With the right tool in your corner, project management can be less time and energy-consuming. Imagine a software that handles project management, issue tracking, team collaboration, and even task tracking and reporting. If you’re a software developer you’re probably already pretty excited about this software – Jira.
Jira is a flexible tool that does so much more than project management. In this Jira Review article, I’m going to elaborate on some of the main features of Jira, its benefits, pricing, and more.
Let’s dive right in!
Jira Review
What is Jira?
Developed by Atlassian almost two decades ago (2002), Jira is marketed as an issue tracking application and also a project management software. What Jira really is, is an embodiment of three packages. The three packages are Jira Core, Jira Software, and Jira Service Management. The most commonly used being Jira Software.
Jira Core is the application intended for project management and some of the features include views and reports, task relationships and, lots of communication tools for easy collaboration. It’s ideal for business teams, marketing teams, etc.
Jira Software is an application ideal for software development, agile project management. Its features which include Scrum boards, Kanban-style boards, debugging and integration with version control providers like GitHub make it a great tool amongst software developers, DevOps teams and, technical managers.
Jira Service Management is used by IT operations or business service desk, incident management, helpdesk agencies, and supervisors.
Due to its flexible configuration and robust set of features, Jira supports a wide variety of industries and you’re likely to find services that are beneficial to your business, team, and even customer service operations, all with Jira.
Features of Jira
Project Management
Jira Core delivers industry-leading project management functionality to help you plan, track, and manage your team’s work.
Views and Reporting
View your work, and the results of your work, in the way that makes the most sense for you, your team, and stakeholders.
Agile Reporting
Teams have access to more than a dozen out-of-the-box reports with real-time, actionable insights into how their team is performing sprint over sprint.
Connect issues to code
Bring information from your favorite version control, build, deployment, or feature flagging tool into Jira Software and get instant visibility into your development pipeline.
Developer Tool Integrations
Integrate with developer tools for end-to-end traceability.
Incident Management
Bring your development and IT operations teams together to rapidly respond to, resolve, and continuously learn from incidents.
Other Features
- Gantt/Timeline View.
- Idea Management.
- Kanban Board.
- Milestone Tracking.
- Portfolio Management.
- Resource Management
- Time & Expense Tracking.
- Traditional Methodologies.
- Collaboration tools.
Benefits of Jira
- It is great for agile development.
- It has available integrations with major applications including collaboration apps like Slack, Version control providers like Bitbucket. This makes it a very helpful tool for developers.
- It’s highly customizable. You can create any type of issue(task), customize workflows as you like with the abundant customization tools made available by Jira.
- Using Jira encourages transparency during project management and amongst team members.
- It’s an application that has a feature for different types of users from software developers to business managers, helpdesk workers, project managers, HR teams, Legal teams, and many more.
Why You Need Jira?
- For agile software development.
- For project management as well as incident management and issue tracking.
Jira Integrations
| Trello | Google Sheets |
| Slack | Gmail |
| Smartsheet | Google Calendar |
| Asana | Github |
| Google Forms | Zendesk |
| Dropbox | Airtable |
| Basecamp | Toggl |
| Wufoo | Ever Note |
| Gitlab | Pipedrive |
| Discord | Hubspot |
| Freshdesk | Twilio |
| Microsoft Excel | Intercom |
| Podio | Google Docs |
| Survey Monkey | Typeform |
| Salesforce | Zoho Projects |
| OneNote | Mailchimp |
| Groove | MySQL |
| Pipefy | Zenkit |
Jira Pricing Plans
With the three packages that make up Jira as a whole, it’s only expected that the services are priced differently.
Jira Software offers four plans which are:
- Free plan.
- Standard plan.
- Premium plan.
- Enterprise plan.
For the free plan, the number of users limit is 10 users. It’s an efficient plan for smaller teams and it comes with many of the helpful features with the exception of some such as advanced features, project archiving, etc.
The Standard plan has a 10,000 users limit and it costs $70 per month. It is ideal for growing teams and it also has features of the free plan plus project roles, advanced permissions, and more.
The Premium plan costs $140 per month and also has 10,000 users per site limit. This plan included advanced features of Jira Software.
Jira Core offers only two plans namely: the Free plan and the Standard plan.
The free plan can accommodate a maximum of 10 users and the features it lacks are advanced permissions, anonymous access, audit logs, and data residency. The Standard plan which costs $50 per month offers you all the features of Jira Core.
Jira Service Management has four plans available which are:
- Free plan
- Standard plan (costs $60 per month)
- Premium plan(costs $120 per month)
- Enterprise plan
Jira Alternatives
1. ProofHub
Proofhub is an all-in-one project planning software that is used by teams, businesses, and agencies for maximum collaboration, resource management, and task management.
Despite the abundance of features and third-party integrations that Proofhub makes available to its users, the only payment required is a flat monthly payment. No per-user fee.
2. Nutcache
Nutcache is a collaborative, project management software that is ideal for managing business-oriented projects and tasks from start to finish.
Some of the features include budget management, milestone tracking, kanban board, collaboration tools, and many more features out in place to create a seamless work environment for teams.
3. Asana
Asana is a web-based and mobile application sophisticated, project management and list-making tool that will help you manage projects of all sizes.
As a project manager or a delegator at whatever you do, Asana is a great tool to help you stay hands-on on the tasks at hand, monitor each member’s input, and be confident in the progress of your team with the data to prove it.
Jira Video
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on Jira
What is Jira?
What is Jira used for?
Can I use Jira without internet access?
How much does Jira cost?
Can Jira be used for non-software Projects?
Wrap Up
In conclusion, Jira is a flexible tool with robust features that are designed to be of use to a wide variety of industries and businesses. From software developers and project managers to Business teams and product owners, Jira has a place for near everyone.
As expected, it can be a little difficult to navigate which Jira package you want or need. You can check them out individually: Jira Core, Jira Software, and Jira Service Management.
I hope you found this Jira review article helpful. If you have any further questions or contributions you’d like to share kindly make use of the comment section below.
