Item: Jira Align
Rating: 7
Author: Rebekah Ryan, PMP

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Jira is used across multiple business units within our organization, but not exclusively. Jira allows us to track and communicate issues/updates/statuses/requests across many internal teams. We also use Jira to build and manage extensive workflows that allow each team to understand their work, ownership and give visibility into time tracking. Jira ensures that all technical teams can accurately track and conduct their work with visibility across the teams that are not directly involved. Jira also allows for communication across these teams for questions and requests, so that everything does not have to be managed via never-ending email chains, etc.

Pros and Cons

Complex workflow creation.
Issue ownership.
Issue tracking.

Less complicated UI.
More consistent email tracking/notifications.
Better and more intuitive cloning options.

Return on Investment

Tracks and improves SLA's.
Shows real-time workflows including gaps.
Allows for revenue realization through task and project completion.

Alternatives Considered

ServiceNow DevOps and Rally Software (formerly CA Agile Central)

I would prefer to use Jira over ServiceNow or Rally. Not only am I most comfortable with Jira, but I think most teams are due to its historical use. Jira's workflow capabilities, although complex, really allow for a lot of customization that is sometimes needed for extremely technical products and product workflows. For our internal teams, Jira really allows for real-time communication and issue tracking, and again, although sometimes complex to build out, the dashboards that can be created to track projects, tasks, and issues you own or are watching, is definitely more advanced than any others that I have used outside of Jira.

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?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Jira Align again?

Yes

Other Software Used

ServiceNow DevOps, Box, Atlassian Confluence

Likelihood to Recommend

Jira is a good tool to use to manage communication for a variety of teams that do not overlap on any other platforms. Jira allows for consolidation of issues and requests that need to be touched by many different resources. Jira's tracking capabilities are decent, although could be improved. Jira is also somewhat complex to use and has a lot of untapped functionality because it is not always fully explained or intro'd to teams.

Jira-foundational tool for cross-team communication and work tracking

Overall Satisfaction with Atlassian Jira Align (formerly AgileCraft)