Jira for bug tracking and project management

I highly recommend Jira for a bug tracking tool and especially for Agile software teams. For us it has really made a difference in terms of: team collaboration, Agile methodology adoption, decreased time to market of new projects/new features and on the overall teams' spirit. We have seen a wide adoption for the other departments as well, non software development.

Pros

We used several bug tracking tools in the past but Jira is by far the best one. What I like most: - user friendly interface, provides a nice user experience - Agile SCRUM/Kanban support out of the box - extremely configurable on almost everything - extendable through custom scripting, either built-in or via addons - very collaborative - there are thousands of addons in the marketplace; you can even write your own

Cons

Being so flexible to be configured, the learning curve for admins is a little steep. The price is based on the number of users and if you experience wide user adoption in a big company, you end up in paying more for upgrading to the next tier, than if you would pay for that tier first time.

Versatile tool for help desk and task management

We use Jira for IT help desk support, miscellaneous administrative and clerical support, staying focused on engineering and resource planning. We've gained several benefits. We can transparently tell all the efforts we are working on, which effort is taking more time, what are the blockers, who's putting how much effort into what work and whether there is value in the work we are doing. Jira has allowed us to stay focused and cut down on non-essential or wasteful work while giving the company a clear idea of what we are working on.

Pros

I love Jira's ease of use. Jira allows our staff and business partners to request from us using Jira Service Desk. Engineers track their effort using Jira Software. We use the default settings for the most part and that works great for us. There is no need to train anyone on how to use it because everything is self-explanatory. That cuts down on confusion and allows us to get/enter accurate information.

Cons

It is slow. It is very slow at times. Jira's makers - Atlassian - have not paid much attention over the years about its slowness. If you are into full-fledged project management, portfolio planning and more, you will have to buy add-ons to get additional functionality within Jira. Did I say that Jira is slow? While the ease of use saves time in accurately recording information in Jira, all that saved time is wasted away waiting for pages to load.

More then you will ever need / Tool to handle thousands of problems one by one

Pros

*Functionality The best feature of Jira is a huge number of integrations, massive amount of possibilities, statistics and tricks that you can you inside the platform. There is an integrated tracking, kanbans, lists, sorting direct contact with chat (stride) and feature to work with git right from every task or issue. * New UI Recently Jira got an update, a new chat (Stride, instead of Hipchat) and a new UI for the tasks. I can see that company goes in the right direction to adopt all of it's powers. *Customization Jira, being confusing at first hides a lot of it's features inside most of which you can change and adjust to your business needs. It is a great solution for a big corporation with dozens of departments, hundreds of employees and thousands of issues and tasks daily. However, in all other cases Jira can be a nightmare at this point.

Cons

*Slow Out off all CRM platforms and tools to handle tasks and issues Jira is the slowest by far. Is it initial problem or has it appeared after adopting so many technologies under one roof - I can't be sure. But one thing is clear - Jira is awfully slow. *To many features Yes, it is a disadvantage when it comes to Jira. When a new customer comes to Jira I believe, he is most definitely confused. Especially, if he/she tried ANYTHING else before. Of course, I see that company does a lot to make it easier and more comfortable, but as it is now, Jira is a terrible solution for fast adoption, scary for a small or middle sized team and most definitely not a great choice for personal use. Jira is Huge. If you are huge - great features, customizing, different apps and plugins will help you solve a lot with Jira. If you are just starting or don't have that many tasks and issues and people in your company - you should probable check other options.

The Ultimate Business Productivity Suite

JIRA has been an excellent tool overall - provides the perfect mix of task, project and issue tracking features that every company needs. I have worked with JIRA in two independent fast-growing companies and both times it has been the main driver of productivity.

Pros

The fully integrated task and project management boards with extensive levels of detail to run Kanban maintenance boards, complex sprints and even visualise recruitment pipelines. In collaboration with Confluence and BitBucket, the Atlassian product suite make the management of a growing software team seem easy.

Cons

JIRA has quite a steep learning curve for less software native users and can appear too complex for the average operational or commercial person. As such, it can be difficult to convince new people to use JIRA without extensive training and hand-holding. This could be improved by guided tours and a simpler interface for "new starts".

Best and most true to tradition agile project/product management tool around

I have a (probably unhealthy) love for Jira and would need a lot of convincing to switch. It's interface is genuinely enjoyable to use and it aligns perfectly with agile product management methodologies, natively and in conjunction with its plethora of add-ons.

Pros

Jira is an immensely powerful issue management tool. It's JQL language provides ultimate flexibility to satisfy the needs of all roles on a product/project team. It's easy to use (if agile concepts are familiar to you and semi-intuitive if they're not), easy to deploy (especially if you're using Jira Cloud) and easy to integrate with.

Cons

The pricing model for add-ons. You could have a 100 users registered to your Jira instance, have an add-on that is used by a small handful of power users, and still be paying a license fee for all 100 users. Very annoying!