It’s been a while since last software review was published here. This time my playground is Jira. In Wind Mobile we’ve been looking for a tool which could be used to manage each type of issues we have in our projects. After deep consideration we’ve chosen Jira.
Overview
Jira of course follow trendy SaaS approach and is available in hosted version but on the first glimpse I’d say most of their business comes from stand-alone installations in customers’ environments. On general level the rest is more or less typical. Jira is web-based so you don’t need any client except of your web browser.
Talking about functionality you can create different types of issues, which go through different types of workflows. You can get a bunch of reports showing how your projects are going. Pretty ambiguous definition you’d say.
Well, it is ambiguous indeed since in Jira practically everything can be configured. Basing on the “issue plus workflow” model you can build support ticketing, bug tracking, project tasks management, cross-team cooperation and anything else you can think of. As far as you can define custom fields, custom permissions, custom states and custom state transitions you’re able to map practically every workflow you have in your project management methodology.
Strengths
Configurability
One of things which are problematic with different project management software is configurability. Each company has its little differences. You’d say that’s natural, but not for most of software vendors. Each time I look at that type of software I try to map our processes in the application. And I fail. Too many things hard-coded. Too many false assumptions. Too many oversimplifications.
Jira is different. In Jira you can configure everything. I can’t find any single thing which was not in the configuration. OK, there’s actually one thing which needs a bit of coding but that’s not a problem since there’s open API and good documentation.
Speed
Web applications suck in one thing. Usually they’re totally crappy when you look at their responsiveness. All that nice UI comes for a cost. You pay for it with your time each time you wait when next screen will finally load. Jira is fast. Sure, it couldn’t match with desktop software but for the web application speed is very appealing.
Ecosystem
With open API and great configurability you can find a lot of free plug-ins adding new functionalities to Jira. We’ll definitely use risk management to give one of examples.
Of course you need a base of customers to build an ecosystem and I don’t expect fresh applications to have something similar build around them. But you need to enable that with your software too. Jira accomplishes the task and since it’s already an established piece of software you can use a lot of others work to improve your own installation.
Feature range
You can say feature range is rather basic. However with all configuration options you have you can cover almost every scenario you need. I found none of typical shortcomings. History, security, notifications, workflows… Everything is there.
Source code
Buying stand-alone version of Jira you get its source code. Now, nothing can stop you to force Jira to do exactly what you want. Although we don’t plan to mess with the core of the code it gives you safety even if somehow Atlassian stopped to support their product.
Weaknesses
Price
We’ve chosen enterprise version, mainly for multiple workflows feature. It costs $4800. It’s definitely the most expensive application we’ve considered. The cheapest hosted version (limited to 25 users) starts from $299 monthly which is quite crazy if you compare it to other alternatives.
Personally I wouldn’t go for hosted version since it’s unreasonably high when compared to stand alone enterprise version.
Anyway, the only thing I can add: Jira is worth its price.
Small usability flaws
Main thing is unintuitive control placement on the most often used screen – issue details. I still can’t get used to see a part of details on the sidebar, another part on central area and a part available only when I edit the issue. I guess it can be configured, at least partially, but I wonder how they could come with that as a standard interface.
Other teeny things are standard lists and a dashboard, which could be better. This time we’ve been able to change standard screens easily, so I shouldn’t complain much. I just wanted to lengthen a bit weaknesses chapter.
The whole interface isn’t very nice, but as far as it’s usable I don’t care. And to be honest it’s hard to cavil since usability of the UI as a whole is very decent. And ugly UI doesn’t automatically mean bad UI.
Summary
Usually that’s the place where I complain. With all cool ideas developed in the product final effect is usually gimpy. It’s easier to work on cool features instead of adding that boring history or polishing security model to suit complex scenarios.
People form Atlassian did the homework well. I have to admit I fell in love with Jira. It’s fast, reliable and flexible. Every important feature is on the board. I can’t think of any scenario we wouldn’t be able to cover with the application. It’s great. The only thing I’d change is the price, but hey, you can’t have everything.
With business approach Jira creators have it’s not software for small organizations. Small organization should find other suitable products which are also cheaper. Jira in stand-alone environment also requires some time form its administrator especially at the beginning. You can avoid that choosing hosted version but in my opinion stand-alone version is much better choice.
Anyway if you have 20+ people in the organization and you look for project management software consider buying Jira. That’s a good choice.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the killer comments.
I just wanted to lengthen a bit weaknesses chapter.
LOL. :) I’m glad you found the value/cost ratio acceptable. There are plenty of free alternatives out there but we think we offer a lot for the price. Support is included in the cost, too. And with regards to the UI, we’re making many improvements. I look forward to reading your review when we pull the trigger on the revised UI. :)
To comment a bit more on the price. I believe it’s a good decision to pay even high price if the product you buy is worth it. While I’d be glad to see lower prices I don’t really complain.
Another thing is support. Having a person who administer installation and is able to read documentation we had no problems with setting up environment. I think we’d be able to manage with no support whatsoever from your side.
The biggest value we got from that purchase is software, not the support.
Hm, coming more from the project management side of things, I find the “minor usability flaws” rather frightening.
Because it is such a powerful tool, the learning curve is quite steep (for me at least that is).
Might be that for us it would have been better, to buy a leaner, less powerful tool with better usability.
I somewhat hesitate, to give it to our Devs, because the time it takes them to learn (and memorize) the basic functions could potentially be better spent coding…
just my 2CP
From my perspective a learning curve isn’t steep. If some controls are put in an unintuitive way that’s a bit annoying at first but after some time you get use to it.
As far as you get familiar with any iterface, even the most crappy one, it’s no longer a big issue. For a user of course – for a vendor it should be a high priority one.
Our teams, including developers, accepted Jira very quickly and there were no problems with time wasted on editing task etc. It was a bit easier for them since earlier for some tasks we used one of ancient versions of Mantis which worked in a bit similar way, but still I believe Jira was a great choice.
We used Jira at my previous companies. but when it’s time to choose a system for our new company, I’m not sure Jira would suit us. There are several severe limitations:
1) can’t create multiple levels of tasks
2) no “general overview” for the current project plan and status (at least without some plugins? ),
3) price is sky high for enterprise version. unfortunately, this is the only version where you can create/modify workflows. Without this feature, Jira falls to basic Bugzilla level.
1. We use a sub-task feature. I’m not sure if that’s something you have on your mind telling about multiple levels of task. I’m not sure whether you can create a sub-task for a sub-task but for us one level of dependency was enough.
2. With the level of customization you can do with Jira I believe you’re able to create reasonable project dashboard. It definitely won’t look nice, that’s for sure, but it should give you all the infomation about project gathered in one place. Another quesion is whether all information you need to have about the project is kept in Jira and the answer is probably “no.” You won’t have project plans etc in Jira so you’ll lack this information in dashboard as far as you don’t want to develop some integration code.
3. A price is high indeed. For me the price is a blocker for small organizations to use Jira. If I had a company which employ 15 people I wouldn’t even consider Jira as an option.
Don’t forget, JIRA is free for charities and open-source projects. And with 15 employees, maybe price would be a blocker, but for up to 10, you can buy it for $10 (which goes to charity). And for the larger-scale installs, the licence fee is one-off and includes 12 months’ support (with continued support being half the up-front price).
What are the information security features built-in ?
What about segragation of data if someone goes for hosted model to ensure data security of an organisation.
Re security: you can design item workflow so specific groups of users have access to items on specific stages.
Re data isolation: this is a question which should rather be addressed to Atlassian and even then I guess you wouldn’t get a very detailed answer. However if you consider a vendor is a serious company, and I do consider Atlassian is so, this kind of issues should be solved on the very beginning. After all if they screwed in this area people would definitely talk trash about them like crazy and they would be soon out of business.