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Jira vs SAP Portfolio and Project Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
284
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Application Requirements Management (1st), Project Management Software (1st)
SAP Portfolio and Project M...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (11th)
 

Featured Reviews

RituRaj - PeerSpot reviewer
SDE 2 at Virtusa
Centralized sprint boards have transformed our planning and now improve cross‑team visibility
While Jira is very powerful, there are definitely areas it could be improved, especially for usability and simplicity. One common challenge is that Jira can feel overwhelming for new users. The number of features, configurations, workflows, and settings is huge. Onboarding non-technical teams or new employees sometimes takes longer than expected. A simple default experience for a beginner would help a lot. Another issue is performance. In large organizations with heavy customizations, large backlogs, or complex dashboards, Jira can occasionally feel slow, especially when loading filters, reports, or larger boards. Pricing can also become expensive as an organization scales and multiple Atlassian products and plugins are added. Some smaller teams sometimes feel the ecosystem becomes costly over time. The mobile experience would be smoother for project managers or leadership users who mainly want quick update approvals or dashboard views on the go. Overall, Jira's biggest strength is flexibility, but that flexibility can also create complexity if not managed carefully. Improving simplicity, performance, and ease of adoption would make the platform even stronger. An additional improvement I would mention for Jira is around balancing flexibility with simplicity. Jira gives organizations a huge amount of customization power, which is great. But over time, many teams end up creating overly complicated processes. After a few years, some Jira environments become difficult to maintain because there are many workflows, custom fields, permissions, and automations layered on top of each other. It would help if Jira would provide a strong built-in recommendation or health check for keeping a project clean or efficient. For example, identifying unused custom fields, suggesting workflow simplicity improvements, flagging redundant automations, or recommending dashboard optimization.
Nalin Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Quality Assurance Group Lead at Samsung
End-to-end project management capabilities and offers seamless vendor and client contract alignment
The system is old, so there are several issues that arise when we fetch data from integrated systems. Sometimes the data gets stuck, and there are instances where we need to access multiple pieces of information simultaneously. This creates problems that I have personally experienced. Therefore, these aspects need to be much more free-flowing and seamless. If something gets stuck, it takes time to resolve, and during the contract phase, we have Service Level Agreements (SLAs). If those SLAs are breached, it becomes problematic. Given that there are approximately 3000 projects running concurrently worldwide, utilizing the system with a vast database and numerous activities taking place. It could benefit from decentralization. Currently, it operates as a central system, but if it could be centralized for specific subsidiaries, it would be easier for us to manage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has been very stable overall."
"JIRA is very good."
"I have trained several non-it people in its usage and they all say it's really easy software to use."
"I feel the strongest feature of Jira is its workflow engine, which empowers us to automate our workflows within our organization and is the one characteristic of Jira that I think can help any organization, be it in any domain."
"The most valuable feature is Jira Align, which is a plugin that helps you to understand the progress that is made against each epic."
"The solution is pretty good and is geared towards those with multiple teams who are using it for the same purposes as us."
"One of the most valuable features is querying because the jQuery function is very good. Additionally, we can create good designs very easily."
"This solution has been established in the market and is commonly used in many project management sectors because it can be easily used once you have experience."
"The SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."
"It improves productivity, cash flow management, and inventory control for clients."
"The stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
"SAP is gradually introducing more flexibility and customization options to the system, allowing users to adapt it to their specific needs."
"With SAP Portfolio and Project Management we were able to have a full track of project progress and get useful insights about our projects."
 

Cons

"What I don't like is that perhaps there are not so many different apps that can add value over the management side of the product."
"The solution heavily focuses on the Agile framework, which might only suit some business use cases. This particular area needs enhancement."
"Of course, the price could always be cheaper."
"We have gone through several version changes and some of those changes have not been intuitive. There was a learning curve and we had some complaints internally about the changes, such as the new interface."
"They are not supporting in-house servers anymore and I think I've got until January to port this to something else."
"There needs to be a way to export a user story."
"I'd like to see better notetaking capabilities so every user can get notes when someone provides comments on a Jira ticket. So if they don't want to provide the comments on the Jira ticket, they can get the personal notes in a Jira tool for every profile."
"It is not capturing the number of hours for which each person has worked on certain things. We use many add-ons to let resources enter the time in the user story itself. We use an add-on called Tempo, but it is kind of a lousy add-on. It is not straightforward. Rather than helping us, it creates a lot of confusion. So, instead of looking out for the additional add-on, I would prefer to have the timesheet entered as a part of Jira itself. They are anyways capturing every information they could for each user story, and then we are able to break down all the task lists. For each task, we're also assigning a resource. So, while we're doing it, why can't they allow the users to enter the time that can be created as a report? Right now, we need to acquire the add-on, and the add-on is not great. It is not helping. The add-on is also not free."
"The system is old, so there are several issues that arise when we fetch data from integrated systems. Sometimes the data gets stuck, and there are instances where we need to access multiple pieces of information simultaneously."
"The initial support package of version 5.0 has some setup difficulties."
"The product itself could have an advanced analytics layer with an improved user interface that is adapted to the new digital era."
"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."
"The platform's support structure needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Jira and its solution off the shelf are cheap. It is cheap for startups."
"The cost is about $10 per user, per month."
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
"There are no additional costs to the standard licensing."
"We are a regional research and education institute. We're using the free license provided for educational institutes."
"We make use of the solution free of charge."
"It depends on the type of license. In terms of subscription, it is cheap, and it works pretty well."
"We used to be on a perpetual license provided by our clients."
"The product pricing varies based on whether the client is new or existing and the complexity of their business processes."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise153
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Is Jira better or would you go with Micro Focus ALM Octane?
Hi Netanya, Basically , it all depends on the use cases for your environment and the business needs. Hope the below data may be relevant to you for identifying your needs and deciding on the approp...
Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Jira?
Jira operates on a subscription model, typically priced per user. It is quite affordable, and the setup cost is low. Licensing is simple and easy to get started with.
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Also Known As

Jira Software
Portfolio and Project Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Joy Global Inc., Citrix, EMC Corporation, Concho Resources, Concho Resources, RZD Russian Railways, Family Dollar Stores Inc., Lenovo
Find out what your peers are saying about Jira vs. SAP Portfolio and Project Management and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,402 professionals have used our research since 2012.