Item: Jira Align
Rating: 8
Author: Ryan McGarry

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Jira to track work tickets for our software developers and other employees involved in the product development process. This is used by nearly our entire organization and helps us track our progress and organize work that is completed by our teams.

Pros and Cons

Intuitive and easy to use.
Augments project planning to keep workflows organized.
Allows for better ticket tracking, so everyone on the team can stay in touch with what others are working on.

The initial ticket creation screen lacks some important features, such as assigning "point values" (a measure of effort needed for the ticket).
The browser needs to be manually refreshed to see new tickets, which can make things confusing when several people in a meeting are simultaneously creating tickets.
The interface on some smaller portions of the software are sometimes difficult to understand.

Return on Investment

It has provided a positive impact by helping us organize our developers' work.
It has provided a positive impact on estimating product releases and sprints.
It has provided a positive impact by keeping the whole team in the loop on our company's progress, allowing coworkers to directly see what we've accomplished!

Alternatives Considered

Atlassian Confluence, Harvest and Asana

Jira provides a large advantage over some competitors, such as Harvest which is more of simple time tracking software, but without the connectivity provided between team members. Furthermore, Asana is a close competitor, but does not provide the same level of integration with other software such as Confluence (used for project documentation).

Support Rating

While we have not had any issues with Jira since our organization adopted the software, this fact is clear evidence that they actively maintain and fix newly reported issues by their users. Thus, being on top of bug fixes is perhaps the best way of supporting users. They also have made their support easily accessible and available on their website.

Key Insights

Do you think Jira Align delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Jira Align's feature set?

Yes

Did Jira Align live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Jira Align go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Jira Align again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Slack, Atlassian Confluence, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Harvest, Azure API Management, Azure App Service, AWS IoT

Likelihood to Recommend

Jira is excellent for organizations that need to track the work being done by teams of software developers, estimating time for development releases, and allowing everyone to stay in touch on what each team member is working on. It also integrates with other software, such as Confluence or Slack, so that the team can get automatic updates.

Jira provides the best features for project tracking, and integrates with all other related software your organization uses

Overall Satisfaction with Atlassian Jira Align (formerly AgileCraft)