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Jira vs SAP Portfolio and Project Management comparison

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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 (12th)
 

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 enjoy working with (and can recommend) Jira for a number of reasons. The best features are that it is friendly and provides good visibility. It's to the point and very effective."
"I like the test cases in Jira. The orange dash items view was great, and I like the features and layout of the data. It's quite different, and people are now getting their items so quickly."
"The ability to keep stories, bugs and documentation in one application is a valuable feature, as is the ability to easily create swim lanes for organizing work."
"We integrate Jira with QRadar which is helpful."
"Based on the flexibility that it offers us, we can adapt to different projects with different cycles."
"Integration is good."
"The solution, for the most part, offers good usability."
"Working in a dev shop that is 100% scrum, this tool is invaluable in its insights to how the process is working."
"With SAP Portfolio and Project Management we were able to have a full track of project progress and get useful insights about our projects."
"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."
"The stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
"The SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
"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."
 

Cons

"In JIRA, it's a bit complex in terms of what advanced search queries we use. Sharing them is also a problem. Because TFS is on the cloud, we can easily save that query and share it with our team members."
"Jira has recently updated their UI, but more can be done to make it even better."
"In general, it is not user-friendly. For a non-technical person to use, Jira is not intuitive."
"In Jira, sometimes developers are not getting alerts when Jira is moving out of the SLA to the product development team."
"Workflows can be improved. We don't use workflows because we can't handle that much complexity. Its interface could be more intuitive for workflows."
"I give Jira a rating of nine out of ten because it is a really good tool, but it can improve in many areas."
"There needs to be easier integration with third-parties — personally, this is the biggest issue for me."
"Though JIRA can be used as a Test Management tool, it is not complete by itself."
"The platform's support structure needs improvement."
"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."
"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The standard package of Jira is for 100 users. They should offer more packages for other increments, such as 500 or 2,000. In my previous company, there was a free package that provided a minimal number of users."
"It is an affordable tool."
"If I compare Jira's licensing model with that of other products, I think that the other products have a much better licensing model."
"There is a monthly license required for this solution and it is expensive."
"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."
"I understand JIRA is quite expensive."
"It is not too expensive. It is just comparative to other tools like Microsoft Teams."
"The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you."
"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
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business108
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise155
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 is a good tool and it is not that expensive. The setup cost is pretty straightforward and the onboarding is smooth.
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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 Broadcom, Planisware, monday.com and others in Project Portfolio Management. Updated: October 2026.
917,181 professionals have used our research since 2012.