Jira Software vs Jira Work Management

[Jedediah Russell]

I'm currently testing the free version of Jira Software to see whether it is appropriate for our organization, but I now realize that Jira Work Management might be a better fit. Unfortunately, because I created my account using Jira Software I'm unable to effectively gauge what features are available with Jira Software but not Jira Work Management. In addition, there's been a lot of updates in the last few years since Work Management was released making it hard to believe what I read on other sites/posts.

If I could get some input on whether the following are available in Jira Work Management it would be greatly appreciated:

• Custom Dashboards
  • Which dashboard widgets are available in Jira Work Management? Important widgets include Activity Stream and Custom Filter widgets.
• Advanced Querying using JQL
• Jira Cloud app integration with Microsoft Outlook and MS Teams
• Apps through the Atlassian Marketplace

Many thanks!

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi Jedediah,

Welcome to Atlassian Community! 

The things that you are looking for like the dashboard is available for JWM, that is a basic feature that is included in all flavors of Jira. The main reason between JWM and JSW is that JSW boards can be either scrum or kanban, in JWM you can only use kanban. Another difference with the boards is that in JSW a board can bring in issues from multiple projects if needed, this is not possible in JWM. You can see more differences here, Jira Work Management vs. Jira Software: What's the difference and which should you use? 

[Trudy Claspill]

More differences - 

Your ability to configure the board in a JWM project is much more limited than in a JSW project.

A JWM project board will show columns for only one workflow at a time. If you have multiple workflows for your issues, you can't show all of them at once on the board. In a JSW board you just map statuses to columns as you wish to show everything at once. In JWM you don't map statuses to columns - the columns are derived automatically from the statuses in the workflow.

JWM has the Summary page that provides a dashboard, but you can't modify what is displayed there.

JWM boards don't support Swimlanes.

The customization of cards in JWM boards is more limited.

JWM projects come with a single pre-designed board. You can't make additional boards that function the same way based on filters. If you purchase only the JWM product I believe you also don't get the ability to create additional boards. That is a feature available if you buy JSW, and with JSW you could make boards for JWM projects based on filters, but the boards would not function the same as the board that comes with the JWM project.

JWM boards hide issues that have been "done" for more than 14 days, and you can configure that like you can in a JSW Kanban board.

JWM boards don't have the Quick Filters feature. They do have a filtering feature, but it is not the same nor as flexible.