GitLab
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Jira
vs
Decision Kit
Decision Kit
GitLab vs Jira Overview
Jira Software is an issue tracker and agile project management application. Portfolio for Jira Portfolio is a separate add-on that enables portfolio management in Jira Software. Jira Service Desk is a separate application to enable IT and customer service capablilities. Jira Core is a scaled down version of Jira Software that contains the general project management capabilities without the software and agile-specific functionality of Jira Software.
Jira is available via 3 deploment models:
- Cloud: SaaS version of Jira hosted and managed by Atlassian
- Server: self-managed version that can be deployed on a single server
- Data Center: self-managed version that can be deployed to multiple servers for high availability.
Gaps
- Extending the native functionality of Jira is done through plugins. Plugins are expensive to maintain, secure, and upgrade. In contrast, GitLab is open core and anyone can contribute changes directly to the codebase, which once merged would be automatically tested and maintained with every change.
Comments/Anecdotes
- From customer comment on why they won’t switch from Jira: > Probably some of these features could be worked around in GitLab (e.g. by using labels exclusively). In particular for our organization we have been using Jira for much longer than GitLab. Migrating to another issue tracking system for existing project would be less than trivial, i.e. if one wants to maintain the history.
- From HackerNews JIRA customer about JRA and how it makes their developers feel:
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Agreed that the problem isn’t directly Jira, but (anecdotally maybe) there seems a clear correlation between Jira and unhappy developers who feel their tracker has way too much process. Jira doesn’t cause the root problem, but Atlassian are profiting from it existing, and so maybe people are encouraged to use it in those ways. I’m not letting it off the hook so easily.
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JIRA makes it dangerously easy to implement overly bureaucratic processes. A certain kind of organization is drawn to it for that reason. Even a healthy organization switching to JIRA can get carried away with the tools now at its disposal.
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Resources
Integrations
GitLab has Jira integration that allows Jira Software to be used as an issue tracker for the planning stage while using GitLab for the rest of the DevOps lifecycle: source code management, CI/CD, and monitoring.
Pricing
Jira Software pricing - Cloud - Flat $10 per month for up to 10 users - $7 per user/month for 11-100 users - Server: $3,600 one-time payment (50 users) - Data Center: $12,000 per year (500 users)
Portfolio for Jira pricing - Cloud - Flat $10 per month for up to 10 users - $3.50 per user/month for 11-100 users - Server: $9,900 one-time payment (500 users) - Data Center: n/a
Jira Service Desk pricing - Cloud - Flat $10 per month for up to 3 agents - $20 per agent/month - Sever: $13,200 one-time payment (50 agents) - Data Ceneter: $60,000 per year (500 agents)
Jira Core pricing - Cloud - Flat $10 per month for up to 10 users - $5 per user/month for 11-100 users - Small teams: $10 One-time payment for up to 10 users - Growing teams: $13,200 one-time payment (500 users)
Comparison
A few missing features in GitLab that JIRA has from this comment - The concept of “Components” with a configurable set of default assignee’s and associate component watchers (this is separate from “Labels”, which also exist in Jira) - Multiple issue types - Configurable set of fields and screens for each issue type - Workflow definition (e.g. allowed transitions for each issue status) for each issue type - Fine-grained notifications control for each issue action
Feature Comparison
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Issues
Quickly set the status, assignee or milestone for multiple issues at the same time or easily filter them on any properties. See milestones and issues across projects. |
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Description Templates
By adding a description template to your issues or merge requests, users who create a new issue or merge request can select a template to help them to communicate effectively. |
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GitLab Flavored Markdown
GitLab uses ‘GitLab Flavored Markdown’ (GFM). It extends the standard Markdown in a few significant ways to add some useful functionality. |
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Labels
Labels provide an easy way to categorize issues, merge requests, or epics based on descriptive titles as ‘bug’, or ‘documentation’. |
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Issue Weights
GitLab lets you manage issues using Agile practices by setting the weight of an issue. |
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Milestones
Create and manage milestones at both the project and group levels, viewing all the issues for the milestone you’re currently working on, representing an Agile program increment or a release. |
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Iterations
Create and manage iterations at the group level, view all the issues for the iteration you’re currently working on within your group or project, and enable all subgroups and projects to stay in sync on the same cadence. |
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Issue Due Dates
In GitLab, you can set a due date for individual issues. This is very convenient if you have small tasks with a specific deadline. |
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Multiple Issue Assignees
Assign more than one person to an issue at a time. |
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Confidential Issues
Keep your information secure with Confidential Issues. With GitLab, you can create confidential issues visible only for project members with Reporter access level or above. |
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Issue Dependencies
Explicitly mark issues as blocked and blocking and track their status. Blocked issues are visible in the issue card view for easy identification. |
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Linked Issues
Mark issues as related to one another. |
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Move Issue to Another Project
You can move issues between projects in GitLab. All links, history and comments will be copied and the original issue will reference the newly moved issue. This makes working with multiple issue trackers much easier. |
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Mark Issue as Duplicate
Mark an issue as a duplicate of another issue, closing it. |
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New Issue via Email
Create an issue from email by sending in the issue title and description. |
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Burnup Charts
With Milestone and Iteration Burnup Charts, you can better understand scope change during a sprint or while working on a new version of your software. |
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Burndown Charts
GitLab provides Burndown Charts as part of Milestones and Iterations. This allows users to better track progress during a sprint or while working on a new version of their software. |
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Project Issue Board
GitLab has Issue Boards, each list of an Issue Board is based on a label that exists in your issue tracker. The Issue Board will therefore match the state of your issue tracker in a user-friendly way. |
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Group Issue Board
Issue board scoped at the group level, so that you can view issues in all projects of that group. |
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Multiple Project Issue Boards
Large companies often have hundreds of different projects, all with different moving parts at the same time. GitLab allows for multiple Issue Boards for a single project so you can plan, organize, and visualize a workflow for a feature or product release. Multiple Issue Boards are particularly useful for large projects with more than one team or in situations where a repository is used to host the code of multiple products. |
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Multiple Group Issue Boards
Multiple Group Issue Boards, similar to Multiple Project Issue Boards |
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Issue Board Label Lists
An Issue Board is based on its project’s label structure, therefore, it applies the same descriptive labels to indicate placement on the board. GitLab issues can appear on multiple issues and they still have meaning without the context of a particular board. |
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Issue Board Configuration
Associate a board with a milestone, labels, an assignee, and a weight |
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Issue Board Focus Mode
Get more information at a time with the Issue Board focus mode, which removes all unnecessary elements from the screen to show your Issue Boards. |
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Add Multiple Issues to Project Issue Board
From an Issue Board, you can add multiple issues to lists in the board by selecting one or more existing issues. |
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New Issue in Issue Board List
With GitLab Issue Boards, you can create issues directly from the board and assign multiple labels allowing them to appear on multiple boards. |
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Issue Board Types
Issue boards/dashboards reflect an organizations flow for processing work items. These boards can reflect individualized workflow or follow established patterns. Issue board types with established patterns (such as Scrum and Kanban) can make setup of new boards easier. |
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Issue Board Configuration with Advanced Logic
Define what issues show in an issue board using advanced Boolean logic. |
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Time Tracking
Time Tracking in GitLab lets your team add estimates and record time spent on issues and merge requests. |
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Single level Epics
Plan and track features and work group level epics that collect issues together. Easily create and assign Issues directly from the Epic itself |
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Multi-level Epics
Plan and track strategies, initiatives, and features with multi-level epics that collect issues together. Manage multiple children epics and their issues within the Epic Tree by dragging and dropping them to organize and prioritize the work. |
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Confidential Epics
Organize a collection of related confidential issues into a confidential epic, allowing you to manage sensitive work more efficiently. |
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Roadmaps
Visualize multiple epics and milestones across time in a roadmap view. |
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Portfolio-level Roadmaps
Visualize multiple parent and child epics across time in a Roadmap view to gain insight into how your portfolio of work is progressing. Establishing the product vision and strategy to organize, govern and shape the effort of multi-disciplinary teams building specific business services and features. |
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Out-of-the-box Agile Reporting
Teams have access to more than a dozen out-of-the-box reports with real-time, actionable insights into how their team is performing sprint over sprint. Example reports are sprint burndown, epic burndown, cumulative flow diagram, velocity chart, burn up chart, and sprint report. |
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Requirements Management
With Requirements Management you are able to gather, document, refine, and track approval of business and system requirements. Manage and track the relationships between requirements and other requirements, requirements and code, or requirements and test cases for each version of requirements. Specific features will include definition, traceability, and requirement hierarchy and dependency. |
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Satisfy Requirements from CI/CD pipelines
This powerful feature uses the GitLab single-application model to allow testing run in the CI/CD pipelines to satisfy your requirements. This automates the cumbersome task of identifying satisfied requirements, and enables your organization to focus on delivering value. |
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Import & Export Requirements
To better collaborate with external groups and organizations, requirements can be imported and exported in CSV format. This allows teams to use a single interface for development and testing against requirements. |
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Service Desk
Allow external users to create issues in your GitLab instance without an account and without access to anything except their issue. Manage tickets from the GitLab interface. |
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Service Desk Custom Branding
Allow customization of incoming issues and response emails, including the service desk user name to allow for a cohesive branding experience for your customers. |
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Portfolio Management
Plan and track work at the project and portfolio level. Manage capacity and resources together with Portfolio Management. |
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Create, search and view issues from chat
Quickly create, view and search for issues straight from chat. |
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Mattermost integration
Mattermost can be automatically installed and integrated using GitLab Omnibus |
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Multiple integrations
GitLab can integrate with Authentication and Authorization (LDAP / AD) mechanisms, multiple 3rd party services, CI/CD, and other tools such as ALM, PLM, Agile and Automation tools. |
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Automatically close issue(s) when a merge request is merged
With GitLab, you can use specific keywords to close one or more issues as soon as a merge request is merged. |
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Configurable issue closing pattern
Define your own specific keywords to close one or more issues as soon as a merge request is merged. |
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