Is JIRA a project management + test management tool?

[Chakshu Jain]

Hi All,

Our team is planning to get JIRA as the project management tool. Just wondering that what are the capabilities of JIRA? Is it just a project management tool or does it incorporate test management tool features as well (Like HPQC). If yes, why do we need a test management tool that should integrate with JIRA? If not, why do we call it a bug tracking and management tool? Your views are appreciated.

Thanks

[Joao Mendonca]

JIRA s a great tool for Test Management, as it is for Requirement and Defect management.

Please take a look at this free e-book that details precisely how JIRA can be used as a Test Management tool for both manual and automated tests.

Xray for JIRA is such an add-on that takes advantage of JIRA and empowers it with test management features, allowing you to create, organise, plan and execute all your different test types.

Regards,

João

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It's an issue tracker at it's heart.  That lends it to project management, as a project is based on "a list of things we need to do to achieve the goal of the project goal".

You can make it do some levels of test tracking, but as an issue tracker generally expects issues to be raised, worked on and then done, it's not ideal as a test tracker on its own (I'd expect a test tracker to support "test plans" that can be re-used over and over).

There are a number of test management tools that integrate with JIRA to provide that sort of stuff, and several that are add-ons that add test management in so you don't have to have another tool to handle the tests.

The reason it's often called a bug tracking and management tool is because it's an issue tracker.  Bugs are raised as issues, and the lifecycle of raise/reproduce/fix/build-new-version (and much more complex processes of course) can all be handled in there.

[Deleted user]

Zephyr for JIRA and Zephyr Enterprise are also can be reviewed for test/defect management purposes.

[Doug Swartz]

As others note, at it's heart, JIRA is issue management. Because of it's flexibility and the many available add-ons, it can be used for many purposes. 

In my company, in addition to defect and issue tracking, it's used for project management for almost any type of team you can imagine. it's used for service request management. Even the legal team uses it to manage what they're working on. It's also used for test management, replacing HPQC. We built our own test management add-on several years ago, but now there are several in the marketplace to choose from. 

[Cheney Ma [Go2Group]]

Agree with Nic, JIRA is an issue tracker at its heart.

If you need any features beyond of this, you can install JIRA add-ons from JIRA Marketplace.
These add-ons just like apps in Apple Store, they add more features and extend JIRA's capabilities to handle different aspects of your project management, like reporting, test case management & test management etc. 

synpaseRT NextGen is a JIRA add-on to add testing capability (Test Case Management, Test Management & Requirement Traceability) to JIRA.