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A typical IS department is better off without Jira Software
May 17, 2021

A typical IS department is better off without Jira Software

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Jira Software

We were using Jira Software to manage technical projects within the Information Systems department. We had some projects that had a definite schedule with milestones, deliverables, and tasks. We also had other ongoing projects that required scheduling, prioritization, and resource assignment. Jira Software was helping us to organize and coordinate our activities.
  • Cloud-based, web application
  • Drag-and-drop functionality within Kanban boards
  • Clean, crisp design that is pleasing to the eye
  • Does not work well for a traditional IS helpdesk application
  • Very difficult, if not impossible, to provision separate security for departments within the same organization
  • Jira's terminology takes a long time to get used to and for end users to learn (and many never do, seemingly)
  • Quick to implement and begin using[.]
  • Ability to assign resources and have those resources receive notifications and updates[.]
  • Simple interface for tracking projects and progress toward objectives[.]
  • Jira Software is low cost for few users, so it was cost-effective for a small team.
  • As we looked to expand our use of Jira, the costs rose dramatically.
  • We decided to drop Jira Software because it ultimately didn't meet our organization's needs beyond a small group of users.
Having had some experience with Jira Software at a previous organization, we didn't evaluate competitors to Jira. The cost of Jira was low enough that we didn't go through a typical evaluation process prior to jumping in to using Jira for managing technical projects. However, we ultimately found it wanting for the needs of a typical IS department.

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

Yes

Are you happy with Jira Software's feature set?

No

Did Jira Software live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of Jira Software go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Jira Software again?

No

I imagine that Jira Software is really useful for geographically disperse focused on a specific project. Indeed, I was part of a team at a different organization than my current one that used Jira successfully to manage a technical initiative. However, it doesn't really suit the needs of an IS department at a Small to Medium Business. For example, we tried to use the helpdesk project template in Jira, but there's no way to update tickets via email and hashtags, which makes it cumbersome to update tickets, etc. Also, try as we may, we could never create one view that showed all projects and resource utilization within the department, which is a significant requirement of any manager. Finally, we tried to share access to our organization's instance with other departments, and we simply could not grant the other departments the rights they would need to manager their own projects. We had to manage the creation of their projects for them, which is unworkable.