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Jira Align vs ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Jira Align
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (9th), Value Stream Management Software (1st)
ServiceNow Strategic Portfo...
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category, the mindshare of Jira Align is 5.0%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management is 5.5%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Tonia Spight-Sokoya - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly with good documentation and the ability to integrate with other third arty vendors
I am really focused on identity access management and getting access to the vendors. Right now, I'm setting up vendor access through Azure. You can do that or with the IAM. Sometimes we have to create several different types of access because we have vaulted databases. We have the Unix databases, I have MySQL, and we have Mongo, where I get access to those user classes or to the databases in the host group. Those are all different access scenario forms that I submit after I do the configuration in the form with the security team. I need clarity on the IAM. I'm not clear on PAM eighter. Is there a form that they have to submit to get access to the internal cyber-risk teams to get their access for people to be able to use the tool on the Confluence side? Do they have to send some kind of form to the operation's security or enterprise security? To be able to get the access for privileged access, do they need to be working on projects that have vaulted databases? I still need to figure out how that works. Other companies that are competitors of Jira and Confluence, are able to create their active directories for the vendors that don't come in internally. They only do access through the cloud and through third-party, two-factor identification. That's something I was wondering if that was already implemented in the packages, the package for Confluence. It would be nice to have that right in the solution.
Srinivasa Neelapu - PeerSpot reviewer
Strategies and goals are aligned with demands and partners, making it a strategic approach for the enterprise but the finance part needs improvement
SPM is definitely strong for project management, but its finance capabilities are not as robust. While there is a separate Financial Management product, it would be beneficial to have more out-of-the-box support for finance integrations within SPM. I’m not suggesting replacing systems like SAP for finance, but there should be better support for financial integrations. Currently, connecting to SaaS solutions is complicated, and getting into detailed financial calculations is challenging. Forecasting is manageable, but handling actual financials is not as straightforward. The finance area needs improvement, specifically making finance application integrations easier. Generic finance capabilities should be more user-friendly and integrated into SPM. Although they have started this journey, it hasn’t been fully released yet. There seems to be a roadmap, and once complete, it will be very useful. Additionally, incorporating a Q&A feature for entire strategies or project demands and enhancing text analytics within SPM would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's easy to set up."
"Jira Align helps us manage communication and tasks for a variety of teams without overlap."
"I found Confluence most valuable."
"The deployment phase of Jira Align wasn't difficult."
"The technical support team responds quickly and resolves issues effectively."
"Jira Align's most valuable features are the roadmap, the program board, and the reports."
"Jira Align's most valuable feature is the view of strategic control reports for high-level directors."
"We use Jira Align for business strategies, collaboration, and reporting."
"It manages portfolios and aligns our current portfolio with internal changes."
"The demand management tool is very strategic because it helps assess risk, gives you a visual of different demands, and rates those values."
"It's a very complete solution."
"You don't need a lot of plugins."
"The stability is excellent. ServiceNow is one of the leading platforms when it comes to stability."
"The program is stable."
"The PPM module is an excellent service."
"The resource manager is useful."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was a little bit complex."
"One area for improvement is that Jira Align's double menu and multiple menus can be difficult for new users."
"I would like to see Jira Align merge and integrate better with Jira as a whole. A lot of the time, the data from Jira won't map very well into Jira Align."
"The solution’s stability could be improved."
"There is no linkage between the Jira records and the overarching schedule. We maintain the overarching schedule in Microsoft Project, and there is no linkage back and forth with the Jira tasks. They are independent of each other."
"Lacks sufficient reporting capabilities."
"Jira Align's user interface needs improvement because its user experience is really bad."
"The synchronization between Jira and Jira Align takes too long."
"I would like to see some artificial intelligence incorporated into the management functions."
"ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management must improve its interface, which is not very interactive or user-friendly compared to other tools like Zendesk. The real-time reporting feature doesn't help much in our decision-making process. It's quite complex to use and lacks the rich features needed for visualization. Overall, I find it to be very poor."
"When we import a really big project with a lot of tasks on it, we face some issues with dependencies. The links between tasks are not working very well. There is definitely room for improvement there. Microsoft Project, in my opinion, is the best option for such a use case."
"The configurations are fine, but the user interface could be improved."
"We track salaries or paychecks of the resources. They change from time to time, such as every six months or every year. If they can come up with a default or out-of-the-box feature to manage those multiple payable costs so that we can automatically calculate the project costs rolled up. That would be the coolest feature that we can expect from ServiceNow. We would like to have an automatic feature to manage the payable costs. We should be able to manage or maintain multiple pay costs so that while calculating the project roll-up costs for individual projects, the respective pay costs in a particular period are picked up automatically from the backend. Currently, we have to customize that. It is doable. We have done it but through customization."
"The portfolio managed is good for IT, but it's not good for non it's not necessarily great for construction projects, such as the building of physical infrastructure."
"It could be more user-friendly."
"The timing reporting module, and how it's used is a bit difficult to understand. Everything related to project management is quite extensive. It needs to be simplified. At first, our users didn't want to use it, because it seems a bit complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Jira Align is quite expensive for small-to-medium companies, but it's quite reasonable for larger ones."
"Jira Align is an expensive solution."
"The pricing and licensing costs are rated lower, around six mainly due to significant increases in licensing costs that were not well-received by users."
"The tool is moderately expensive."
"Our customers buy licenses. We are not involved in its purchase."
"The software is very good, but the price is expensive. Our licensing costs are on a monthly basis, but there are no additional costs to the standard license fees."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing. The price of the solution depends on the number of people using it and the projects you are working on."
"Jira Align was reasonably priced then, especially for a bundle license that accommodated around 50 monthly users."
"The licensing is based on metrics and is tailored to customer's needs."
"The pricing is negotiable based on the contract and licensing perspective."
"The solution was quite expensive."
"The cost of the solution should not be more than $50,000 annually."
"The solution could improve by being less expensive and the pricing model is confusing. Many people are getting charged different amounts. There are additional fees that they are adding on."
"The tool is expensive."
"They sell some things in bundles, and it could be handier that some of those things could be sold in another way, like purity models and other packages. Another thing that I'm struggling with is the pricing of ServiceNow's FYE experience, which includes the tools that are positioned for supporting HR."
"We have a team of about 6,500 employees across the globe. So, the amount of money I'm going to save by putting the money on the table for the implementation and licenses is very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
9%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Jira Align?
I joined the company because they had a large project, and as a startup company, they needed to scale up efficiently. My task was to review the current baseline, assess the team's capabilities, and...
What needs improvement with Jira Align?
The platform's communication features could be more robust for better team integration.
What is your primary use case for Jira Align?
We use Jira Align for business strategies, collaboration, and reporting. The solution allows us to manage the various products and features delivered on that platform.
What do you like most about ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management?
We mainly use the solution to support operations and align our ITSM operations with our business goals. This involves coordinating between our application development, support teams, and network en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management?
It's a bit costly currently. Efforts are being made to explore cost-benefit measures for investing in it.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management?
There is always scope for improvement. As of now, making the product more cost-beneficial would help more organizations consider investing in it.
 

Also Known As

AgileCraft
IT Business Management, ServiceNow IT Business Management Suite, ServiceNow ITBM Suite, ServiceNow ITBM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Anthem, nielsen, Homeland Security, NCR, dimension data
Proximus, UNT SYSTEM, SAP SuccessFactors
Find out what your peers are saying about Jira Align vs. ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.