JIRA vs TFS

JIRA is ranked 1st in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 15 reviews vs TFS which is ranked 4th in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites with 25 reviews. The top reviewer of JIRA writes "Using this for backlog prioritization is the key to either kanban or scrum processes". The top reviewer of TFS writes "Can Provide A Centralized Place To Store All Source Code And Build Information For Entire Organization". JIRA is most compared with TFS, Micro Focus ALM and IBM Rational Team Concert (IBM ALM). TFS is most compared with JIRA, Micro Focus ALM and CA Agile Central. See our JIRA vs TFS report.

JIRA

TFS

20594

JIRA

Based on 15 reviews.

18628

TFS

Based on 25 reviews.

Most Helpful Review

Joe Friedrichsen

Managing Director Business Change and Quality Assurance at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island

Using this for backlog prioritization is the key to either kanban or scrum processes.

Working in a dev shop that is 100% scrum, this tool is invaluable in its insights to how the process is working. Are the stories written well? Is... Read more »

SeniorSyb114

Senior System Engineer at a manufacturing company

Not just a source code repository, but a real and complete ALM solution

The TFS is not just a source code repository, but a real and complete ALM solution. Among other things, we use it as a ticketing tool. It is a... Read more »

Jira vs. tfs report from it central station 2018 03 04 thumbnail

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Quotes From Members Comparing JIRA vs TFS

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros
It helps me to use virtual Scrum boards across four locations, three time zones, and to plan my work. It fully supports the Scrum approach, and the Agile way of working, and it has Agile thinking behind it..It gave us control over all test artifacts in one place, along with easy traceability, mapping between stories, bugs, test cases, and test cycles.The traceability mapping feature is something that became very useful, especially during releases and bug fixes.JIRA stores history of changes, which helps a lot to track who, when, and why the issue was modified.Reports, analytics, and a ton of widgets, they are great and intuitive. Perfect for an agile team.For QA, the most interesting for me are boards, backlog, and filters.One of the valuable features is traceability from requirements to test cases.The adaptability of the Scrum and Kanban boards for other uses, with careful use of the customization features. Read more »	Complete integration with VS IDE and Office tools: This give us a possibility of high-level automation, thus minimizing human error.Version Control: TFS offers both the centralized “TFVC” version control technology as well as the distributed “Git” version control technology.I like its MTM (Microsoft Test Manager) section which gives us options to create various test plans and add test cases into it.The API for managing TFS programmatically is very powerful, you can listen on work items changes by TFS events.Work item management integration with source control.TFS’s test management capability without the expensive licensing has large gaps. Users will be unable to access performance testing and coded UI testing capabilities. Read more »
Cons
I struggle with Epics, how they are implemented in JIRA, because they don't work like any other Story, I see a list of Epics, but although I can order them, there are some mismatches with how the Epics are used compared to what Scrum expects, or what Story mapping expects an Epic to be.I would like to see visualization of release planning. I can list the releases and I can give dates to releases, but to show how they are happening on a timeline, I would need to order the Portfolio part. But just for this, it may be too much to use the Portfolio for that.It should have its own repository for test case creation, so that one does not have to resort to third-party tools and plugins.I would love to have more features to make nice documents, like Release Notes or a feature overview, right from JIRA.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.I would like to see test execution modules.Ease of administration and customization. It is really clunky in this area.There are some minor quirks, such as zero-point stories not appearing in the portfolio scope. Read more »	TFS on-premise does not support integration with SharePoint Online.Not all of the functionality, which is exposed by the command line interface (tf.exe) is available in the Visual Studio GUI.TFS and MTM have their own style of working and they are different from other tools like Jira or TestRail, which are simpler and easy to use.Sometimes we feel that it need more CPU, and RAMs on TFS server, either we implemented the hardware with the product minimum requirements.Microsoft should discontinue the use of SharePoint as I don’t really see any value add to TFS, document management features can be included in TFS web portal itself, if required!Access and permissions are confusing when attempting to include basic manual testing functionalities. Read more »

Pricing and Cost Advice

The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you.It is very cheap if you forego the local instance and stick to the cloud.

If running TFS on-premise is expensive, maybe you could consider moving to the Cloud and use the Visual Studio Team Services.Use the Microsoft recommended “seat-based” licensing model. This allows a single developer with multiple machines to consume only one client license.TFS is on the higher side, but if you intend to use the tool as a complete ALM tool, it will reduce your costs in the long run.It's just as expensive as HPE ALM, without many of the features, best used for development tool only to avoid higher costs.

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Answers from the Community

Rhea Rapps

Content Specialist at IT Central Station

Question: Compare JIRA and TFS; How Do I Choose?

Claudette Steynberg

We use both. It depends on your application and your budget.

For us, the Atlassian suite of tools required to do end-to-end ALM processing is very expensive (currency conversions also does not help). We, therefore, only use JIRA as an incident/support/planning tool.

We are a Microsoft partner and hence the VSTS/TFS tool suite is much more affordable to us. The visibility of this tool from backlog item to code, build test and released into production is amazing, but it lacks some of the basic admin capabilities that are well automated in JIRA e.g. as tasks are moved, the status of parent items/stories/epics are not automatically updated in VSTS. This adds a lot of admin overhead for product owners, scrum masters and team members.

If it weren’t for budget, the Atlassian suite will be my first choice. If you combine, JIRA, Bitbucket, and Bamboo you would get the same visibility.

We also use Confluence extensively as all our documentation are done Wiki style. We found SharePoint just becomes a repository and not a knowledge share platform.

Hope this helps!
Shout if you have questions.

13 March 18

See 20 answers

Ranking

RANKING

1st

out of 35

In Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

Views

62,521

Comparisons

44,884

Reviews

Followers

2,316

Avg. Rating

8.1

4th

out of 35

In Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

Views

27,646

Comparisons

22,533

Reviews

Followers

1,678

Avg. Rating

8.2

Top Comparisons

TFS vs. JIRA

Compared 32% of the time.

Micro Focus ALM vs. JIRA

Compared 19% of the time.

IBM Rational Team Concert (IBM ALM) vs. JIRA

Compared 5% of the time.

See more JIRA competitors »

JIRA vs. TFS

Compared 64% of the time.

Micro Focus ALM vs. TFS

Compared 14% of the time.

CA Agile Central vs. TFS

Compared 5% of the time.

See more TFS competitors »

Also Known As

Team Foundation Server

Website/Video

Atlassian

Microsoft

Overview

JIRA has multiple deployment options to provide the flexibility your organization needs.

Cloud is a fully hosted service for customers who want to iterate quickly and have us take care of managing the infrastructure.

For customers who need to run our applications behind their firewall, we have Server and Data Center options. Server delivers greater capacity for a larger user base and gives you more control, allowing you to remain compliant with your enterprise IT, security, IP and privacy policies. For our largest customers, Data Center provides all the capability of our Server option, along with high availability, instant scalability and performance at scale.

Atlassian also offers premium support and strategic services for enterprise customers. Technical Account Managers are cross-functional technical advisors providing proactive planning and strategic guidance across your organization. Premier Support goes above and beyond our standard offerings to give you account-wide support from a team of senior support engineers.

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) is the collaboration platform at the core of Microsoft's application lifecycle management (ALM) solution. TFS supports agile development practices, multiple IDEs and platforms locally or in the cloud and gives you the tools you need to effectively manage software development projects throughout the IT lifecycle.

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.

Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP

Top Industries

REVIEWERS

Manufacturing Company

16%

Insurance Company

16%

Healthcare Company

16%

Software R&D Company

16%

VISITORS READING REVIEWS

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

REVIEWERS

Financial Services Firm

36%

Software R&D Company

14%

Retailer

Energy/Utilities Company

VISITORS READING REVIEWS

Financial Services Firm

27%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Insurance Company

Marketing Services Firm

Company Size

REVIEWERS

Small Business

37%

Midsize Enterprise

16%

Large Enterprise

47%

VISITORS READING REVIEWS

Small Business

20%

Midsize Enterprise

17%

Large Enterprise

63%

REVIEWERS

Small Business

11%

Midsize Enterprise

24%

Large Enterprise

65%

VISITORS READING REVIEWS

Small Business

12%

Midsize Enterprise

17%

Large Enterprise

71%

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Find out what your peers are saying about JIRA vs TFS and others in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites.

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