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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
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

"The most valuable feature of Jira is the project package for development."
"Since our service is customized to each client, the ability to customize workflow for each project's specific needs has improved productivity simply by streamlining our efforts."
"We use Jira mostly for task coordination and assignment, and additionally scrum methodologies define work items and bug issues, and if we create any bugs all of them are fixed."
"Jira's collaborative features, such as comments, notifications, and real-time updates, facilitate better communication."
"I liked the flexibility of the application. It was pretty user-friendly."
"The solution has helped my companies efficiency with managing tickets throughout the life cycle."
"Working in a dev shop that is 100% scrum, this tool is invaluable in its insights to how the process is working."
"Reports, analytics, and a ton of widgets, they are great and intuitive. Perfect for an agile team."
"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."
"The SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
"With SAP Portfolio and Project Management we were able to have a full track of project progress and get useful insights about our projects."
"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."
"The stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
 

Cons

"Jira can improve by making methodologies better, such as scrum and agile. Additionally, improvements in Kanban boards are needed."
"Better JIRA Agile integration and more functionality related to JIRA Agile plugin"
"It would be good if we can grant access based on the roles. This is something that Jira can look into. Currently, anyone with Jira access can access everything. Being able to define access based on the roles will give us more flexibility in managing Jira. I would like to have more reports in Jira. Currently, eight or nine reports are there. You can use Screen Test to get more reports or data from Jira, but you will have to get more add-ons, plug-ins, and stuff like that. It would be good if they can increase the number of reports."
"I am unable to query based on the subtask and link by issue."
"They are not supporting in-house servers anymore and I think I've got until January to port this to something else."
"it would be helpful to have a better tutorial for learning and to have a better understanding of what the features are and what they do."
"JIRA still has their own backtracking tools. It should have a better visibility into HPE UFT. Most people use functional testing tools, like QTP. They need to improve their integration to make it seamless."
"Grid: It is really strange that there is no possibility to edit an item in the grid. You need to go inside, and even then, not all items are editable, so you need to switch to edit mode. That's too many clicks and switches."
"The product itself could have an advanced analytics layer with an improved user interface that is adapted to the new digital era."
"The initial support package of version 5.0 has some setup difficulties."
"The platform's support structure needs improvement."
"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."
"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

"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
"The license is yearly. It is a large, long-running program."
"To try this solution, use their cloud offering to get familiar. After that, it's in my view worth the money."
"I am not sure if the client is using a commercial version. I think it is on a per-user basis, and it is around 15 Canadian dollars for a user, but I'm not sure. It also has a free version."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis, and it is based on what you use."
"We are on an annual license to use Jira."
"We make use of the solution free of charge."
"For very small companies, if you have less than 10 individuals, it is $10 a year for each of the products. When we were a part of the enterprise and had more than 10 people using it, or before they came up with this solution for small companies, it was $2,500 a year for the license for Jira and Confluence, and I believe something like $600 a year to perpetuate the license. I can't remember if it was $600 or $2,500 annually. It was for up to 25 people at the time, and this was in the early 2000s and mid 2000s."
"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
8%
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.
910,479 professionals have used our research since 2012.