Jira Product Management: The Best on the Market?

Last week, I published an article highlighting the 10 best product management apps for your team. Today, we will focus on the top-seeded entry on that list: Jira. 

Product management guides every step of a product’s lifecycle– from development to positioning to pricing. It’s a hefty to-do. And it requires a solid, reliable hub for your team’s tasks. Luckily, there are product management tools that offer you and your team just that.  

What are product management apps?

Product management apps are software-based tools that help product teams execute all phases of the product lifecycle. This includes planning, researching, developing, and launching products. 

With more and more teams going remote, there’s even more reason to possess a central place to develop and manage products.

What makes a great product management application?

Interface

A UI (user interface) that strikes a balance between aesthetically pleasing and practical is a must. The best product management apps have a clean, intuitive user interface with modern appointments that translate well across different operating systems. Your team needs an experience that feels instinctive and seamless in both mobile and PC variants. 

Usability

Implementing new software can mean dealing with unproductive learning curves. Minimize setbacks by choosing an app that offers adequate customer support across multiple mediums. The best product management apps provide training, blogs, webinars, and other material to assist your team while learning the platform.

Features and Functionality

The right app will facilitate productivity by offering a way to manage and organize product-specific duties. The proper storage of functional details, files, and discussions is largely dependent upon product spec templates. All good product management systems should incorporate them. 

Additionally, you want a tool that captures customer (and in-team) feedback. This can be received through email, support chats, and browser-based help tools. The best product management applications compile the feedback into highly readable and actionable results. 

Does the product management tool have an apps marketplace to connect you with first- and third-party applications in order to unlock additional features? 

Value

Above all else— you need a good value. The best product management applications carry an appropriate price for their features. The cost should be clear, transparent, and flexible. 

Jira

This article will outline the interface, features, and cost of Atlassian’s Jira. Jira Software is a business process management tool used by agile teams to plan, track and release software. 

Interface

The project board includes a drag-and-drop interface that allows teams to manage every project detail. From a developer’s perspective, usability is often quite good, though non-tech may consider it slightly more difficult. Jira is a feature-rich application that is very flexible and customizable, which may lend itself to a more difficult learning curve.

Scrum boards

A Scrum board is a tool used to help organize a Scrum project and add progress visibility. The Scrum board is broken down into columns, with each one representing a different phase of progress, for example, “Not Started,” “In Progress,” “In Review,” and “Complete.” 

With Jira, scrum boards are accessible to any team member at any time, so everyone understands their role in the project. This is the tool that unites teams around a single goal and promotes iterative, incremental delivery. Jira Software’s scrum boards can be customized to fit your team’s unique workflow, allowing you to add your own flavor to the process. 

Roadmaps

in Jira, there are team-level roadmaps useful for planning large pieces of work several months in advance within a single project. 

Software development teams can sketch out the big picture, communicate plans with stakeholders, and ensure the roadmap connects to the team’s work. Users can strategically plan and track work across multiple teams and monitor the health of their initiatives.

Reporting

The software provides teams access to many out-of-the-box reports that give users real-time, actionable insights into how their team is performing sprint over sprint. These reports offer critical insights for scrum, kanban, and any agile methodology in between — allowing your team to identify trends and work smarter.

Jira’s Pricing

Jira offers flexible “per user” pricing. This means you pay for precisely the number of users you have on your team. Jira even offers a free plan for teams with under 10 members. The rates are as follows:

Free: Free for teams with under 10 members.

Standard: $7.50 per user per month.

Premium: $14.50 per user per month.

Enterprise: Billed annually. Switch the Billing cycle to Annual to view Enterprise pricing.