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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

"The solution is easy to use and user-friendly."
"It gave us control over all test artifacts in one place, along with easy traceability, mapping between stories, bugs, test cases, and test cycles."
"The initial setup isn't too complicated."
"The product provides high flexibility to create new workflows quickly."
"One of the most valuable features is querying because the jQuery function is very good. Additionally, we can create good designs very easily."
"There are a lot of different plugins for Jira. Unfortunately, we did not test so many and the big pain point for us is the rigorous handling and the roadmap of Jira. We have a portfolio and structure plugin and we have our story map plugin in Jira"
"It includes by default all the necessary tools for a project manager to work and make their work more efficient."
"Jira as a structure has Confluence for documentation, and for what it is offering it is a strong suit with Atlassian."
"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 stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
"The SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
 

Cons

"The only issue I see is the licensing model of Atlassian for Jira. Many customers face issues with this model, often resulting in solving the issues in a nonstandard way, which may double the cost of the product."
"The solution should be more user-friendly and include integration with different tools."
"In general, although we use JIRA, we never really learned how to use it properly. The learning curve of the solution is high. It has a lot of power, and yet we don't understand its capabilities."
"We would like to see the integration of a lite-version of Confluence, just to manage some of the templates and documents."
"The downside to JIRA is the constant push for the changing of the user interface."
"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."
"Jira can improve by making methodologies better, such as scrum and agile. Additionally, improvements in Kanban boards are needed."
"We're doing PI planning, Program Increment planning, and that kind of stuff, and it's not always a good facilitator for that. We tend to pull it out and put it into other tools to manage that, and then we get it back into Jira as that's our system of record for where all the stories are kept. That's probably the biggest headache with it."
"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."
"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

"The price of the solution could be lower."
"There is an annual subscription to use Jira."
"It does not cost that much."
"I don't have the number, but I sure wish Jira was less expensive. Its price point should be a little lower, and it should be more flexible for users who are just ticket viewers."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. The product offers flexibility in pricing since it depends on the memory bits you have used."
"Its price is fine, but we would like it to be less expensive. We are paying on a yearly basis."
"The pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."
"Compared to the value Jira provides, it’s not that expensive. It has an yearly licensing cost."
"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.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.