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JIRA vs Pivotal Tracker: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare JIRA and Pivotal Tracker, two popular project management tools used in software development teams. We will analyze their key differences, focusing on specific aspects that set them apart from each other.

  1. Pricing Model: The pricing model of JIRA and Pivotal Tracker differs significantly. JIRA follows a more traditional pricing approach, offering different plans based on the number of users or projects. On the other hand, Pivotal Tracker provides a simpler and more transparent pricing structure, with a fixed price per project. This makes Pivotal Tracker a more cost-effective choice for small teams or teams with limited budgets.

  2. Workflow Flexibility: JIRA offers a highly customizable workflow, allowing teams to define and configure their own issue types, statuses, and transitions. This provides a great level of flexibility but can also result in a complex setup process. In contrast, Pivotal Tracker has a more streamlined and opinionated workflow focused on Agile development methodologies. While this can be seen as a limitation for some teams, it simplifies the setup and ensures a more consistent project management approach.

  3. Integration Ecosystem: JIRA has a vast integration ecosystem, with numerous plugins and integrations available for various development tools and services. This allows teams to seamlessly connect JIRA with their preferred development tools and enhance their workflows. Pivotal Tracker, although it also offers integrations with popular tools, has a more limited ecosystem. This means that teams relying heavily on specific tools might find JIRA more suitable for their integration needs.

  4. User Interface and User Experience: JIRA has a robust and feature-rich UI that provides a comprehensive view of project details and progress. However, this can make it overwhelming for users who prefer a simpler and more intuitive interface. Pivotal Tracker, in contrast, focuses on simplicity and ease of use, offering a clean and intuitive UI that emphasizes the most important project information. This makes Pivotal Tracker a better choice for teams looking for a more user-friendly and accessible project management tool.

  5. Reporting and Analytics: JIRA provides extensive reporting and analytics capabilities, allowing teams to generate custom reports, track project metrics, and visualize data in various formats. Pivotal Tracker, while offering basic reporting features, lacks the advanced reporting capabilities of JIRA. This makes JIRA a better option for teams that require in-depth analytics and metrics to monitor and improve their project performance.

  6. Community and Support: JIRA benefits from a large and active community of users, with a wealth of resources, forums, and documentation available for support. This makes it easier for teams to find answers to their questions, troubleshoot issues, and share knowledge. Pivotal Tracker, although it also has a supportive community, is not as extensive as JIRA's. This can make it slightly more challenging for teams to find comprehensive support and guidance when needed.

In summary, JIRA offers a highly customizable workflow, extensive integration options, advanced reporting capabilities, and a strong community; whereas Pivotal Tracker provides a simpler pricing model, streamlined workflow, user-friendly interface, and a focus on Agile development methodologies. The choice between the two depends on the specific needs and preferences of the team in terms of budget, flexibility, ease of use, reporting, and community support.

Decisions about Jira and Pivotal Tracker
Jakub Olan
Node.js Software Engineer · | 17 upvotes · 377.4K views
Migrated
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JiraJiraYouTrackYouTrack
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LinearLinear
at

Last time we shared there information about our decision about using YouTrack over Jira actually we found much better solution that our team have loved. Linear is a minimalistic issue tracker that integrates well with Sentry, GitHub, Slack and Figma which are our basic tools. I would like to recommend checking out Linear as a potential alternative to "heavy" issue trackers, maybe at enterprises that may not work but when we're a startup that works awesome!

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Jakub Olan
Node.js Software Engineer · | 4 upvotes · 297K views

YouTrack feels much more lightweight than Jira and additionally have all of features that Jira have, of course lacks at some analytics features, but it's more powerful at permission management and agile workflow. Additionally YouTrack have awesome integration with other JetBrains products such as incoming JetBrains Space and all other IDEs such as GoLand.

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Nasser Khan
Product Manager at StackShare · | 5 upvotes · 71.4K views

Over time, as our teams became bigger and projects became more complex, we started to take agile processes more seriously and wanted more advanced (by our standards) project management abilities, like burndown charts, velocity tracking, etc. We also wanted to handle a lot of content management tasks that were primarily done by non-technical teams but often touched engineering.

After using Pivotal Tracker and Wrike, JIRA ended up being the right choice for us. Its design was flexible enough to do engineering project management, content management and other tasks like product roadmapping effectively. It had all the bells and whistles we wanted (plus many more we never got around to using). Given that it is a flexible service that tries to do everything, it is ideal for a team that can 1) dedicate significant bandwidth to upfront setup and organization and 2) empower admins to establish and enforce best practices among team members.

#Collaboration #IssueTracking #AgileProjectManagement #ProjectManagement

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Pros of Jira
Pros of Pivotal Tracker
  • 310
    Powerful
  • 254
    Flexible
  • 149
    Easy separation of projects
  • 113
    Run in the cloud
  • 105
    Code integration
  • 57
    Easy to use
  • 52
    Run on your own
  • 39
    Great customization
  • 38
    Easy Workflow Configuration
  • 27
    REST API
  • 12
    Great Agile Management tool
  • 7
    Integrates with virtually everything
  • 6
    Confluence
  • 5
    Complicated
  • 3
    Sentry Issues Integration
  • 74
    Agile
  • 59
    Easy to use
  • 51
    Nice UI
  • 37
    Scrum friendly
  • 28
    Simple estimation
  • 23
    Slack Integration
  • 13
    Velocity
  • 10
    Easy setup
  • 9
    Great support
  • 7
    It does the estimation better than we humans
  • 3
    Nice ios app
  • 3
    The right kind of simplicity

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Cons of Jira
Cons of Pivotal Tracker
  • 8
    Rather expensive
  • 5
    Large memory requirement
  • 2
    Slow
  • 1
    Cloud or Datacenter only
  • 2
    Can't seem to change the number of total points

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What is Jira?

Jira's secret sauce is the way it simplifies the complexities of software development into manageable units of work. Jira comes out-of-the-box with everything agile teams need to ship value to customers faster.

What is Pivotal Tracker?

It is a collaborative, lightweight agile project management tool, brought to you by the experts in agile software development.

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What are some alternatives to Jira and Pivotal Tracker?
Trello
Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process.
Asana
Asana is the easiest way for teams to track their work. From tasks and projects to conversations and dashboards, Asana enables teams to move work from start to finish--and get results. Available at asana.com and on iOS & Android.
Confluence
Capture the knowledge that's too often lost in email inboxes and shared network drives in Confluence instead – where it's easy to find, use, and update.
Redmine
Redmine is a flexible project management web application. Written using the Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database.
Bugzilla
Bugzilla is a "Defect Tracking System" or "Bug-Tracking System". Defect Tracking Systems allow individual or groups of developers to keep track of outstanding bugs in their product effectively. Most commercial defect-tracking software vendors charge enormous licensing fees. Despite being "free", Bugzilla has many features its expensive counterparts lack.
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