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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

"Reporting: It gives a nice report of my backlog and what my team has currently spent its efforts on."
"The most valuable feature is that it has different APIs available, with good services, and it is completely by the books."
"Atlassian products are the exact opposite; a new team can be brought on and be working efficiently within minutes – with Team Concert it could be hours or even days, if ever, before a team can be working well together."
"We use Jira for project management and tracking."
"JIRA's technical support is absolutely fantabulous."
"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"
"JIRA was a major improvement for a variety of reasons listed in other answers."
"We integrate Jira with QRadar which is helpful."
"SAP is gradually introducing more flexibility and customization options to the system, allowing users to adapt it to their specific needs."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"There could be some improvements in the project management and portfolio level features. I think they could bring more flavours of Agile to Jira, that would help."
"Could be more intuitive."
"Sometimes the solution doesn't communicate well with other platforms. It's quite difficult to integrate things and make the data flow from A to B, to Jira, and then back to other areas."
"It is not capturing the number of hours for which each person has worked on certain things. We use many add-ons to let resources enter the time in the user story itself. We use an add-on called Tempo, but it is kind of a lousy add-on. It is not straightforward. Rather than helping us, it creates a lot of confusion. So, instead of looking out for the additional add-on, I would prefer to have the timesheet entered as a part of Jira itself. They are anyways capturing every information they could for each user story, and then we are able to break down all the task lists. For each task, we're also assigning a resource. So, while we're doing it, why can't they allow the users to enter the time that can be created as a report? Right now, we need to acquire the add-on, and the add-on is not great. It is not helping. The add-on is also not free."
"The solution lacks integration with visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau, which would be beneficial for better insights."
"The technical support could be more responsive."
"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of integration with SVN, and auto-sync with the build release number."
"The help desk and services management features are in need of improvement."
"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."
"The platform's support structure needs improvement."
"The product itself could have an advanced analytics layer with an improved user interface that is adapted to the new digital era."
"The initial support package of version 5.0 has some setup difficulties."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not too expensive. It is just comparative to other tools like Microsoft Teams."
"I am not sure about the pricing, but I know its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The price of Jira could be lower."
"We currently have ten users, and it is free for ten users."
"The price of the solution could be lower."
"Jira and its solution off the shelf are cheap. It is cheap for startups."
"We had a perpetual license but have changed to a subscription."
"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 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%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise154
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: August 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.