Going Big: Jira to Jira Align

Today, Jira seems to be as old as the hills. Everyone is nowadays familiar with the project management tool launched over 20 years ago. Since then it has been adopted by more than 65K companies and has become associated with Agile ways of working.

Five years ago, Atlassian launched Jira's "Big Brother" - Jira Align, a platform built for scaling lean and agile frameworks. Although the two tools are integrated, they serve different purposes and offer unique benefits. Understanding the differences between the two can help teams make informed decisions about which tool best fits their needs.

Purpose and Scope:

Jira is primarily a software development tool designed to help teams plan, track, and release software. It is used for issue tracking, project management, and agile development. Jira is highly customizable and can be tailored to meet the specific needs of software development teams.

In terms of work hierarchy, Jira can only go up to Feature level tracking, as it has been designed to primarily manage team level work items.

On the other hand, Jira Align is an enterprise agile planning platform that is designed to help organizations scale agile across the enterprise. 

It provides a way to align strategy, planning, and execution across multiple teams and projects. Jira Align is aimed at larger organizations that need to coordinate and synchronize the work of multiple agile teams.

Jira Align can scale tracking of work up to ART and Portfolio level, giving the opportunity to monitor progress and delivery of Program Level objectives or Portfolio Epics.

Features and Functionality:

While Jira is focused on issue tracking, task management, and agile development processes, Jira Align offers features for strategic planning, portfolio management, and creating alignment at scale.

Jira Align provides features like dependency management, road mapping, and enterprise-level reporting and analytics, which are not available in Jira.

Integration and Scalability:

Jira integrates with a wide variety of other software tools and has a large ecosystem of add-ons and integrations to extend its functionality. Jira works well for smaller to medium-sized teams and can be adopted at the team level.

Jira Align, on the other hand, is designed for larger organizations that need to scale agile practices across the enterprise. It is built to support multiple teams, programs, and portfolios within a single integrated platform. 

Jira Align also provides integration with Jira Software which allows the two tools to work together seamlessly.

Choosing the Right Tool:

The decision between Jira and Jira Align ultimately depends on the specific needs and scale of the organization. 

For smaller teams and software development projects, Jira may be the more appropriate choice due to its focus on agile development and issue tracking. 

For larger organizations looking to scale agile practices across multiple teams and projects, Jira Align offers the features and capabilities needed to align strategy and execution at the enterprise level.

In conclusion, Jira and Jira Align serve different purposes and are designed for different scales of operations. Understanding the differences and benefits of each tool can help organizations make the right choice based on their specific needs and goals. 

Both tools offer powerful capabilities for project management and agile development, but the key is to choose the one that best aligns with the organization's size and requirements.