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What is best approach for using JIRA as MS Project Replacement.

John Hurlbert

Tried to start a discussion around this but there were no takers so maybe this is just an odd question? I'm at a new company planning for growth and the vision is to use JIRA for project management of complex hardware/firmware/software/server developments (not exactly an Agile environment...).

The "Roadmap" provides a high level view of what is going on but if management is used to a MS Project view there are some major differences.

+ The subtasks don't show as schedule items, though I can see them if I select a task

+ The dependencies don't seem to drive the dates (lots of details around how this does or could work - subtasks rolling up to tasks, rolling up to Epics, editable at all levels, planned vs actual, ...)

Does the fact that there are 3rd party apps (Big Picture, Structure, ....) suggest JIRA doesn't do this natively (or at least not well?)?

Is 3rd party the best way to go or are there just better ways to use the Roadmap capability?

Accepted answers

Dave Rosenlund (Trundl)

Hi, @John Hurlbert (& @Kailin). For general purpose "project management," where Advanced Roadmaps isn't what you need, most folks usually look at Structure for Jira and BigPicture.

Both offer capabilities that are MS Project like in some ways, but are built specifically for Jira (and run through the Atlassian specified services).

Full disclosure: I work for the company that makes Structure.

Hope this helps,

-dave [ALM Works]

Sean Osawa at Ricksoft

Disclaimer: I am a Marketplace Partner of a Gantt app.

Hi @John Hurlbert

Yes. It is the best way to use one of the 3rd party apps if you are looking for an MS Project alternative.

As you are already aware of, there are some feature gaps between MS Project and Jira.

Atlassian has recently added features like Basic Roadmaps and Advanced Roadmaps to Jira because of its popularity. I guess they continue developing features around it, but it should take a while.

I also doubt it becomes a real MS Project alternative as Atlassian does not aim to do so.

We compared them and gathered information on the below page, which might be useful for you.

https://www.ricksoft-inc.com/jira-wbs-gantt-chart-vs-ms-project/

All comments

Kailin

I would like to hear the answer as well. The Roadmap "feature" is not powerful enough. The most I've been able to make Jira into a Project Management tool, is to combine it with Smartsheet, which has native dependencies and easy ways to show the Gantt timeline, even building project-specific dashboards.

If there's a native way to make Jira more powerful for project managers without the use of 3rd party apps, I'm all ears!

John Hurlbert

Well Kailin, I found a related question that didn't show up in previous searches and here were the 2 answers from Jan 2018. It is a bit dated - "Portfolio" is now called "Advanced Roadmaps" but maybe this is still the best answer. Ericka's response does include some details on BigPicture configuration.

Nic_Brough__Adaptavist_ COMMUNITY LEADER Jan 17, 2018 • edited

There are other add-ons in the market place (if you look for estimate or estimated date, you'll find a few), but the ones I've used that do things like this are Portfolio (Atlassian), Tempo planner (Tempo) and Cycle Control (Botron). They all take different approaches, but they can all deliver you dates one way or another.

Edit- Bother. I completely forgot BigPicture. Also well worth a look.

Ericka Samuels Jan 18, 2018

I'm pretty sure BigPicture will do that. As long as you configure it to use the Original Estimate field from the JIRA issues. Original Estimate becomes your 'duration' field that you'd normally have in MS Project. If you use BigPicture's Start Date and JIRA's Original Estimate, the End Date will be derived. ex: task starting on the 1st w/9 days of Original Estimate will end on the 9th.

BigPicture's task links (finish to start, finish to finish, etc) work really well.

Of course, you'll have to ensure the Original Estimate field in JIRA is added to the necessary screen schemes and issue types.

Kailin

Cool, thanks for sharing, John. Now I'm looking into Advanced Roadmaps (how-to doc link here), and will need to read about what BigPicture is. I haven't heard of that before either.

Dave Rosenlund (Trundl)

Hi, @John Hurlbert (& @Kailin). For general purpose "project management," where Advanced Roadmaps isn't what you need, most folks usually look at Structure for Jira and BigPicture.

Both offer capabilities that are MS Project like in some ways, but are built specifically for Jira (and run through the Atlassian specified services).

Full disclosure: I work for the company that makes Structure.

Hope this helps,

-dave [ALM Works]

Sean Osawa at Ricksoft

Disclaimer: I am a Marketplace Partner of a Gantt app.

Hi @John Hurlbert

Yes. It is the best way to use one of the 3rd party apps if you are looking for an MS Project alternative.

As you are already aware of, there are some feature gaps between MS Project and Jira.

Atlassian has recently added features like Basic Roadmaps and Advanced Roadmaps to Jira because of its popularity. I guess they continue developing features around it, but it should take a while.

I also doubt it becomes a real MS Project alternative as Atlassian does not aim to do so.

We compared them and gathered information on the below page, which might be useful for you.

https://www.ricksoft-inc.com/jira-wbs-gantt-chart-vs-ms-project/

John Hurlbert

Hi Dave, Thanks for your answer and your full disclosure. Since you are with Structure, my very quick impression is that Structure was a great and full featured tool for JIRA Server and the JIRA Cloud version is catching up - is that fair?

Thanks,
John

Dave Rosenlund (Trundl)

Hi, John. Yes. That's mostly fair. I'd be inclined to say Structure still is a great tool for server and data center And, it is a great tool for cloud-based project management, too.

What is fair/true is that the cloud version has many (but def. not all) of the features of the on-prem editions. In the same way, Jira itself differs in some very important ways from the on-prem versions.

I would say these differences are mostly relevant to ppl who are coming from the on-prem versions of Jira (or Structure). We have tons of happy customers who simply don't make that comparison — because they never used the on-prem versions of these things.

~~~~~~~~~~~

You may be interested in our July Webinar (last Thursday of the month at 11:00 US ET). We have a guest customer presenter who used an on-prem version of Jira and Structure prior to joining his current employer, who has Jira Cloud.

He's going to share his use case and talk about his journey of getting used to the cloud versions of Jira and Structure.

It will be listed on our Events page very soon, but you can also drop us a note at webinars@almworks.com if you're interested.

Good luck,

-dave [ALM Works]

Eliah Ninyo

i'm also looking for a solution to keep using Jira for task management and add the project management point of view instead of using ms project.

for my manager i need to show the dependencies, see that a delay in a task actually delay the end date, and add constraints like start this after that. and so on.

any convolution @John Hurlbert ?

Ifat Keren

Hello John

I'll be more than happy to hear what did you do eventually:)

Thanks

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