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Jira vs SAP Portfolio and Project Management comparison

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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
283
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 is a comprehensive tool for managing projects. It helps in task segregation and assignment, making it time-efficient for employees."
"It handles all of the issues that we need it to do."
"Everything is tracked in one place."
"The board has been a very valuable feature because it can be very simple for teams that are not technical. It can also be highly technical and have lots of data for teams that are technical. So we use it for both instances."
"Jira as a structure has Confluence for documentation, and for what it is offering it is a strong suit with Atlassian."
"I have definitely seen a positive return on my investment with Jira; the team loves it, and relevant metrics include considerable time saved, as Jira is a great tool for me compared to manually tracking all the user stories and writing them on Microsoft Word or Google Docs."
"JIRA has been very simple to use, no issues."
"The solution has helped my companies efficiency with managing tickets throughout the life cycle."
"The stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
"It improves productivity, cash flow management, and inventory control for clients."
"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."
"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."
"The SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
 

Cons

"A lot of features, such as time tracking, are only available through the marketplace. If multiple users are working on a user story, we aren't able to pull out the reports. So, there are many things that they aren't offering. They are available only through the marketplace. That's not good for a product."
"There are times when Jira goes down, and we find it difficult to log in."
"The reports and dashboards do not provide for reports in a graphical way."
"The tool is not good at the enterprise level."
"Some of the interfaces, especially on the administrator side and for permissions, are not so clear. They aren't very user-friendly."
"I also wish Jira had an indicator to tell you that you are approaching the limit for the story points that can be delivered during a sprint. I don't think there is an indicator like that, but such an indicator will be very helpful because then I will be easily able to see that we are approaching the limit."
"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."
"Of course, the price could always be cheaper."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution could be less expensive. We pay annually for the solution."
"The license is yearly. It is a large, long-running program."
"The standard package of Jira is for 100 users. They should offer more packages for other increments, such as 500 or 2,000. In my previous company, there was a free package that provided a minimal number of users."
"The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you."
"The price seems reasonable to me. It's very similar to Splunk."
"We are on an annual license and could be less expensive."
"It is certainly a long-term solution for our company and for previous companies that I have worked for. They have these long-term term licenses, but I'm not sure if they really pay on a yearly basis. They are certainly using it for a really long period and for a lot of users."
"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 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
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
11%
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 Planisware, monday.com, Broadcom and others in Project Portfolio Management. Updated: July 2026.
911,436 professionals have used our research since 2012.