Agile workflows have exploded in popularity among many companies due to their focus on incentivizing collaboration, allowing teams to tackle complex projects effectively. As a result, many companies now use different project management software solutions to accommodate this flexible framework.
Among these solutions are Rally and Jira—two popular Agile development tools that are used by many. On the surface, both may look the same, however in reality, there are certain key differences and nuances. Rally offers enterprise-level features that scale toward complex projects. Meanwhile, Jira focuses on configurability, allowing its users to build the workflow they want.
To this end, Software Finder has created a comprehensive comparison between Rally vs Jira, highlighting their key features, strengths, and weaknesses. By the end, you'll be equipped to make an informed decision about which tool best suits your project management requirements.
Features | Rally | Jira |
User Interface | Clean and visually appealing UI that offers different project views | User friendly UI that can be customized based on user’s needs |
Customizability | Custom workflows, customizable reports, and custom views | Custom workflows, dashboards, fields, notifications, layout, issue types, and automation rules |
Project View | Kanban boards, portfolio view, and custom dashboards | Kanban boards, sprint capacity view, top level planning view, and custom dashboards |
Collaboration Tools | Notifications, comments, release tracking, and capacity planning | Comments, child issues, mentions, delegated administration, and file sharing |
Reporting Tools | Cumulative flow charts, velocity charts, and custom reports | Burndown charts, velocity charts, sprint reports, cumulative flow diagrams, and custom reports |
Project Templates | No project templates, but work item templates are included | Pre-built templates, such as Kanban and Scrum templates are included |
| Try Rally Free | Try Jira Free |
Rally Software is a project management tool that is designed with Agile principles in mind. Thus, its primary function is to track project iterations. In addition, it offers an extensive list of features that cater to different aspects of project management, including portfolio, customization, and integration.
Rally Key Features
- Allows users to track and manage work with Kanban boards, backlogs, and burndown charts
- Custom dashboards that can be tailored to any stakeholder’s monitoring needs
- Cumulative Flow Diagrams within the software help in mapping out value streams, as well as in analyzing workflows
- Offers its own pre-built metric charts to help analyze unique data points such as flow time, flow velocity, and flow predictability
- Integrates with third party tools such as Git and Jenkins
Pros
Portfolio Management
Rally's portfolio management capabilities are robust, offering features like resource allocation, portfolio reporting, and strategic planning. Views, such as the Portfolio Kanban page help visualize data in a new light and allow users to gain additional insights with regards to their portfolio.
Extensive Reporting And Analytical Tools
The software offers a wide range of reporting and analytics features, allowing teams to track progress, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions. Its pre-built metrics help in tracking the status of the project and ensure that tasks are being completed on time, leading to a more efficient work process.
Enterprise Level Scalability
Due to its extensive features, Rally is well-suited for large organizations with complex project portfolios and operations. It’s also designed to handle increasing workloads and user demands, ensuring reliable performance even as organizations grow.
Cons
Requires Training
Users with no prior experience in Agile workflows or complex project management tools may find Rally difficult to learn without undergoing some training or tutorials.
Feature Bloat
Rally’s impressive list of features may be overwhelming for less complex projects, making it less ideal for small projects. In addition, the extensive features and customization options within Rally make it more difficult to set up properly.
Jira Software empowers teams to track issues, manage projects, and collaborate effectively. It caters specifically to Agile methodologies and offers robust features for bug tracking, reporting, and integrations.
Unlike simpler tools, Jira provides a highly customizable framework, allowing teams to tailor workflows and adapt to their specific needs. This flexibility, combined with advanced project management capabilities, makes Jira a popular choice for teams working in software development, project management, and marketing.
Jira Key Features
- Issue tracking where tasks and requirements are constantly monitored throughout the entire project lifecycle
- Robust reporting capabilities, allowing you to track project progress, identify bottlenecks, and make data-driven decisions
- Customizable workflows that are tailored to your team's specific processes and workflows, ensuring that the project progresses as smoothly as possible
- Integrates seamlessly with other popular tools like Git, Confluence, and Slack
- Offers scalability and handles various projects, making it suitable for all kinds of teams
Pros
Customizability
One of Jira’s strongest selling points is its extensive customizability. Boards, filters, fields, and notifications can be customized to the user’s whims. This emphasis on customizability helps in bolstering team efficiency and ensures all kinds of teams with different workflows can pick up Jira.
Extensive Integrations
Jira offers integration with other popular third-party software such as Git, Bitbucket, and Slack. These integrations help enhance its appeal for Agile teams since it streamlines workflows and incentivizes collaboration, thus aligning itself with Agile methodology principles.
Agile Design
Jira offers a host of features that are designed to help streamline Agile practices. These features include Kanban boards, sprint functionalities, and burndown charts. Finally, Jira’s primary function regarding issue tracking and assigning tickets means that the software lends itself naturally to an iterative approach, making it more suited for Agile teams.
Cons
Overcomplications
Jira’s impressive level of customizability—while its greatest strength—is ironically also its most serious bane. The level of customization offered means that companies often overcomplicate their own workflows in an attempt to make full use of Jira’s functionality. As a result, these overcomplicated workflows can hinder rather than help projects.
Optimization
At times, Jira can get slow or unresponsive, due to handling very large but poorly designed custom workflows. Finally, compared to other more light-weight software such as Asana and Trello, Jira also takes up more resources on systems.
The following section goes into detail about the key features for Rally and Jira. Both have their nuances and quirks that make them suited for different purposes.
If you're looking for a comprehensive, enterprise-level solution with a strong focus on Agile methodologies, Rally might be the ideal choice. Its features include advanced reporting, robust portfolio management, and integration with other enterprise systems.
However, if you prioritize customization and flexibility, Jira might be a better fit. Jira offers a wide range of plugins and add-ons, allowing you to tailor the platform to your specific needs. It's also popular for smaller teams and startups due to its user-friendly interface and affordability.
If you want a personalized opinion with an expert to help you pick the best project management software for your company, contact us here at Software Finder.
1. Pricing Plans And Scalability
Rally
Rally offers flexible and customizable pricing, depending on the size and needs of an organization. For a personalized quote, click Get Pricing.
Jira
Jira offers four pricing tiers, with each offering extra features. However, it’s also important to note that Jira offers a limited trial period for most of its pricing plans where users can test the product for themselves. As of now, following pricing plans are offered by Jira:
- Free - 0$ (Free forever for 10 users)
- Standard - $7.16/user/month
- Premium - $12.48/user/month
- Enterprise - Custom Pricing
Disclaimer: Pricing is subject to change.
Winner: There is no “right” choice here as it all depends on your organizational needs as well as the scope of the project. Jira is more straightforward with their pricing and may accommodate businesses of all sizes, but Rally offers custom pricing based on the needs of the company.
2. Customization For Use Cases
Rally
Rally software offers several customization options to tailor the tool to specific needs and workflows. It accomplishes this by allowing users to create custom workflows, customizable reports, custom work views, etc.
Jira
The ability to configure and customize is one of Jira’s salient features. Essentially, the software allows users not only to create custom workflows, layouts, dashboards, and fields, but also takes it a step further and allows users to customize even minor aspects of the project, such as notifications, permissions, and automation rules.
Winner: The extent of Jira’s configurability makes it the winner in this category. However, Rally is no slouch here; when compared to other software on the market, Rally’s customization options can pack a punch.
3. User Interface
Rally
Rally offers a clean, intuitive, and visually appealing UI that is designed to provide a clear overview of the project and make navigation easier for the end user. It also offers different ways to view the project such as a Kanban view. In addition, Rally also offers its users the ability to create their own custom boards.
Jira
Just like Rally, Jira offers a very clean and user-friendly UI that is designed to facilitate easy management of tasks. Like Rally it also offers several ways to view the project such as Kanban Boards. Jira’s sheer customizability, however, may give it a little edge over Rally, even if the former also allows customizable boards.
Winner: It’s a tie as both software offer a minimalistic UI that’s designed to be easy to navigate around. Ultimately, the best UI for your team depends on your own personal preferences.
4. Collaboration and Communication Tools
Rally
Rally makes use of an in-built notification feature to alert users of important events, such as task assignments, deadline changes, or status updates. In addition, users can utilize “Release Tracking,” a unique feature that allows teams and team leaders to closely monitor progress and identify any roadblocks that can impede the project.
Jira
Jira offers many communication tools that teams can use to communicate with each other. These include comments, child issues, mentions, and document sharing tools that integrate with other software such as Microsoft Office. Additionally, Jira makes use of delegated admiration—a feature which allows users to grant specific permissions to other users within your organization, without giving them full access to your Jira instance.
Winner: Jira has a clear advantage over Rally here as their additional features provide more methods of getting the project finished. However, once again, Rally also has their own suite of features that are more than enough to get the job done.
5. Cross-Departmental Communication
Rally
Rally makes use of Capacity Planning, a feature that allows managers to prioritize tasks based on the capacity of their teams. They also provide several features to facilitate cross-departmental communication and collaboration such as requirement traceability, portfolio management, integration with communication tools, customizable dashboards, and notifications.
Jira
Jira also provides several features to help facilitate cross-departmental communication and collaboration. These include cross project linking, real-time updates, and other task tracking features such as top-down visibility so that teams can monitor progress of their own work items, no matter where they are in the work pipeline.
Winner: Both Rally and Jira are neck-in-neck when it comes to cross-departmental communication as they more or less offer similar tools that function in the same way.
6. Project Templates
Rally
Rally does not really have any project templates. Instead, they provide work item templates that allow users to create pre-defined structures for different types of work items, such as user stories, tasks, defects, and changes. These templates can include fields, attributes, workflows, and relationships, making it easier to standardize and manage work.
Jira
Unlike Rally, Jira offers a variety of pre-designed project structures that cater to various methodologies, including traditional project management and scaled Agile frameworks like Scrum and Kanban. These pre-formatted templates can be used to quickly create issues, epics, and stories, streamlining your project setup and maintaining consistency across your work. In addition, Jira also allows its users to create their own custom templates that fit their specific requirements.
Winner: Jira’s the clear winner here. Rally may provide work item templates; however, they are not the same thing as project templates, which Jira has in spades.
7. Comprehensive Agile Reporting
Rally
Rally offers certain Agile reporting tools such as cumulative flow charts, velocity charts, custom reports, etc. These tools help provide important insights that help project managers analyze the performance of their team and identify trends that increase overall output.
Jira
Jira provides several reporting features such as burndown charts, velocity charts, sprint reports, cumulative flow diagrams, and custom reports. With this, teams can make data-driven decisions, identify areas for improvement, and ensure that projects are delivered on time and within budget.
Winner: Both Jira and Rally are once again tied here as they offer similar functions that give similar outcomes.
8. Integrations
Rally
Rally software offers various integrations with similar platforms, allowing seamless collaboration and data exchange. These integrations can help improve effectiveness, and ultimately provide a more cohesive work environment. However, their integrations are somewhat limited compared to other project management tools.
Jira
Jira offers a wide range of integrations with other software, making Jira itself more versatile and compatible with other types of workflows. In addition, these integrations can help streamline workflows, improve efficiency, and provide a more comprehensive view of projects.
For example, Jira integrates with other source code management tools, CI/CD pipelines, communication tools, testing tools, and other project management tools. This allows teams to work more effectively by providing a more unified view of their projects.
Winner: Jira has a clear advantage over Rally since they have an extensive range of integrations with all types of software.
9. Security
Rally
Rally platform encrypts data both at rest and in transit, implements robust access controls, and conducts regular security audits. The software also adheres to industry-standard security frameworks and maintains continuous monitoring of its systems.
Jira
Jira uses secure authentication mechanisms, encrypts sensitive data, and provides granular access controls. Jira also maintains detailed audit logs, regularly releases security updates, and complies with various security standards.
Winner: Both software are tied as far as security concerns go.
10. Customer Support
Rally
Rally offers a variety of resources to help users, including comprehensive documentation, community forums, a knowledge base, and direct customer support. In addition, Rally hosts a number of official tutorial videos on YouTube, ensuring that non-technical users can learn their way around the software.
Jira
Jira is known for providing good customer support. Atlassian, the company behind Jira, offers a variety of resources to help users, including extensive documentation, community forums, a knowledge base, and direct customer support. While the quality of support can vary, Jira is generally regarded as having a helpful and responsive support team.
Winner: Both software offer equal resources when it comes to customer support; however, it’s important to note that customer support can always vary in quality and is highly subjective.
While both Rally and Jira may have many overlapping features, ultimately, they’re intended for and used by different audiences. Rally leans more towards large enterprises due to its focus on features such as portfolio management whereas Jira’s versatility means that it can fit all sorts of company sizes.
When choosing between Rally vs Jira, consider your team's specific needs and project type. If you're primarily focused on software development and require features like portfolio management, Rally might be a better fit. However, if you need a more general-purpose project management tool with strong issue tracking capabilities, Jira could be a better option. In the end, the best choice depends on your team's specific needs and preferences.
If neither Rally nor Jira fits your specific requirements, consider exploring other alternatives like Asana software or Trello software. These tools offer comparable features while providing unique strengths.
