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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
285
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

"JIRA's technical support is absolutely fantabulous."
"Jira provides substantial analytical aspects, especially in defect categorization and routing."
"The most valuable feature of Jira is the integration with all the different Atlassian tools. They all integrate very easily."
"It is user-friendly, and you can manage your project according to the methodology you want. It is also easy to configure."
"It has enabled us to keep track of features or projects; previously, we used to manually keep track in Office, and we now have a centralized repository for all the information."
"Straightforward system that gets the job done."
"We've found the scalability to be good."
"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 stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
"The SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
"It improves productivity, cash flow management, and inventory control for clients."
"With SAP Portfolio and Project Management we were able to have a full track of project progress and get useful insights about our projects."
"SAP is gradually introducing more flexibility and customization options to the system, allowing users to adapt it to their specific needs."
"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."
 

Cons

"The main area for improvement is the high cost of the product."
"The only problem area for me is applying filters, and for new users it is very complicated work."
"They can maybe dumb down the directions for building the automation a little bit because to be able to build out the automation, I had to play around with it and learn what all the fields meant and what they were referencing. I don't have an IT background originally. My background is in biology, and I got into project management by chance. I am good at it, but I haven't really worked with coding languages. In terms of writing automation, it is easier for devs because they intuitively know what they're being asked, but as a PM who originally didn't have IT experience, it was a little bit daunting at first. It could also have an extra hierarchy to be able to allow tasks under stories. It could be the way it is set up at our organization, but currently, under stories, you can have sub-tasks, but you can't create a task. Being able to customize your hierarchy a little bit more would be beneficial because sometimes, the devs would say, "Well, here's a story, and now we need sub-tasks," but as we were building out the sub-tasks, sometimes we had to go a step lower to dig in a little bit more, and we couldn't do that."
"When I was managing projects that started from epics and moved to multiple tasks, I found that the integration of epics and user stories could have been a little easier."
"It is not intuitive."
"Though JIRA can be used as a Test Management tool, it is not complete by itself."
"Jira is not a highly customizable platform, all you can do is use various plugins and widget to fulfill your needs and if you need more than that, then you might have to look for other project management tools."
"Generally, customization, granted that it is done only at system productions state, is hard and time consuming."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We used to be on a perpetual license provided by our clients."
"It is not too expensive. It is just comparative to other tools like Microsoft Teams."
"The licensing cost for Jira is typically around seven dollars per user, though it may vary depending on regional variations. This cost is for a subscription-based model rather than a one-time purchase. I rate its pricing a seven out of ten."
"It's not very cheap. It's also not very costly. I'd rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing."
"I understand JIRA is quite expensive."
"There is a monthly license required for this solution and it is expensive."
"The pricing is much higher than other similar solutions available in the market, and as such, the vendor should think about a price reduction to make this product more affordable."
"It is subscription-based, and we probably pay yearly. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of price."
"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
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 monday.com, Planisware, Broadcom and others in Project Portfolio Management. Updated: June 2026.
904,146 professionals have used our research since 2012.