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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

"Jira is great for story management."
"Overall, I think it is a very useful tool for teams to be on track and to be on the same page."
"It's an organized, collaborative, transparent way of working and that's really helped the organization overall."
"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, there is a lot of data that you can pull out for estimations, it has got a lot of out-of-the-box functionalities, and it also works well with all the integrated tools that you buy."
"Overall, it is very intuitive. It is so lightweight and easy to use. It is easy to manage our product backlog and user stories, and it produces great reports."
"I have experience with Jira's bulk tracking and issue management. We use it to add new features to our product, fix bugs, and address customer feedback."
"We use multiple plugins and tools which are integrated with Jira, it provides good output as we expected and we are basically hoping to increase the number of users."
"I like the ease with which we can do our workflow administration, especially with respect to defects."
"The SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
"It improves productivity, cash flow management, and inventory control for clients."
"The stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."
"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."
 

Cons

"Sometimes the screens can be a bit too busy. There's often a lot of information on the screen. I think paring things down and applying some UX improvements might enhance the look and feel of the interface."
"We lose a lot of information when working at the ticket level in Jira."
"Although this is a somewhat old-school approach, we'd like to see some common building block approaches to certain things."
"The initial setup was a bit problematic in terms of getting access to Jira. That goes for a few users, including me."
"For me, the solution is too complicated as it has too many features. It would be nice if they could streamline things."
"Once a story is closed, all the records, versions, and documentation associated with it are gone. We lose the traceability of what was done."
"There is a steep learning curve for administration. While the tool is fairly easy for our users to understand and use, what it takes to set up the system to make it easy for end users is fairly complex."
"From the project management perspective, I would say there are a lot of different issues that could be tweaked. There can be small improvements with traceability, for example."
"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 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."
"The initial support package of version 5.0 has some setup difficulties."
"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't deal with licensing in my current consultant position."
"The price at the moment for Jira is okay. I'm absolutely not amused with the plans to try to drive us to the cloud or to other licensing models. For the very simple reason that we are a company in the defense sector where cloud is problematic in a number of the domains. We are now approximately 60 users and the new policy will actually confront us with an upscale to approximately 500 users. I find it unacceptable, and may potentially lead us to look for another solution."
"The price seems reasonable to me. It's very similar to Splunk."
"The price of the solution could be lower."
"We are using the enterprise license which is nice because it ensures that we always have the latest versions of Jira software."
"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."
"The price is quite competitive."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive. We pay annually for the solution."
"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
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.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.