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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

"I liked the flexibility of the application. It was pretty user-friendly."
"We use it for capacity planning. We need to gauge and assess whatever is coming to our pipeline and then everything comes to the pipeline, appears as a pic, and then based on that, we create the story points and we take it from there."
"What I like most about Jira is that it's flexible, as it has the flexibility to be configured for any company."
"As long as a company has the money for storage, it's scalable to any size."
"Kanban board: The board is easy to use and visually impressive to non-IT users, who found it easy to relate to."
"This product provides you a good view of the status of your projects."
"The scalability is good."
"Productivity increased by using this tool and organization can measure the productivity of a resource, early alert being displayed in the case of project failure and success, and the organization can identify the workload on resources for a day."
"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."
"It improves productivity, cash flow management, and inventory control for clients."
"The SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."
"The stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
 

Cons

"There's been the odd amount of JIRA downtime (not self hosted) and sometimes tickets that can't be accessed."
"The biggest drawback that Jira has is that they don't have a separate chart to show metrics for lead time, cycle time, and throughput."
"Though JIRA can be used as a Test Management tool, it is not complete by itself."
"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."
"Customer service has not been helpful but I have not minded since the wiki documentation and Atlassian Answers forum have been great."
"I do know the initial setup was pretty complicated. The user interface could be better organized and easier. ​"
"The reports in Jira can be improved, especially for test reports. I find it difficult to customize and integrate for different testing purposes."
"There's a really steep learning curve for configuration."
"The product itself could have an advanced analytics layer with an improved user interface that is adapted to the new digital era."
"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."
"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."
"The initial support package of version 5.0 has some setup difficulties."
"The platform's support structure needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."
"To try this solution, use their cloud offering to get familiar. After that, it's in my view worth the money."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis, and it is based on what you use."
"It does not cost that much."
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
"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."
"The price seems reasonable to me. It's very similar to Splunk."
"JIRA's pricing is very economical. I would say that JIRA is a great deal more economical than Microsoft."
"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
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.
905,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.