Which Jira Should I Get?

A photo of the blog post's author
Senior Consultant
4 min read /

You're probably reading up on Jira because you're looking for a great tool to manage workflows, tasks, and issues, right? Look no further, because these are definitely Jira's core features.

Now that you've discovered Jira all that's left to do is to figure out which Jira version you actually need for your use case. So what exactly are the differences between Jira Core, Jira Software, Jira Service Management and Jira Ops? Here's an overview:

Jira Core

Is your team project-oriented and looking for a flexible tool to organize the different tasks and processes? This should include creating simple to-do-lists, but also modelling complex, automated, workflows? Then Jira Core is your choice.

  • Work with predefined workflows and adapt them to your needs.
  • Manage processes, requests and issues.
  • Work together on issues – transparently and comprehensibly.

Jira Software

Jira Software is the tool for all you agile teams out there. In addition to the sophisticated workflow mechanisms in Jira Core, you can organize the team's tasks in Scrum and Kanban boards.

  • Create individual Scrum and Kanban boards along with the respective reports (burndown charts, velocity charts, cumulative flow charts etc.)
  • Manage your time and your priorities in sprints.
  • Manage open issues in backlogs and different topic epics.
  • Integrate your development tools.

Jira Service Management

Looking for a tool to manage all your service requests? Pick Jira Service Management. It combines all of the Jira Core features with the resources you need to manage and resolve all incoming service tickets from other teams or your customers. 

  • Manage issues and tickets in one space using automated workflows.
  • Prioritize the issues to stick to your Service Level Agreements.
  • Integrate a knowledge base to enable users to help themselves.
  • End-users both internally and externally don't need a license.

Different versions of the Jira tool and their features at a glance

Jira Ops

Jira Ops is the latest addition to the Jira family and it should be your first choice for successful incident management.

  • Automatically alert the right people if something goes wrong.
  • Keep up to date with all incident details and measures with the incident timeline.
  • Integrate Slack, OpsGenie, PagerDuty, xMatters and other tools you already like working with.
  • Keep you customers informed with automated Statuspage updates.
  • Learn from past incidents with the detailed incident reports.
  • See how others handle these situations and check out Atlassian's incident management handbook for tips and tricks.

Your Use Case, Your Jira

A question that comes up a lot when talking to other Jira users and people wanting to get started: Can I combine the different Jira versions? The answer is yes, of course. You can combine one Jira version with another and also use all four different applications at the same time. To fit the tool to your team's needs even better, you can add one or a whole range of the Atlassian Marketplace apps to your Jira instance.

Get in Touch

We hope this post helps you figure out which Jira will become your Jira. If you're looking for more help in making your decision, have questions about licenses or if you have an idea for an individual project, talk to us!

Let's find the perfect solution for your use case.
Get in touch