What analytics approach do executives favor - Jira add-ons or separate reporting platforms?

I’m curious about how upper management (think C-suite, SVPs, and department heads) likes to review data on code quality, team performance, and project health.

As a team lead who spends time in Jira every day, I find it convenient to have reporting built right into the platform. Everything is in one place and I don’t need to switch between different systems.

But I wonder if this same preference applies to executives who don’t use Jira as much in their daily work.

In your experience, do senior executives prefer:

  • Built-in Jira reporting (using add-ons like Structure, Advanced Roadmaps, reporting extensions)?
  • External analytics platforms (such as Looker, QlikView, or custom dashboards) that pull information from Jira, GitHub, CI/CD systems, testing tools, etc.?

If you’ve been involved in setting up leadership reporting, I’d appreciate hearing what drives their choice between these options.