Jira vs Confluence

Differences Between Jira and Confluence

In this discussion, we will cover Jira vs Confluence. Thus, before going into the difference between the both let us learn some basics about both Jira and Confluence.

What is JIRA?

JIRA is a tool developed by Atlassian which is an Australian Company. The main purpose of Jira is to track bug, track related issue, and it is used for project management.

Jira is designed for project management in an agile way and that is the reason for which most of the official documentation is written with this. But in a practical scenario, people use Jira even in a variety of non-agile projects which describes its importance and versatility.

It provides a nice dashboard to look at the issues which were assigned to someone and need to be resolved. The main use of this tool is to track issue and bugs related to your software and phone apps. It is also used for project management. The JIRA provides a compact dashboard looks which consist of many useful features and functions which make handling of issues very easy.

Now we can have a look at the JIRA workflow which has the following stages when an issue is created:

1. Open Issue– Once the issue is created, the same is an open stage and can be assigned to a person (assignee) to be worked upon.
2. In Progress Issue– After the issue is opened and assigned to an assignee, the assignee can mark it as “in progress” which shows that the assignee has taken the issue and has actively started to work on the same.
3. Resolved Issue– After the issue is successfully resolved from the assignee’s end it can be marked as Resolved and can be assigned to the same person who created the issue or to some other concerned person. After verification of the resolved issue, if it is successful, it can be closed otherwise re-opened, if any further changes are required.
4. Reopened Issue– An issue can be reopened which was created and resolved earlier but if it requires some more changes or the resolution was not correct or some more bugs are found. The same issue can be assigned to the same assignee to whom it was assigned earlier or to someone else.
5. Close Issue– After successful verification of the resolution the issue can be closed. Generally, it is done by the same person who has reported the issue.

JIRA Workflow

Below is the JIRA workflow:

Image is taken from JIRA official documentation.

What is Confluence?

A confluence is a collaboration tool. It is used to help teams to collaborate and share knowledge efficiently. Using Confluence, users can create blogs and pages which can be commented on and edited by all the members of a team.
For example, we will be able to create a roadmap easily. We can also create notes containing a checklist, create a knowledge base and manage everything centrally. We can also attach files, like our excel planning and display it on a page for our convenience.

Confluence is also designed to integrate with Jira and they have many integration points, giving Confluence users the ability to view, interact with, and reference Jira issues from a wiki page.

Head To Head Comparisons Between Jira and Confluence (Infographics)

Below is the top 20 difference between Jira vs Confluence

Key Differences Between Axure and sketch

The two separate products from the same company – Atlassian. let us discuss some of the major difference:

• JIRA is a fully customizable platform for organizing teams around tasks, projects, and initiatives. Dependencies of the task, accessing resource, permissions, hierarchy, etc. can all be set up. Project managers and Agile leaders can then watch software statuses like backlog planning, release planning, and overall progress. The JIRA framework can also be used for business groups and isn’t confined into just software development.
• Confluence is a knowledge base, or wiki, that organizes and stores all of your information assets around the projects we are doing in JIRA (like, product requirements), or general things like meeting minutes, marketing assets, design documents, etc. Confluence has easy integration with JIRA, so these assets become an integrated piece. Hence, teams can create, collaborate and update on these assets effortlessly in a robust manner.

Jira vs Confluence Comparison Table

Here are some of the Comparison between Jira vs Confluence

Conclusion

Both differ entirely. So understanding this difference, we can make use of both by combining them.

Here are some of the reasons why we should integrate confluence in Jira:

• We will have all your project documentation in a central location eliminating the need of our team members to search across their email, computer folders or Google drive to find what they need. We can also keep and organize release notes, requirement specifications and code reviews directly in Confluence.
• By combining both Jira vs Confluence, we can enable cross-team communication. Hence, breaking the barrier between the engineering department and the rest of our business teams. Business stakeholders will have the ability to see the status of releases and get complete visibility of team progress.
• We can deliver faster by reducing wasted time and switching between context when our team transitions between Jira software and other resources. Also, team members who are performing software development will have access to the correct documentation within Jira. We can bring Confluence pages to Jira by adding gadgets and allow developers to easily view documentation that is relevant to tasks they are currently working on. We can even establish trusted connections and access user restricted Confluence and Jira pages.
• It can also help business teams benefit from the reporting. Jira keeps on generating data about projects and issues, but business teams might not have the time or skills to check into these reports in detail. Thus, by linking Jira information to Confluence reports we can present the status report in understandable charts, on a simple user interface for your business team to benefit from the wealth of data available in Jira.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to the top difference between Jira vs Confluence. Here we also discuss the Jira vs Confluence key differences with infographics, and comparison table. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –

1. Jira vs Asana
2. Jira vs Trello
3. Itil vs Agile
4. Jira vs ServiceNow