Jira vs Lucidchart: Which is a better fit?

Jake D.: My name is Jake, my company is Uni. We are one to 10 people, and my score for Jira was a four. Before we were using Trello and we didn't like it as much as Jira, because it really only was good for task management, but the tickets and organizing complex projects weren't as strong on it. We also really liked the documentation and the ability to do other things in Jira that Trello didn't offer. So in general just as we grew and had more engineers to manage and more complex software projects to manage, Jira became a better fit for our company. I chose Jira first and foremost, because the devs at my company really liked it and had experience working on it. It also allowed us to manage a front-end and backend team more easily and collaborate with ease compared to the other products we were looking at. It was affordable for startups and also supported us scaling all the way up if we were to grow our org to be much larger. As I had used it in previous companies that were bigger enterprises and saw it used for everything from documentation to ticket management to product management and development, so it just made the most sense for our org as we grew and was very affordable. Getting started with Jira was pretty easy, it took us about a week. We had a designated project manager who went about kind of setting up every user and getting the board set up the way we needed. We had engineering leads trained in how to do ticketing and how to move tickets from beginning to end pretty quickly. I think a lot of people use Jira and have experience with it coming out of school or bootcamp, so it was a pretty easy switch for us. Coming over from Trello, we found it was pretty fast to recreate the tickets and our processes from that. I think my biggest recommendation is just making sure that the engineers really want it. I think that project managers, it really caters to and has a great amount of tools for documenting, doing product recs, doing task management, QA, all of that. But I think if the devs aren't comfortable using it for pointing, using it for work management, it kind of gets out of line or doesn't get set up in a proper way. So, asking your developers to make sure that that's the tool they want and making sure it's set up in a way that's optimal for them I think makes it a much smoother transition, and easier for the business leads and product leads to engage with as well.

Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Shawn. I'm a University Chief Strategy Officer. I give Lucidchart a five out of five for this review. And for more reviews like this, click below. We examined a number of different tools that could do what Lucidchart did. Probably the most significant was Canva, as we were looking at a variety of templates that we won't have readily available for our staff. A lot of our staff had not had the experience of using some of the templates that Lucidchart had, and so they didn't have the background and they would be searching on Google for a variety of things, many of which were not great. Lucidchart did a great service for our staff by having all of that material available. And when we looked at other groups or other types of software, we found that they had pieces, but nothing as comprehensive as Lucidchart had. We chose Lucidchart for a variety of reasons. Number one, which I've already mentioned, is the fact that Lucidchart comes with a number of, actually I shouldn't say a number, with extensive amount of built-in templates for all types of business processes that we wanted our employees to be able to use. And we had a number of entry level employees who had never had any experience with using some of the flow charts, diagrams, budget templates, and so we were able to get them licenses to be able to use this, and to both work with us on training and also be able to have examples. Because most of the templates that are given come with a fully pre-build version of what it should look like. So, we were able to both tell our employees to please use this specific template to understand this template, and also that they would have a training ability to be able to look at it and use it. What I also appreciated was that it was a highly collaborative program. So, I could look in and see what my entry level employees were doing with Lucidchart and be able to offer them feedback or commentary for being able to use this. And a feature that we all really liked was the ability to print out the materials that we had in a variety of formats. It may seem really, really simple, but I find that there are a lot of programs that you try to export something and they don't really still put it into a, at least the ones we were looking at, put it into MO that it becomes readily accessible or insertable into number of other programs. So, Lucidchart allowed me to crop what I wanted from any of the materials that I was working with, and then export to a variety of file sizes and file types to be able to utilize in presentations, to print out separately as PDFs, to be able to send off to staff through emails, to plug into websites. All of that comprehensive ability to do the work of my office with the staff that I had was really instrumental in us choosing to use Lucidchart on a business license. I found that using Lucidchart at the very beginning was really intuitive. Number one is, you get an individual license, there's a number of training tools that are available to you, both videos and written materials. So, for some older person like me, I could look through the guide books and be able to figure out how to maneuver it, although it's actually pretty, again, intuitive so that you're able to go and just start working. You log in to Lucidchart and you're given the opportunity to just work on a blank canvas and be able to build the way that you would in any other type of flow chart software. Or, if you wanted to, you can choose from hundreds of templates to be able to create SWOT analysis or scheduling materials or org charts. And so, you can just jump right into being able to do that work. What's also nice is that, if you see a template that you want to use but you never used it before, not only is there an explanation available before you enter into any of those templates, but also in the form itself is a guide usually with videos and links to be able to show you how to be able to create in that space as well. So for me, having done many of the templates before, I was able to refresh my knowledge or in some cases to see how other industries would use these tools, which for somebody who didn't come up through the business pipeline was really helpful. And then, for the employees that I was hiring, many of whom had just come out in their undergraduate training, I was able to say, "Well, I mean, I want you to use this specific template." And I would say, "You could watch this video, read this explanation, you could look at this additional link that's here." And then they would learn how to be able to use that. And so, what I've been really impressed by is the fact that those employees now use it religiously and are able to produce some high quality materials that we're able to use in the business functions of our work without having my spent days on days training my staff to be able to do that. And so, the quality of the material that they produce to be able to do the work of our institution has been really, I think, a testament to how quickly they're able to pick up and apprehend these types of resources through Lucidchart. And that's how Lucidchart is built to be able to support it. I think that it's important to be able to do a trial membership. I mean, Lucidchart is generous with giving you a chance to be able to review what's available. For us at our institution, they give variety of templates that was available was really important because it just gave us the open door to look at a variety of opportunities in terms of what we could build. Some companies might not like the variety, they might want something very, very specific and potentially more built out. These templates are a certain level, they're not simplistic by any means, but they could be simpler than what somebody who is working in private enterprise might want. But for our purposes, they were great. And so, I would definitely recommend that somebody who is either a project manager or product manager does a run through, seeing what's available there and if it's too simplistic or overly complicated, there is a possibility that certain units might purchase this and there's just way more there than they need for a business membership. And so, they should be really thoughtful with regards to, "Okay, is this the right level for what we need to be able to get work done?" But knowing that a number of people coming out of schools don't have the training in how to produce a number of these documents, I think it's a wonderful training tool. And so, if you're hiring a lot of people who are young or new to the profession that you're in, and don't have that industry expertise, then this could be something that an HR manager takes a look at and says, "Yeah, this is a great way to be able to help train people how to use these types of materials to do the work of a business." But that's going to be different, company to company. And so, somebody should review it in that time. And the nice thing about Lucidchart is that it's really easy to be able to review those because once you do the trial membership, you have access to every template that's there, and you're able to take a look and see, "Okay, is this the stuff that we want to be able to use?"