Both Jira and Trello are offerings of the same vendor, Atlassian. So, these two most popular project management tools are offered by the same organization. But they still have multiple differences and different target audiences, which is why they compete in numerous scenarios. Since Jira was designed for software and development teams, it mainly targets software engineers, developers, or project managers working on software projects. In contrast, Trello has a much broader target audience, as it basically offers multiple kinds of project tracking. In this article, I will discuss about Jira, Trello, and their key differences.
What is Trello?
Collaborating and communicating through a team when working on a project can be a huge headache. For one thing, you have to attend countless meetings so that your team can plan, manage and track the project. You also have to manage hundreds of emails that are part of long email threads to be able to keep track of all of your project conversations. Also, there is a challenge of keeping up with the administrative workload associated with managing a project. As a result, collaborating and communicating with your team on a project is more time consuming and a bigger hassle than working on the project itself.
Fortunately, there is a better way, that is Trello. Trello is a project management software created for small businesses and big organizations. Trello board lists and cards enable you to organize and prioritize your projects in a fun, flexible, and rewarding way. With Trello, you can plan, organize and track your projects by creating project boards that contain tasks lists, progress lists, workflow lists, and much more. Trello cards allow you to manage your conversations and dive into the details by adding comments, attachments, and due dates. But the best thing of all is that you can boost productivity by unleashing the power of automation across your entire team with Trello’s built-in workflow automation.
Now let me tell you the advantages of Trello. First off, Trello can be used immediately after signing up. So, Trello offers you a free sign up after which you get access to almost all of Trello’s features. Now it does have a premium service, but most of Trello’s essential features are available in the free account. Secondly, it follows the Kanban system. So the Kanban system is a popular methodology that can be used to achieve lean. In Trello you can also achieve lean. Trello also has a very popular mobile application that also has the same features as the interface that you see on the desktop. This is very user-friendly also. Now the next advantage is that all project related items can be seen on one page, which means everything you need about the project is available in one place. Next, adding new members creating issues, and assigning them is very easy with the help of Trello.
What is Jira?
Jira is a bug-tracking and project management software that helps teams deliver higher-quality products faster. With Jira, you can organize your projects into releases, identify and assign workflows to relevant team members, and more easily track progress. This issue and project management software has been in use for over 19 years. It has all the features you need to run a successful company, and it is free! Jira is used by all sorts of companies, from major corporations like Microsoft and Walmart to small startups like Uber and Airbnb. When you are using Jira, it will assume that your team is using the agile methodology. I have worked with teams who are using Jira, and they are not using the agile methodology. There are apps and plugins that you can get in order to have Jira organize things differently, but by default, without any extended capabilities, Jira itself is an agile tool.
It is an easy-to-use platform that lets you create custom fields for tracking things that are most important to your team. And because it integrates with the tools of more than 12,000 different apps, there are a lot of ways to customize how it works. It can be used to manage everything from software development to marketing campaigns. It is also easy to get started with, which is why it is one of the most popular project management tools among entrepreneurs, small and mid-sized businesses.
We can also do test management activities, but Jira itself does not provide any test management activities by default. So, by default, in Jira, we cannot define the test cases, bugs. But we have a special plugin called Zephyr, and if we install that particular plugin within the Jira, we can also do test management activities. We can then also define the test cases, write the test cases, upgrade the status of the test cases, generate the test reports. So, everything we can do in the Jira itself is by using multiple plugins like Zephyr.
Jira vs Trello: Key Differences
Best Use Cases
Jira is really perfect software for developer based applications. So, if I am managing projects and I need something that is going to help my developers, manage new code implementation, develop new aspects of your product, as well as fix bugs, maybe a client backlog kind of situation, Jira is perfect for such specific developer situations.
Trello can also be used for dev teams, but the great thing about Trello is that it is much better for broad applications than Jira is. So, if I want not only my dev teams to be able to use it but also customer support, sales, and even HR teams in terms of managing new hires and new onboarding process, Trello is well suited. It uses the Kanban board style that can be used in a variety of ways for much more general applications across an entire company.
Easy to Use
Getting started with Jira is fairly easy. You get a lot of help from their company while implementing it with your team. But I must say that with the robustness of functionality and the developer focused applications of Jira, it probably takes a little bit longer time than an application like Trello.
With Trello, just because of the nature of their software, I think the simplicity of the application and its broad application across different use cases make it a lot faster to implement, a lot more out of the box preparation.
Pricing
Trello pricing is slightly better than Jira. The free tier of Trello is a lot useful for small teams as they can use it indefinitely. Whereas in Jira, only 10 users maximum can work on the free tier version.
Jira standard tier has a lesser price than the Trello Business class tier. The Trello business class tier price is around 12.5$ per user per month compared to 7$ per user per month in Jira standard tier. But in Jira, there is a storage limit, Trello business class has no storage limit.
Reporting
Jira has multiple report options such as a burndown chart, sprint report, velocity chart, cumulative flow diagram, and many more. These reports are highly customizable and configurable. With such reports, Jira helps you get valuable insights which want to know about the teams working on the project.
On the other hand, Trello does not have reporting options like Jira. It has power-ups which provide all the information about the projects.
Which one to choose, Jira or Trello?
Jira and Trello are actually made by the same company, which is Atlassian, and they both have great benefits of them. But I think you just have to be honest with yourself about what I am using it for. If this is a developer specific tool that you are looking for, Jira is great. But if you are looking for something that you use across your entire organization or it is primarily not on the dev side, it is project management in marketing and product specifically, then I think that Trello is a better fit in the sense that the simplicity of the application. The number of ways it can be used really effectively and again with the Kanban board style is something that I think is more intuitive for a majority of people.
Final Thoughts
So that was all about Trello, Jira, and their key differences. Trello is a simple and easy to use collaboration tool that can enable you to organize projects, and everything related to them into boards. With Trello, you can find all kinds of information being worked on, who is working on what, and what progress the project is making. And Jira is something that some of the world’s largest companies and organizations are using for their agile workflows because it is a lot easier to see things using a digital tool like Jira for a lot of teams. Both are very popular tools that will help you manage the projects efficiently. So choose the tool depending on the use case and get started with Jira or Trello.
