Jira Software vs Jira Service Management vs Jira Work Management

What are the differences between Jira Software, Jira Work Management and Jira Service Management?

There are many excellent products available from Atlassian. They occasionally overlap a bit, and some people may find the names a little confusing. Because of this, it could be challenging for beginners to navigate and distinguish between the tools. So let's clarify the situation.

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Jira helps teams plan, assign, track, report, and manage work and brings teams together for everything from agile software development and customer support to start-ups and enterprises.

Software teams build better with Jira Software, the #1 tool for agile teams. Deliver amazing service experiences across all teams from IT, Dev, Ops, and more with Jira Service Management. Business teams can unlock the power of agile and collaborate better with Jira Work Management.

With templates and solutions crafted for every team and Jira as your common language - work moves fluently and transparently across your organization.

Plan, track, and manage your agile and software development projects in Jira. Customize your workflow, collaborate, and release great software.

Connect Dev, IT Ops, and business teams. Quickly respond to change. Deliver exceptional service experiences.

Jira Work Management makes it easy for business teams to collaborate, align, and deliver work, all in one place.

Boards:

Backlog
Custom board filters
Custom quick filters
Epic filter
Swimlanes / grouping
Card colors
WIP limits
Multi status columns
Multiple boards per project

Issue List:

Filter
Epic hierarchy
Column configuration

Issue Collector / Forms

Gantt / Timeline / Plans:

Dependencies
Advanced plans (Premium only)
Display in advanced plans

Dashboards:

Default reports

Fields:

Versions
Components

Automations

Templates

Queues
Dashboards and Reports
Channels
Customers
Forms:

Show or hide fields
Headings
Field validation
Tables
Rich formatting

Workflows
Automation
SLAs
Service request management
Incident management
Problem management
Change management

Services:

Tier
Change approvers
Responders
Stakeholders
Relationships

Alerts
On-call scheduling

Navigation:

Custom background colours

Boards:

Column collapse
Predefined adhoc filters
Card customization
Subtasks on card

Calendar

Dashboards:

Default reports
Summary dashboard

Fields:

Versions
Components

Automations

Templates

Issue List:

Usability
Inline edit
Inline creation
Drag and drop
Grouping

Gantt / Timeline / Plans:

Dependencies

Software developers
QA and testing
Project managers
Program managers
Product designer
Product owners
Scrum masters

DevOps managers
IT operations managers
Support managers
IT Service desk agents
Enterprise Architect
Services owner

Business users
Marketing
Operations
HR
Legal
Finance
IT

Agile teams
Bug tracking
Project management
Product management
Process management
Task management
Software development
Requirements & test case management

ITSM
Service Desk
Enterprise Service Management
Service Request Management
Incident Management
Problem Management
Change Management
Asset Management
Customer Support
Ticketing Support

Non-technical team projects
Workflow approvals
Task management

Licensed by user
All Jira Software users can access Jira Work Management features

Users have access to:

Software projects & features
Business projects & features

Licensed by agent
Free and unlimited customers (users submitting requests)
All Jira Service Management agents can access Jira Work Management features

Users have access to:

Service management projects & features
Software projects & features
Business projects & features

All Jira Software users can access Jira Work Management features.
Users have access to Business Projects & features (Dashboards, Reports, etc).

Cloud
Data Center

Cloud
Data Center

Cloud

How do I choose between Jira Software, Jira Service Management and Jira Work Management?

The Short answer is: You don't need to!

The use of Jira by all teams throughout the organization has many advantages. Since tasks and tickets are only used in one place, it is simple to share status between teams and move tasks between projects in JWM, JSW, and JSM.

Jira Work Management is designed with useful views for non-technical teams because business teams operate differently and require different features from, for example, software developers.

Licensing is done by user. Jira Work Management users, Jira Service Management users and Jira Work Management Users can collaborate effectively in one system.

Know more about the difference between Jira Work management and Jira Software in our blog here!

Items vs Issues

Issue types are called Items in Jira Work Management and issues in Jira Software. You can move items/issues between the different products of Jira.

Customize your project

You can configure your Jira Work Management project in your favorite color. There are 14 different colors to choose from. In Jira Software and Jira Service Management, the projects are all white.

Use ready-made templates

In Jira Work Management you can choose to use pre-configured templates to set up the project, with workflow and issue types.

Built-in views for different purposes

Listing items in an Excel-like view and work on your daily work items in a board view. Jira Software boards include more features, like quick filters, card colours and swimlanes, but in Jira Work Management you can also plan for upcoming events in a calendar or viewing dependencies between items in a timeline view.

Reports track status and not lead/cycle time

Reports in Jira Software are more connected to lead and cycle time, while Jira Work Management reports are more based on counting items to track status.

Synchronous collaboration

Last but not least, with Jira Work Management’s collaborative mode functionality you can invite other users to work on the same project items at the same time. This is not possible in Jira Software.

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Atlassian Enterprise Platinum Solution Partner

Solution Partners provide the services, implementation, consulting, and unique solutions that help our users create what's next.

Our experts hold the following certificates and accolades:

Your point of contact:

Emilio Franke

Atlassian Conslutant

Specialization:

Cloud Migrations, Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Jira Work Management, Jira Align

You would like to see Jira Service Management in action?

We'll be happy to give you a tour. During a demo, we'll show you the features that are relevant to your business.

Feel free to write to us about what you would like to map with Jira Service Management.

Learn more about the features of Atlassian Cloud and Atlassian Self-Managed.

Atlassian Cloud Migration

Discover more about catworkx

What are the differences between Jira Software, Jira Work Management and Jira Service Management?

Meet the Jira family:

Feature Comparison

Who uses the Jira family?

What is Jira used for?

How does Jira licensing work?

How is Jira Hosted?

How do I choose between Jira Software, Jira Service Management and Jira Work Management?