What needs improvement with JIRA Portfolio?

The tool needs to improve its speed and response time.

The solution should provide a monitoring interface for the customers to have more information about the issues. We cannot receive the information by mail. We can use the tool to share reports, but it should also have a space for customers to add comments. JIRA should provide more online video resources explaining how to use the solution.

From an improvement perspective, I would like to see the product of more integration capabilities with different platforms. The APIs work, but what my company noticed is that Atlassian offers extensions in the marketplace, and one also needs to buy new products it provides. The integration of the new products with the rest of the portfolio always takes some time, including for users to become familiar with Atlassian Assets and OpsGenie. The product's performance is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.

From a usability standpoint, JIRA doesn't work properly with excessive information on the dashboard. It would be beneficial if the product team could modernize or customize the dashboard to tailor it to individual users' needs. For instance, I might only require a few key metrics on my dashboard, whereas another user might need a different information set. Introducing modularity in how information is displayed or communicated to the end user could simplify the user experience and improve overall usability.

The solution’s pricing could be reduced.

We are based in India; I would like the product to integrate local pricing. We earn in rupees but spend in dollars. Its pricing could also be lowered.

JIRA and Confluence must be linked automatically. What I change on JIRA must be updated in Confluence if it is related. If a task has been completed in JIRA and is mentioned somewhere in Confluence, the status must also be updated on Confluence.

There is room for improvement in terms of scalability.

It would be really nice if the solution provided a heads-up every time they enhance something or add new features. Recently, we had an issue because they changed the structure of using demo accounts. We didn't have any heads up and were struggling with what to do and how to go about it. We had to reach out to a lot of people, ask if they were also facing the same issue, and then we finally had to figure it out ourselves. JIRA Portfolio is an amazing tool, but it would be much simpler if it provided a heads-up about how to go about new changes beforehand. The documentation for these changes is available online, but it's too much. If the solution comes up with a change, it should only provide information for that particular change. Otherwise, we'll have to spend a lot of time looking into a lot of documentation.

JIRA Portfolio's configuration management could be improved.

The interface JIRA Portfolio could improve.

The automation in JIRA Portfolio could improve, it takes some time. We have to do some other tactics to have the same integration. Manually integrating something will take more work than if it was automated, but the automation scripting in the solution is not simple. The ability to connect to market-leading tools should be easier, such as Selenium. A smaller package installation would make it easier. One component would speed up the process. For example, if people choose Selimiam in Jira Portfolio should be one component, such as one .exe file which everything can be installed. A similar process should be done for Cypress to make the process easier.

I think the solution can improve in graphs and the analysis part. Considering what I would like to see in the solution that could simplify my life, I would like to mention Miro. Currently, we have to visit Miro specifically to carry out PI planning.

This solution requires some effort to insert functionalities from Tempo to the base of Jira. I think that could be simplified.

The integration capabilities of JIRA Portfolio could be enhanced. For each cloud service provider, effort should be on both sides and bilaterally. There should be an integration of efforts between the cloud service providers' side and JIRA Portfolio because AWS has no JIRA Portfolio integration. Hence, limiting some of the solution's possibilities.

I don't have much exposure to it. We use the tool to a minimum amount. The integration needs to be done with different tools. In terms of email functionality, if we have an email, it would be helpful to provide the status updates or notes directly configured via email.

In the next release, Portfolio should include more metrics and develop their portfolio planning.

It's hard for people to learn. It's got kind of a steep learning curve. As much as it's not Excel, I would like to see an auto-scheduling feature. It'll help you plan, yet it won't plan for you. Some people think of it as an easy button they'll hit. They have this feature already, auto-schedule. And if you understand it, you know what to do before you auto-schedule the work. If you've manually set a due date on something, it's going to respect that. It's not going to try and override it when it auto-schedules it. However, what I thought would be pretty cool is if there was the ability with these planning environments that one could introduce their own scheduling algorithm. If you carry that one step further, if it comes pre-configured with these relationships and how the auto-schedule will run, that would be ideal. I’d like to have an algorithm or a way to introduce our own scheduling algorithm. Whether that is just a GUI for that that allows you to say, "Hey. Let's prioritize based on certain criteria," or something else, that would be ideal. There needs to be some more flexibility in the scheduling. All of the data lives inside the tool. So maybe it could use some more integration or export options to formats that are common, like Excel or PDF or something. However, I've run into a lot of research where people handle complex multi-level projects. That's a whole different subject matter domain. A lot of people look at is the best algorithm to auto-schedule work or predict where they may end or start based on those type types of formulas. The other thing that I liked yet went away is the resource management piece. It'd be great for a planning tool to look at the individual level, not just the team level, at the individual's skillset for planning purposes. Hopefully, we would have more data points. Their availability, capacity, for example, what days they'd be available to work, et cetera, could be tracked. This is something that they started with. They had this concept and then Atlassian said it wasn't getting much use, so they decided to pull it from the product.

An improvement would be if Portfolio were integrated with Office 365. Also, Portfolio's portfolio management is complicated because you need different components or apps to see specific portfolios.

JIRA Portfolio could improve new implementation because if I want integration for the complete wide frame tools it cannot provide any wide frame tools. In a future release of JIRA Portfolio, they should add more general features to make it easier for project management.

The price could be improved.

I don't much have developer insight into the Jira tool, however, it would be nice if it could provide an end-to-end solution for a project. For example, I'm from the SAP field. In SAP, we have something called SAP Chart or Solution Manager, and there you can create tickets and you can monitor the progress. You can manage the end-to-end scenario from development to go-live. If those features could be incorporated into Jira, it'll be a full package.

The HR aspect of the solution could be improved.

The query features should improve in JIRA Portfolio. For example, if I would have to create my own queries for looking into something such as what business features we have released last month, or the last three months, I don't know if I can do it. The solution requires a certain level of expertise. JIRA Portfolio should work on an intuitive way of querying and having different views, which will help us to track the progress. When things have been visualized they are more easily understood.

We sometimes have issues importing and exporting Spanish data because we use accents, and they don't always export correctly. The kanban board could also use some more filters. We just had a project where the deployment for Jira didn't have any ETA, and it's a requirement for the client. We accommodate a lot of issues on the board, so the workaround was to create boards by project, not client.

We would love to be able to have direct contact with Atlassian. Currently, they are not working directly with West African countries. We are considering using JIRA Align, but when we contact them, they say that as we are in West Africa, they don't directly work with West Africa.

Converting a task into an epic is very troublesome. As it is now, if you make the mistake of creating the wrong thing then you just have to delete it and start again. If you could convert between things such as features and tasks then it would be helpful.

Some "help" on each tab should be included in the tool, for those people who do not have previous experience with it like how to filter part of the portfolio or project, how to easily set the versioning based on Release management best practices, and in my opinion, nobody should delete a task inside the team. There should be a log to track all movements of cards, any change on dates, due dates, responsibilities, etc. Another thing could be to have an easy way to manage the Portfolio and have more ways to share and to show graphics and reports

Today, when we want to prepare PI planning, we have a dedicated plugin, which allows us to print a ticket. We have beautiful tickets which is an advantage. We can print tickets and put them right on the wall. It's better for PI planning due to the fact that you can read information, and it's always written in the same way. On each ticket, you can see priority, version, et cetera, always written in the same way. If you write it directly, however, it's not always readable. JIRA Portfolio can help you during PI planning because you can write your dependencies directly. However, it would be better if you didn't have this manual part of the process. If we don't have to print a ticket and to put a ticket on the wall, it would be easier. It's very difficult, for example, for sizeable companies to find large rooms to do PI planning. With coronavirus, we have to work from home. PI planning needs to be re-imagined. It needs to be virtual, not physical. It would be better if it was more like Klaxon, where your ticket is pushed to a blackboard. JIRA is very poor at reporting.

I think their view needs to be more user-friendly. The UI makes it difficult to find things. Secondly, the configuration is very complex. JIRA should help people find out what configuration they are using. There are many issues, but I would say the UI needs to be improved most. Also, some training documents need to be there with respect to their configuration. They don't have training documents easily available. You really need to figure it out by yourself. That is something they must improve.

The workflow needs improvement. The product itself could be improved in many ways, but at the moment I don't have anything very specific to discuss. It might be helpful to have a simple version of the solution built for a small number of users that would be fast and have a straightforward installation process.

I think to improve the product they need to work on integration. I think what I call heterogeneous integration into other tools will be important. It would be nice to work with data modeling from any tool. From an enterprise reporting perspective, you definitely want to be able to take core data, put it into any sort of raw database and be able to manipulate it to get the information you are looking for. I think the reporting side is probably where JIRA is not the strongest product in my view. Needed improvements just boil down to an improved integration. I know it is always going to be a challenge to add new features, but I think better integration around Microsoft or other core applications would help. I think big data warehousing is important. Enabling RPA for the benefits that can offer would help as well.

The stakeholders have to decide to use JIRA and that's the problem. Not all the stakeholders are in touch with JIRA but we need their budget for the whole team to get the opportunity to use JIRA. It's not a problem with the tool, it's our organization. Some of the stakeholders have other opinions and they like to use other tools. The initial setup could use improvement.

I think that front-end development is a little bit buggy in some cases. Some of the features take a while to respond and some need to be more clear. Now we are using next-generation projects, so it's simpler to set the projects up than it was in the past. There is some work to be done there to have a clearer interface and workflow of how to organize a simple software project.

We would like to have an option for a secure board that we can give to our clients that would allow them to see certain aspects during development, but not so much that they can steal all of our information. A dashboard specifically for customers would improve this solution. Sometimes I have a customer-solution in addition to the more general solution. I would like to be able to differentiate these using perhaps a different color. If I get a feature but there is not a user story, and I want to know which epic it belongs to, it is really hard to figure out. It is hard to work from the bottom up. If you tap on your epic you can see its features, and if you open its features you can see user stores. If you go on, if you are going from top to bottom, it works well. However, if you want to go from the bottom up, it is very hard to do.

I would say that there's a lot of reporting on the dashboard so something that can be improved is the project level visibility because it is a little unclear. Especially when you compare it to JIRA Central.

There could be many things that could be improved but we haven't been working with it long enough to accurately find the weak points. The pricing of add-ons could be improved. You should have the option to pay only for the users concerned, that would be fine, because of the dashboards everybody has access to the dashboard. This solution is not able to be integrated with other solutions because you have to upgrade it and pay for more licensing.

Generally, I'm a happy customer when it comes to this product. The product's speed could be improved. However, there is really no software that can ever be fast enough. I would like to see more flexible reporting and the ability to customize reports. If the pricing could be reconsidered by the company, that would be helpful to all users and organizations using the product. On a scale of one to ten, one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate JIRA Portfolio as an eight. That is based on German skepticism. To be a ten is not even being a silver bullet, it's being a gold bullet. Very rare if it even exists. The only product I use that is a ten is TeX (or LaTeX). It is public domain software, 30 years old, absolutely stable, it never crashes, it uses a minimum amount of resources because it has no GUI. That is as close to perfect as a product can be.