JIRA Focuses on Project Management of Scrum Methodology and Trello Is General-Purpose
The biggest difference between JIRA and Trello is what they care about. JIRA focuses on one of Agile methodologies, Scrum. That being said, JIRA wants to be a tool to run Scrum. In contrast, Trello adapts Kanban style to be a general-purpose management tool.
So, we can say:
- Trello could be used to run Scrum, but JIRA is designed to run Scrum.
- JIRA could use its "data" used to run Scrum to represent your project overview in Kanban style.
They could be the alternative of each other, though this may not be a good idea. They are tools differing very much.
JIRA and Trello Are Tools
The same perspective of JIRA and Trello might be: they are both tools. They try to be a tool for you to run a project management philosophy. However, JIRA strongly suggests you to use it in Scrum, and Trello tries to fit any philosophy in your mind with Kanban view.
This is why you see templates provided in Trello, but not in JIRA. Different Trello templates are originated from different project management philosophy.
Trello's List Could Provide Straightforward Context
With Kanban, Trello's tasks/stories are organized in "lists"/columns/lanes. The column-style provides users straightforward context of a mission, when a list represents a mission.
I like the visual power of Trello to help me follow up context when context switching between projects in my daily life.
How JIRA Sticks to Scrum?
JIRA sticks to Scrum by forcing each issue you created should be one of Epic, Story/Task, or Sub-task. Any of
Epic, Story/Task, and Sub-task plays at a special role of "the hierarchy of project management". It means that
only type of the same level could be converted easily, e.g. story and task. If you try to convert an issue of story
to be a sub-task, some difficulty may happen to you. It's feasible, but you may see how the data structure of the issue
changes to fit into the whole project again.
Pick Up Trello for Normal Projects and JIRA for Software Product
In my case, I use both Trello and JIRA for different scenarios. If the project is a specific software product, I am keen to use JIRA. For other tasks, especially most tasks are individual and need much context switch of mine, I choose Trello. For example, when organizing a conference or my household, I use Trello.
I am looking forward to writing down another post to elaborate how I use Trello. Stay tuned!