Rally vs. Jira vs. Jira Align

As organizations strive to become or remain more agile, they search for agile project management software solutions that can help them to adopt an enterprise-wide agile methodology.

Rally Software and Jira remain widely used as project, program, and portfolio management tools, but as the Agile development process scales, more organizations favor a move to Jira Align. This article aims to look into the best fit solution for your business.

​​What Is Rally Software?

Rally Software (previously known as Agile Central) is an agile planning and execution platform that lets teams and organizations plan, prioritize, manage and track their work. It is popular with mid-sized companies that need a software solution that aligns goals and business goals, improving efficiencies. It integrates with Jira, CA, Github, etc., and includes many tools, including a portfolio kanban, release tracking, a risk dashboard, and a Github connector.

The Rally Software Team board helps align daily tasks with organizational strategies. It supports Scrum and Kanban so that teams can manage their workflows independently and view tasks across stages through Work Views. Rally software also supports planning capabilities for roll-ups, progress, dependencies, alignment, and planning.

What is Jira Software?

Jira Software is an issue and project tracking solution for all members of an agile software development team that can plan sprints, track tasks and issues, and release software based on organized best-practice methodologies. The software is customizable so that teams can opt for a ready-to-use workflow or create their own. Teams can track performance and dependencies with visual tools and reports. Jira Software integrates with over 3,000 apps in the Atlassian Marketplace.

Like Rally Software, Jira features Scrum and Kanban views to increase communication and enhance visibility. It can be used by several teams, including any business team (HR, Marketing). A Work in Progress (WIP) feature allows teams to spot and prevent bottlenecks for a smoother workflow. Reporting tools support more than a dozen agile report formats and a built-in automation engine, making it easy for teams to automate at scale without coding.

What is Jira Align?

Jira Align is the first-ever platform built for scaling agile methods enterprise-wide. Jira Align is utilized for change planning, delivery, measurement, and learning across development cycles. Strategy is directly linked to customer outcomes since all work is visible, even at an enterprise scale. Jira Align helps to get and keep team members aligned to organizational goals to maximize outcomes and accelerate digital transformation and strategy.

Comparing Jira, Rally Software, and Jira Align

While Jira, Rally Software, and Jira Align have some similarities, they have a few key differences. And these differences can have a considerable impact, depending on your goals and the size of your business.

Which tool for what type of enterprise?

Rally Software is an excellent solution for companies that want to adopt agile methods across business stages but is particularly well-suited for managing software development projects.

Jira Software is an agile project management tool for a wide variety of teams and use cases. Small to large businesses can use Jira for issue tracking, customer support, product development, and more.

As companies grow and scale, they will need to migrate to Jira Align. Jira Align provides guardrails that allow organizations to access predefined best-practice configurations to improve visibility and predictability. Jira Align brings transparent Agile reporting, focusing on delivery and process improvement to support Agile at the enterprise level.

Views

All three tools have comparable views, including portfolio and program Kanban views for backlogs. This allows teams to create customized process flows and to test and evolve their custom build. However, unlike Rally Software, both Jira and Jira Align have excellent roadmapping views.

Jira Align’s road mapping feature can extend three program increments to the future while still including predictability and percentage of confidence rates. Jira Align will also automatically push the known accepted velocity into the backlog. Unlike Rally, the roadmap is a robust module that captures high-level strategic themes and granular tasks like features. This view adds additional value to enterprises that want to learn from data in real-time to upscale their data radiation and for team members that want to track progress.

Workspaces for planning, managing and tracking

Jira Align provides several rooms that allow various levels and multiple teams to track how specific individual portfolios and programs function against execution, risks, dependencies, and objectives. Unlike Rally, the Dependency Object is a robust manageable object that paints pictures on the program board to plan increments, rooms, and other reports.

Conclusion of the tool comparison

Although Rally, Jira, and Jira Align are all decent project management tools, Jira Align offers the most flexibility, visibility, and guardrails for your organization. Align is the only tool suited for Enterprise-level Scaling and can meet any business and development needs.

When deciding to adopt a new project management application, pick one that is flexible and able to grow with your business needs. Speak to your software partner about migration to find the tools that fit your unique needs.