Monday, December 21, 2020

Trello or Jira: Which agile team management tool should you pick?


 As the workflow of the software industries has become more intricate in recent times, team management has become an uphill task altogether. Managers are likely to face roadblocks like time-consuming meetings, communication barriers, task-delegation woes, failed deadlines, etc.

But all these inherent issues can be resolved to a great extent by adopting an agile approach for managing the teams and work. This approach helps in:

  •          splitting project tasks into smaller fragments
  •          enhance visibility and automate workflow
  •          improve team-efficiency, collaboration, and employee engagement
  •          assure better adherence to timelines
  •          improves budget-management

With such benefits to offer, let us have a look at the most trending agile team management solutions- Trello and Jira! Both of these are owned by the same vendor- Atlassian and are known for efficiently streamlining the project management tasks.

This write-up compares Trello and Jira and provides you clear visibility of their distinct capabilities, thus helping you to choose the right tool that befits your team management requirements.

Comparing Trello and Jira

Tasks Best Suited to Each Tool

Trello: managing smaller projects, tracking and categorizing tasks, business process management, monitoring workflows, etc.

Jira: managing technically complicated projects, complete development cycle- plan, design, develop, test, release, and support a software product.

Available Versions and Pricing Policies

The basic version of Trello is available for free. It not only provides access to all the project management features but also permits you to create boards and add users without imposing any limitations. Thus, Trello’s free version is ideal for entrepreneurs who desire a basic team-collaboration tool while being cost-efficient.

However, if your business processes require data from a third-party system or need to work with code from a repository; the paid versions of Trello – Enterprise or Business Class–should be preferred. Both versions offer board-collection functionality, certain administrative tools and also enable data syncing with other business systems like GitHub, Salesforce, Slack, etc. A monthly subscription fee is charged per user. Trello Enterprise comes with a tiered pricing system and offers some amazing features like premium customer support, two-factor authentication, on-boarding assistance, etc.

Jira doesn’t offer any free version, but the charges are negligible if purchased by smaller teams. For larger teams, Jira charges a subscription fee per user that becomes lesser as the team grows bigger. Moreover, it provides on-premise deployment to the users looking for customizing their set-up and installing the same on their existing hardware. It is available in several versions like Jira Core, Jira Service Desk, and Jira Software.

Project Management Features

Trello surpasses Jira by being a highly flexible, and visual Kanban task managing platform. However, Trello does not provide most of the agile features desired by a traditional software development company, like project reporting, planning scrums, and sprints, a backlog of user stories, code repositories, issue tracking, etc.

On the contrary, Jira offers a wide range of features designed to meet the needs of software development teams following the agile approach. Jira has the abilities to support Kanban and Scrum methodology as well as a combination of both if required. Its agile reporting functionalities like sprint planning, burn down charts, etc. enable managers to efficiently supervise and deliver functional product increments speedily.

Distribution and Management of Tasks

Trello is excellent in managing tasks and also comes with an easy learning curve. Trello logs tasks employing a three-tier hierarchy namely Lists, Boards, and Cards. The managers can use their discretion in creating and organizing these elements, assigning due dates, attaching required files, assigning cards to particular users, etc. The only drawback of managing tasks in Trello is the absence of pre-built workflows. Due to this, the existing boards need to be copied and customized or processes need to be created from scratch for any task that needs to be managed.

Jira offers the same task management features but follows a different approach. It offers workflows that aid teams in building, testing, and releasing software products. It also allows one to build custom workflows for use in other agile and product development scenarios. However, since Jira’s task management functionalities are directly embedded within an agile framework, it offers lesser flexibility in tasks other than software release.

Collaborating with Teams

Both Trello and Jira simplify collaboration but in different ways.

Trello permits the board to be shared with an unlimited number of persons and provides each user with similar visibility of the tasks and project status. Users can communicate by commenting directly on cards. They can share attachments, mention other teammates’ names, and use emoj is as well. Managers can distribute tasks to users by assigning them to specific cards and then the users are notified via SMS, email, or push notifications, etc.

Jira offers numerous collaboration features like instant messaging, file sharing, task assignment to team members, and custom notifications. Jira offers several agile features that prove beneficial to managers planning to organize their tasks in sprints. It also supports Mixed methodologies, Kanban and Scrum.

Third-party Integration Capacities

Trello’s provides a list of native applications and integration connections like Slack, GitHub, Salesforce, Zendesk, and Google Drive. Jira outshines Trello by offering a huge library of native integrations that work for all types of solutions used for test management, time-tracking, code review, e-mail, reporting, and cloud storage.

Final thoughts

I hope this article has provided you the necessary information that will help you select the team management tool. If you are looking for custom software solutions for team management, try Biz4Solutions, a top mobile app development company. Reach us at sales.enquiry@biz4solutions.com.

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