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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 (2nd), 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 (10th)
 

Featured Reviews

Rituraj NSIT - 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

"It benefits us because we have globally located teams. Our team members work in different geographies, so the product is a better way to manage progress and see the status of different tasks"
"It is a good defect tracking tool. It has a lot of capabilities and functionalities. There are a lot of graphs and a lot of tracking. It can be sprint-driven if you want."
"The JIRA user interface looks great. It's an overall good experience. It's very intuitive in the sense that you understand how it's going to work. It's very self-explanatory, and it's beneficial overall."
"The design of the interface is clean and not too busy visually."
"The product is very scalable and it's very flexible to match any organization."
"The product is very useful, and as a program manager, I recommend it wholeheartedly."
"Overall, the solution is very nice and has a variety of great features."
"Jira offers tools for managing projects using Agile methodology, and I think it is good to encourage the development team to use Jira so that the organization benefits from the proper execution of projects on time, helping our organization to execute in a better way."
"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."
"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 SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
"The stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
 

Cons

"If I'm comparing it to ALM Octane, the documentation is not as robust as ALM Octane's documentation."
"The Jira dashboards could be more useful. The dashboards have good widgets but the comparison of data over time or extraction of trends from the data is not easy."
"We'd like to see more collaboration tools implemented within the product itself."
"The support person I contacted was not skilled enough to provide me the answer so it's up in the air."
"Ease of administration and customization. It is really clunky in this area."
"The only problem area for me is applying filters, and for new users it is very complicated work."
"The reporting capabilities, specifically customized reports, should be improved. The out-of-box reports don't meet our needs."
"We'd like to use it with non-Agile projects in the future, however, right now, it is a very Agile-focused product."
"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."
"The platform's support structure needs improvement."
"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."
"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We used to be on a perpetual license provided by our clients."
"It is subscription-based, and we probably pay yearly. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of price."
"The tool's pricing is expensive. The new pricing is indeed quite expensive compared to what it was a few years ago. Last year, when we intended to renew our subscription, we found the pricing considerably higher."
"When you get larger, the pricing becomes very, very steep."
"It's not very cheap. It's also not very costly. I'd rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing."
"The basic price of Jira is reasonable, but for each plugin, we have to keep paying more. When you add it all up, it can be expensive. The main problem we face is we are forced to purchases plugin licenses for users who are not going to use them. For example, we have Jira licenses for approximately 450 people but if we only want a purchase a plugin for few people it is mandatory to buy the license for the 450 people who have Jira licensees. This is a problem because sometimes we need plugins for the product manager or for people in charge of the report, not everyone. For us, it can be very expensive in the end, they should alter this policy to allow plugins for only a set number of licenses."
"There is an annual subscription to use Jira."
"Jira and its solution off the shelf are cheap. It is cheap for startups."
"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
13%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
6%
Construction Company
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business108
Midsize Enterprise61
Large Enterprise152
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 itself is fairly priced for the features it provides, but pricing is a bit higher than some alternatives, mostly because many plugins and add-ons are paid and licensed per user. So even if onl...
What advice do you have for others considering SAP Portfolio and Project Management?
The platform integration with SAP finance systems has unified language and criteria, reducing the time for growth periods and ensuring international financial control and management. The resource m...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Portfolio and Project Management?
The product pricing varies based on whether the client is new or existing and the complexity of their business processes.
 

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: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.