We performed a comparison between Jira and Micro Focus Alm Octane based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Jira is a bit ahead of Micro Focus. Our reviewers found Micro Focus to be more complex to install and to have weaker security integrations. Its price point is more pleasing than Jira’s however.
"Its visual display and ease of use are most valuable."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"Transparency of development projects, as well as approval processes for some business projects, has improved massively."
"It is a very convenient tool. We can organize our sprints through scrum or kanban. There are scrum boards, and there are kanban boards. If you prefer scrum, you can use Jira. If you prefer kanban, you can still use Jira. You can create your kanban boards in a similar way as you create your scrum boards. It is very useful. It also seems to be very popular these days."
"Everything is tracked in one place."
"The most valuable feature of Jira is the reporting feature, which allows us to track our team's tasks."
"There are a lot of different plugins for Jira. Unfortunately, we did not test so many and the big pain point for us is the rigorous handling and the roadmap of Jira. We have a portfolio and structure plugin and we have our story map plugin in Jira"
"You can record your unit testing, regression testing, UATs, et cetera."
"It's brought our entire team into a single tool. We're all looking at the same real-time data. Our project management office has been able to set up dashboards for individual teams, and do comparisons by teams, of integration, and cross-team integration, burn-up, burn-down, and cumulative flow..."
"It’s easy to set up."
"The platform's most valuable feature is pipeline integration or continuous integration services."
"Current version of the solution is fairly stable."
"We are seeing some real improvements in the way we do things. We are becoming more agile in the way we do it because of that and in a way that stories are managed. Stories are given lifecycles as opposed to just being entities within a tool."
"It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most important feature is the integration among all the different features in just one tool: Agile management system, requirements management system, test management, defects management, automatic test execution. Really, if you're looking at other tools, you will never find all that integrated into just one tool with all the traceability, with all the elements in just one place."
"The solution natively supports Agile-Waterfall hybrid software development at an enterprise scale. This is very important to us. Because even though the company wishes to go Agile, we still have projects which follow a Waterfall methodology. In order for us to accommodate both, we needed some sort of hybrid system. Because if we are using a fully Agile system, then the reporting might not be correctly extracted."
"Grid: It is really strange that there is no possibility to edit an item in the grid. You need to go inside, and even then, not all items are editable, so you need to switch to edit mode. That's too many clicks and switches."
"Because I am a developer, I would like integration with Git Source Code Management so that for tickets, we can reference the code where the change has happened and where the issue is. This feature might be there, and I probably haven't discovered it."
"What I don't like is that perhaps there are not so many different apps that can add value over the management side of the product."
"Of course, the price could always be cheaper."
"Jira can improve by making user management better. It is not easy to have visibility of who has the right to do what. Only the administrator has this visibility but there should be the option for other users too."
"The reporting part is a little bit difficult for me. It is not so easy. There should be a simpler way to track the efforts of our team. For example, in an Excel sheet, there is a feature for filtering. It would be much better if we can use something like that. Currently, for a complex query, we need to use Jira Query Language. Using Jira Query Language every time is not efficient for me."
"I would like to see test execution modules."
"I would like our clients' IT group to be able to have oversight without setting up agents. We're managing tickets, and I'd like their IT group to see everything we're doing without having to set them up as agents. There should be a better way of managing their users. I've got such requests, but Jira is expensive, and it is difficult to pay an agent fee for somebody else to view these tickets. Currently, the only way in which I can do that is by setting a user up as an agent, and it becomes cost-prohibitive. They need to do a better job on ticket viewers."
"I like their smart analytics; perhaps they should continue to expand and improve there because it's a fantastic start."
"The Requirements Module could be better, to build up a better requirements process. There's a huge improvement from ALM.NET to Octane, but it's still not really facilitating all the needs of the product owners, to set up their requirements in Octane."
"The biggest problem with ALM Octane is that it's very complex, so it's difficult to use and scale."
"The solution should improve by adding scrum board-like functionality."
"We have some requests to beef up the manual testing abilities and the ability to report on testing progress. All the basics are there, but there's an issue of maintainability. For example... once you plan a test and it creates a run, more particularly a suite run, you can't edit the suite run afterward... That that is not realistic with how people work. Mistakes are made and people are humans and we change our minds about things. So the tool needs to allow for a bit more flexibility in that testing area, as well as some better widgets to report on progress."
"Currently, Micro Focus ALM Octane is considered an old-world tool in the industry and lacks the perception of being a new-age tool among its customers."
"Documentation is not clear."
"The elements in filtering need to be improved, meaning the number of filters I can use in widgets or in the grid views in parallel. There's a limitation which bothers a lot of our users. Filtering in text, or having a complex filter is limited. In a given field, for example, I can use a filter only once. I cannot say, 'Include the values 1, 2, and 3, and exclude value 17.' This is not possible but we have requested it often."
Jira is ranked 2nd in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 259 reviews while OpenText ALM Octane is ranked 5th in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 38 reviews. Jira is rated 8.2, while OpenText ALM Octane is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Jira writes "A great centralized tool that has a good agile framework and is useful for day-to-day planning, task management, and work log efficacy". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OpenText ALM Octane writes "Reporting engine, widgets, and dashboards are a huge plus, and powerful REST interface means we can interact with other tools". Jira is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, IBM Rational DOORS, Rally Software, Polarion ALM and TFS, whereas OpenText ALM Octane is most compared with OpenText ALM / Quality Center, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Rally Software, GitLab and Codebeamer. See our Jira vs. OpenText ALM Octane report.
See our list of best Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites vendors.
We monitor all Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
ALM Octane integrates easily out of the box with Jira,
additionally, once you DevSecOps users are onboard to Octane,
they will realize Octane does more, so they can reduce their dependence on Jira.
Several of my customers have come to this realization.
Octane is an Enterprise solution, but Jira is not.