Work'n It: Jira Service Management vs. Jira Software vs. Jira Work Management

[Rachel McDonald]

I'll be honest...for quite a long while, I was seriously confused about the difference between Jira Service Management and Jira Software. And then Jira Work Management got thrown into the mix? YIKES. I was definitely on the Struggle Bus since my company was somehow using all 3 of them and the projects all seemed pretty similar.

But here's the breakdown of how we use them and how I finally figured out the difference....

Jira Service Management:
I'm on the Support Team and we handle (external) client requests. Clients can log in to their help desk portal or email to open an issue/ticket. Those tickets get assigned to a Support tech who works with the client to resolve the issue. The Support techs all work through their QUEUE of tickets. And all of this happens in our Help Desk Project. That all sounds very "Jira Service Management," right? Well, I was a little slow on that realization. But the detail that clicked for me that this was Jira Service Management was that we were communicating with folks OUTSIDE of the company. It was a total lightbulb moment.

Jira Software:
Our Development Team works in their own project with tickets that look a lot like tickets in the Help Desk project. But they didn't work out of queues...they worked in a BOARD. The change in visualization was a wild for someone who had spent years working in a queue and it was hard to get a handle on this new view. But the detail that clicked for me that this was Jira Software? They put their tickets into SPRINTS.

Jira Work Management:
Our Support Team also rolls out new client roll-outs in a separate Implementations project. That project has tickets that are assigned to Support techs to complete but there aren't external clients, this project is completely internal. But there weren't queues...we were working off of a BOARD. The realization that our Implementations project was Jira Work Management came from the little detail of NO SPRINTS. It just clicked! Yes, this project had a board but no, there weren't sprints!!

There are definitely articles out there that help explain the difference (Jira Work Management vs. Jira Software: What's the difference and which should you use? is a good one) but things just didn't click with reading article.

But if you are confused like I was, I would definitely suggest using the "Switch to" feature and select different programs:

Go through the projects that are in Jira Service Management, Jira Software, and Jira Work Management and figure out what makes them different. I was so stuck on seeing how they were similar, that I didn't think on seeing how they were different.

I'm still learning about all-things Atlassian, so please share your Ah Ha moments!