Jira vs Microsoft Project comparison

"It includes by default all the necessary tools for a project manager to work and make their work more efficient."

"The dynamic communication and the ability to customize it the way we want are the most valuable features."

"In terms of the general way that the tool functions, it seems like it's a pretty good fit-for-purpose for what we're trying to do. We've never thought about replacing it with another technology."

"We can create multiple boards for the same product backlogs."

"The most valuable feature is project management."

"JIRA stores history of changes, which helps a lot to track who, when, and why the issue was modified​."

"It was very easy to learn Jira. As a scrum master, I run daily stand-ups, and they are run directly from Jira. The feature that I really love in Jira is called Issue Navigator. It allows me to customize how I want to show the user stories within Jira to my squad."

"The most valuable features of this solution are workflow and reporting."

"I use Microsoft Project to manage project timelines."

"It's most useful feature is that it interfaces with Project Server so we can, from my perspective, from a portfolio perspective, we can see across the organization."

"Microsoft Project is one of the only solutions you can use in just about any industry. It's difficult to do that with most other project management tools. There is a lot of flexibility within the product assets. Most sectors can utilize Microsoft Project successfully because it doesn't have any generic adapters."

"It's a scalable product, especially the online version."

"I especially like the reporting tools, which are visual tools and offer visual reports."

"I have found that the chart reporting feature is very helpful for us currently."

"Microsoft offers good support."

"The ability to break down project phases is most valuable. Being able to align the tasks and reporting with project milestones and progress is also valuable."

"If they want Jira to be the one-stop shop of the view of all of your deliverables, not just from a defect tracking perspective, but also from a requirement perspective, a code perspective, and a testing perspective, it needs to pull out more data and work better as an integration tool."

"Sometimes, it is slow and hangs. We faced some stability issues where JIRA was down for a day. Also, we have lost some of our comments made in the JIRA because of downtime."

"The GUI should have much better features like more graphical illustrations. There are some cases or benchmarks that we are trying to capture into a dashboard GUI's graphical summary, but unfortunately JIRA is not able to do that."

"For a non-technical person to use, Jira is not intuitive."

"There needs to be a way to export a user story."

"I would like our clients' IT group to be able to have oversight without setting up agents. We're managing tickets, and I'd like their IT group to see everything we're doing without having to set them up as agents. There should be a better way of managing their users. I've got such requests, but Jira is expensive, and it is difficult to pay an agent fee for somebody else to view these tickets. Currently, the only way in which I can do that is by setting a user up as an agent, and it becomes cost-prohibitive. They need to do a better job on ticket viewers."

"Having more seamless integration with Confluence would really help us track our product management activity and other product details in one place."

"The solution's stability could be improved, and it could be made more robust."

"The Microsoft license is relatively expensive."

"I would like to see the inclusion of multi-currency support."

"I would like to see both Time and Team based options improved."

"Once we commit our status, changing it is hard."

"We'd like the solution to have better integration with other third-party and open-source solutions."

"The tool's most valuable feature is scheduling."

"There are some things about it that I've always hated, and they haven't really changed them. It makes a lot of assumptions. It is also difficult to put business rules in it. You have to de-link it from the consecutive task if you don't want to do a What-If analysis, and sometimes, if you forget to do that, it changes everything. It is a pain in the neck to undo it. I would also like to see better integration with graphics. The graphics are primitive, and they need some major work. I would like to have the ability to do some small macros within the project for fuzzy logic. For example, if you're not sure how long a task takes, you can get the earliest guess. It is very time and manpower intensive to keep it up to date. You need to constantly update it. You will find that you are spending more time working on the Microsoft Project file rather than working on your project. I don't want to devote a person to just do that. That's silly. You can link it to some more modern applications so that it is dynamic when a real-time resource schedule changes, but it is not at all dynamic. It is only as dynamic as the person using it. It would be nice if we could plug it in real time for each project, subproject, or task. If something is going on, I want to see it in real time. Sometimes we have international clients, and they don't use the same calendar. They have a Thursday and Friday weekend, and we have a Saturday and Sunday weekend. I can change it in Microsoft Project, but I would like to be able to do it globally. There may be a way to do it, but I just haven't figured it out yet. I would like to be able to specify globally what weekend we want or what we want to call a weekend. We might have a project that works seven days a week. Some tasks are automated outside, like manufacturing processes. Embedding external processes is almost impossible because, in a practical sense, we don't have people who can do a lot of programming here, and also the interface of Microsoft Project is not the easiest because a lot of it is proprietary. It would be nice if we can link different tasks to external sources of inputs and outputs so that we could integrate them with a master project plan and see in real time what's going on. For example, you are manufacturing a batch of a chemical, and I have to rely on if a customer is making some type of complex chemical. Their system does not interfere with ours. We have to get the outputs from their system and enter them manually into the project to see the effect. That takes time. If you're talking about hours, you going to spend three to four hours, but there is the risk of getting it wrong or making a mistake. On tight projects, every minute counts. I would like to see some control system interfaces with Microsoft Project. A modern machine shop has a lot of computer numerical control (CNC) computers. In fact, virtually all machining is done with a CNC machine. Even 3D additive manufacturing is made with CNC. That data can go to a computer, and that computer can spit it out to a project so that you can see in real time whether you are going to finish a day ahead. If you had to finish a day ahead, you could talk to the systems' software, which can say that if I have this machine working for another hour and this one for one hour or less, I would be able to meet the schedule. It can then make those changes, but it can't do that. Everything needs to be done manually, which takes more time, and there's a risk of mistakes. It requires smarter automation and more machine learning. There is no machine learning capability in Microsoft Project. It just doesn't exist. That's why I say it is only suitable for small-sized to medium-sized companies and small projects. Most people don't have the problems that I have. I don't have them all the time, but when I have them, they're big. When you're bidding on a project that has to get done, you find yourself spending most of the time working on Microsoft Project, whereas you should be spending these hours managing the project. Thinking on a bigger scale, I would like better integration with Office, Visio, and Access. If you make a change in one, it should cascade to others and vice versa. It doesn't do that. It is not a dynamic program. I would like to see a dynamic program or at least the capability of being dynamic, that is, even if it is close to real time where it outputs to a module, and the module then talks to real-time things. The real-time data goes back into the module, and the module updates the project plan. Such dynamic capability would be nice. It may not be real time, but it is at least close. I would like to be able to link directly to the data in an Excel spreadsheet so that I don't have to keep going back and forth updating it. I don't want to have to create a dynamic link library. Whenever I change the data in Excel, it should update in Visio or PowerPoint. If I'm doing a pie chart or any kind of graphic, I don't want to constantly update my graphics. I want to link them together, and I want them updated automatically. I know it is a wishful thing. They don't make major changes every time they come out with a new version. They don't fix the issue. They just add a few features."

"I find the setup a little bit cumbersome."

"The price of the solution could be less expensive. We pay annually for the solution."

"There are other solutions that are free making this solution seem expensive in comparison."

"If you are using just Jira, it is cheap, but if you start to use it and you feel you need some more services or more functions, then you have to buy add-ons, which can make it expensive."

"The price of Jira is reasonable."

"If I compare Jira's licensing model with that of other products, I think that the other products have a much better licensing model."

"We feel that the product is a good value for the cost."

"The tool is expensive."

"The pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."

"The solution is less expensive than other options."

"I do not have personal experience with pricing or licensing of this product."

"It gets expensive when having to add all of the plugins and everything that you need."

"The pricing is based on a licensing model and is reasonable."

"Its price could be reduced a little."

"We have to pay for a yearly license for Microsoft Project."

"I believe the licensing for the solution is based on an annual fee."

"The licensing model is somewhat complex."