienced issues with multiple users editing the same item and saving over one another's changes. Only issues have been minor that we've learned to work around.

In sum:

After a number of years working with various tools, Jira is seemingly the best option for managing software development.

Benefits:

Jira is excellent at keeping track of our issues and linking between them on a kanban board. It was our introduction to a Kanban system of tickets. There are also many features we see ourselves using that we are on the verge of delving into, allowing us to focus on the tickets now but expand in the near future. I like that tickets are easily linked to each other. Our previous system made it difficult to know which tickets were related, while Jira has several options for relating tickets (related to, duplicates, blocked / blocks/ etc)

Drawbacks:

I think the price can get high depending on how big your team is. We were just over the free limit which becomes a large cost, especially once you include subscriptions to confluence etc. I think the load times and UI can get buggy at times, there are multiple times a day I have to click through menus several times for it to register. This is by far the most frustrating thing, especially when you have many tickets on a page. One issue we had was that our current ticket system allows us to CC users onto tickets so they (+ anyone else we add) can get an update. This was not possible through regular Jira, however something similar could be done with effort on the Jira Service Management side.

In sum:

We moved our IT department to start using Jira for the teams that work in development. We have not yet moved our Helpdesk or "system uptime" teams over since we are still looking at what product works best. So with the smaller team, I believe it has helped in keeping our tickets in order. It is simple to see what is currently being worked on in each project. We do not have the highest plan so we do not have all features, but I think our current feature set is large with room to evolve.

Benefits:

Product roadmap feature, project tracking, team collaboration, gantt chart

Drawbacks:

For product roadmap user can only go back a year. So for a long time product that already has been developed setting up that product is challenging.

In sum:

Jira is one of the best collaboration and product/project management solution out there. As a user of many other competitor products I strongly encourage you to consider Jira if you are in the market for such solution.

Benefits:

The software is made around the idea of AGILE collaboration on projects for the entire team. It brings transparency to the processes and is a great information radiator for the entire team. It facilitates commonly used methodologies such as SCRUM and KANBAN and makes project management significantly easier. It is also very versatile and adaptable to particular needs. Although the standard fields are great, you can also create your own to fine tune your processes. Workflows are also highly customizable, giving the user-base great flexibility on how work is set up. Based on this, teams which work in areas not related to software development can also reap the benefits. I've seen implementations in recruitment, data analysis and more. Another great feature is its integration compatibility with other ecosystems such as Microsoft's which makes it easy to pick up. In terms of services, Atlassian offers multiple ways teams can use Jira: Cloud or Self-managed (Server or Data Center) making it an adaptable offering that can withstand the highest level of corporate security scrutiny. Another great feature is the marketplace which contains a great number of apps that provide added capabilities to the app. Last but not least, Atlassian has developed an entire ecosystem geared towards solving projects (especially software ones)like: Confluence (Info silo), Bitbucket (code management), Service Desk and more.

Drawbacks:

The plethora of fields and customizations available can make a new user feel a bit overwhelmed. In this regard, it takes a bit to get used to it. The interface could use a revamp to make things cleaner, clearer and more crisp for the more casual user at least. (ex: easier to find timekeeping, task transitions, new task coloring schemes and more) The workflow engine can also be upgraded to be more user friendly and provide more administrative options (create, apply, delete, manage versions) The security administration section also needs a revamp in terms of adding or removing users, groups, roles into or from project (ex: if you create a new group, you can't bulk add it to all existing projects without some scripting in the CLI)

In sum:

I started project management with this in my toolkit and it has remained my favorite ever since. I have seen other options such as Kanbo or Monday, I believe Jira and its related ecosystem remains far superior. Its pricing scheme is pretty good as well, you can try it for free, adopt it in small teams almost free (10$/m) and can scale it up transparently. It gets pricier when it comes to enterprise grade, yet that is the norm and i believe it is money well spent.

Benefits:

So far, the gold standard in project and process management, especially in the number of options, features, automations, integrations and workflows that the software is capable of handling. We shifted to this software when the pandemic hit and were forced to stay at home since we needed a more powerful software to handle our workflow. If you have a techy team, nothing else compares.

Drawbacks:

Biggest con really is that it is not the most user friendly software. Unlike Trello or Asana where you can just go fire it up and it's good to go. This one takes a lot of set-up to do and a deep familiarity with how it works under the hood. Given that the software is one of the older ones, you can sort of see it's age in both the older workflows (issues, screens, etc) vs the newer templates. The newer project templates sort of partially solved this problem but if you need to tweak the settings, it still has a steeper learning curve. The con really here is that i tried Jira with my other less techy company (a school) and adoption was really low as users just weren't able to keep up with it.

Benefits:

*Functionality The best feature of Jira is a huge number of integrations, massive amount of possibilities, statistics and tricks that you can you inside the platform. There is an integrated tracking, kanbans, lists, sorting direct contact with chat (stride) and feature to work with git right from every task or issue. * New UI Recently Jira got an update, a new chat (Stride, instead of Hipchat) and a new UI for the tasks. I can see that company goes in the right direction to adopt all of it's powers. *Customization Jira, being confusing at first hides a lot of it's features inside most of which you can change and adjust to your business needs. It is a great solution for a big corporation with dozens of departments, hundreds of employees and thousands of issues and tasks daily. However, in all other cases Jira can be a nightmare at this point.

Drawbacks:

*Slow Out off all CRM platforms and tools to handle tasks and issues Jira is the slowest by far. Is it initial problem or has it appeared after adopting so many technologies under one roof - I can't be sure. But one thing is clear - Jira is awfully slow. *To many features Yes, it is a disadvantage when it comes to Jira. When a new customer comes to Jira I believe, he is most definitely confused. Especially, if he/she tried ANYTHING else before. Of course, I see that company does a lot to make it easier and more comfortable, but as it is now, Jira is a terrible solution for fast adoption, scary for a small or middle sized team and most definitely not a great choice for personal use. Jira is Huge. If you are huge - great features, customizing, different apps and plugins will help you solve a lot with Jira. If you are just starting or don't have that many tasks and issues and people in your company - you should probable check other options.

Benefits:

We used several bug tracking tools in the past but Jira is by far the best one. What I like most: - user friendly interface, provides a nice user experience - Agile SCRUM/Kanban support out of the box - extremely configurable on almost everything - extendable through custom scripting, either built-in or via addons - very collaborative - there are thousands of addons in the marketplace; you can even write your own

Drawbacks:

Being so flexible to be configured, the learning curve for admins is a little steep. The price is based on the number of users and if you experience wide user adoption in a big company, you end up in paying more for upgrading to the next tier, than if you would pay for that tier first time.

In sum:

I highly recommend Jira for a bug tracking tool and especially for Agile software teams. For us it has really made a difference in terms of: team collaboration, Agile methodology adoption, decreased time to market of new projects/new features and on the overall teams' spirit. We have seen a wide adoption for the other departments as well, non software development.

Benefits:

Coming on board with Delta I hadn't user the JIRA platform outside of submitting tickets in my past. There was a shell created by our IT team and it was a great start but with the help of an intern he and I were able to completely change and enhance the user experience on both sides for those who enter tickets and those who work or engage with tickets. The system seems a little overwhelming at first because it offers so many variations however once you really consider what you want to do and who you want to achieve it really straightforward. You're able to change and modify just about every aspect of the interface so that its complete company-specific or even department-specific is you choose. You can make it look like its an extension of your companies actual website. You can access and run reports for so many different KPI's or metrics to see preformance or SLA's and they are all realtime.

Drawbacks:

Like I stated it was a bet overwhelming bacause there are so many options and changes that can be made using JIRA however there are tons of resources as well.

In sum:

Overall I really loved the platform and the easy of use and they offer a mobile solution which allows you to manange, support and assist using your mobile device which is important which you are on the go and have customers who diesire information or support.