Anyone ever use Azure DevOps over Jira

[Jean Ann Harrison]

My company IT Director is talking about migrating from Jira to Azure DevOps which I'm completely opposed to doing.  As such I need to have justifications for this move.  

I do realize that Jira can work WITH Azure DevOps but my concern is two fold:

1.  How long we could have a fully configured instance where our data could be easily migrated?  

2.  How long would it take to migrate data from Jira to Azure DevOps?

I realize this is a Jira board and not an Azure DevOps board but I'm looking for justifications for my meeting with the IT Director and Senior Director of Engineering so we can keep using Jira because no one on our team even remotely knows or has worked with Azure DevOps tool in the past.  

[Jean Ann Harrison · Accepted solution]

Thank you all for your answers.  After researching our current costs and situation, my company IT Director finally agreed we will renew our Atlassian account but properly scaled back to fit our new small team rather than when we were a much larger company.  We were paying for  20 add-ins and come to find out, we only need 3 add-ins.  This dramatically reduced our cost and he couldn't justify the cost of migrating over to Azure.  He also made it clear that preferred Azure over Atlassian because he was more familiar with it.  Ha!  But I made a stronger case for us to use Jira and Confluence where I was completely backed by my Director of Engineering and my manager.  

Plus, I'll be granted Jira Admin privileges to allow me to configure our projects to allow us to use the tools efficiently.  PHEW!  I'm sure I'll be reaching out with questions but I will be sure to check online first for any tutorials I might need.  

Thanks again to all who helped me to present a very reasonable argument to keep Atlassian as a tool for our team to continue to use.   

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jean Ann Harrison,

It is tough to build a business case for or against tools if you don't know the why for any side of the story.

I would not focus on how long it would take to migrate before you're in the clear on why your IT Director wants to get rid of Jira. I know this is an Atlassian forum, but I can assure you I would take the exact same stand if the move would be the other way around.

If it is true that no one in your company has any experience with Azure DevOps, then you know there's a big leap into the unknown and an important learning curve to take before your teams will be up to speed in the new tool. That's quite a risk and a cost to take, so I would expect there's some serious arguments against your current way of working and toolset.

I've learned over time that it is way easier to win an argument when you know the arguments you're up against. Pretty often they can be mitigated in a different way than initially expected.

A suggestion you may want to consider is to ask yourself what you would be losing when you would make this move? You say you want to keep using Jira. Why? How terrible would the world be if that were to happen? You could consider running a premortem play from the Atlassian playbook to investigate what may (not) happen.

Suppose your IT director comes up with a very compelling argument that leads to a clear conclusion towards a different tool and it improves the way your organisation delivers its work, you still win. But very rarely problems in an organisation are solved by switching to a different tool. Maybe you can help uncover a different problem that can be perfectly solved with your existing tools! 😉 

All the best negotiating!

[Jean Ann Harrison]

Thank you so very much for your wise response.  The one sole reason why the IT Director wants to m move away from Atlassian is due to cost.  And he states he feels he could do so easily migrate and the training of our team would be "easy."  I don't believe him as I think the only reason he wants to do this is due to cost.  

I'll continue to do further research!  

Thanks again!

[jennifer.dempsey_Appfire · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jean Ann Harrison

While you're in the research phase, you may want to consider evaluating a tool like  TSF4JIRA Azure Ops Integration. Whether you decide to migrate your data once from Jira to AzureDevOps or enable bi-directional synchronization of data to continue working in both tools more effectively, it will help you do so safely and efficiently.

We would be happy to give your IT Director a demo. You can schedule a demo here.

Or, You can email me at Jennifer.dempsey@appfire.com and I can put in contact with our PM to further discuss your needs. 

Please let us know if I can help you with any questions. 

Warmly,

 Jennifer Dempsey, Product Marketing Manager, Appfire

[Jean Ann Harrison]

Thank you so much Jennifer.  I will definitely email you and I will also check out the link you shared.   I'll be in a discussion meeting with both directors and our Dev team on Monday but I'm trying to get as much information to have an educated discussion.    

[jennifer.dempsey_Appfire]

You're very welcome, Jean Ann! I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

At a previous employer (in 2021) we switched from Jira to Azure DevOps. There was not a migration path at that time that would support moving all the information for each Jira issue (history and comments as well as some of the core issue info) and no support for moving boards or historic reports. We opted to start over in ADO rather than hassle with trying to migrate and only getting partial data.

Without doing the research myself I don't know if there has been any improvements in that area. Do your own research to confirm whether or not you can reasonable migrate your data, and be prepared to accept that you can't all the data migrated.

Additionally there are a lot of differences in functionality, including ADO having more flexibility for issue type hierarchy. If you have no experience with ADO that can be a challenge to deal with and adapt to. If you end up moving over, I would encourage you to arrange some training for the team and see if you can set up a sandbox to do experiments.

[Jean Ann Harrison]

Hi Trudy!  

Thanks again for your very interesting response!  You gave me some strong justification ideas.  I am continuing my research on the ADO community board as well but based on your response, I'm very concerned about the data loss in the migration as well as the lack of training.  My IT Director has tried to convince us that our training in using that tool would not be difficult, at least not how we're going to use it.  

My digested concern (along with my Sr Dir of Engineering) is the configuration of the other tool to be ready for us to use in a relatively short time (less than a month) and I highly doubt that is possible.   

But I assure you. I've been doing my own research and  continuing to do so.  

Thanks again!

[Trudy Claspill]

Getting ADO configured "quickly" and appropriately depends a lot on having resources that fully understand your work processes and the configuration capabilities of ADO. Understanding your work processes includes understanding what type of report need to be produced in what format and how those need to be delivered, as well as understanding the needs for different levels of permissions and/or the ability to segregate access to the information.

Your company would need to make sure the are adequately invested in the up front planning for this change. Ours was not. We were simply pushed over to ADO (also due to cost and our other investments in Microsoft) with no real preparation of the environment or training. For those of us well versed in Jira (use, configuration, reporting) it was a challenge to see the thrashing that happened in ADO as experiments were tried and abandoned. It felt like there was a lot of time wasted trying to figure out how to use ADO. 

Proper planning and upfront work is key to a smooth transition.

I also completely agree with @Walter Buggenhout . It is vitally important to understand why the change is being proposed, and understand what can be gained and what might be lost from the change.

One more note - with another previous employer (before 2020) we had a huge investment in Atlassian tools. We also had a small investment in TFS (precursor to ADO, I believe). That employer decided we needed to have everybody on Jira, so I've also been through a migration in the other direction. In that case we did a lot of up front work with the TFS teams to learn how they used TFS and then tailor training to teach them how to do the same things in Jira, and identify what things could not be done in Jira.

I think both Jira and ADO have good and bad points. I would not make a blanket statement that one is better than the other. That depends on your company's needs. Regardless, whichever one you are more familiar with, transitioning to the other will present challenges simply because it is unfamiliar and different.

[Jean Ann Harrison]

As I mentioned to @Walter Buggenhout was that the sole reason for the suggested change by the IT Director (or so he claims) is the total cost of maintaining Atlassian products in our company. However, he hasn't checked with any of us regarding our experience, our preference, our usage or even to understand how we work. Well that is until I pushed him to make me a Jira admin this week.

You mention the very important point of "having resources that fully understand your work processes and the configuration capabilities of ADO" which again, this has not been the case. Reporting from Jira can easily be exported into our QMS repository which is critical for our regulated environment. Because we have a small team, we're doing more than just developing and testing software. We're required to write documentation and pitching in many different ways. As such, we don't have time to struggle with a tool or wait for that tool to be ready for us to use. Bottom line is that my Sr Dir of Engineering has emphatically stated that the cost of losing time where we would be pushing back releases due to this migration would be far more costly to the company in the long run than a one time annual fee to pay Atlassian.

FYI, your experience with trying to migrate to ADO in the past was exactly what I've experienced with trying to implement automated test tool in other companies. It's incredibly painful and slow no matter how much these tool companies promise convincing our leadership. It's exactly why it's so important for this IT Director to understand our processes and I know he doesn't.

I do understand what both you and Walter are saying. This is why I'm trying to reach out to you all in understanding what we need to bring to the table and allow leadership to make the best decision for our company. I greatly appreciate all perspectives shared.

[Anthony Robinson]

I know it's past your decision window, but for future people reading this...

My org has just completed a medium sized (~5000 items) Jira to ADO migration.  We made extensive use of the Jira-AzureDevOps-Migrator tool from Solidify.

Feel free to hit me up if you have any questions about this tool or our migration.

[Ramón García Marrero]

Hi Anthony,

Now it's my turn to estimate the effort to migrate JIRA to ADO. Can I get more information about how much time did I take to you?