Best approach to replace MS Project using JIRA

[John Hurlbert]

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?)?

Maybe the Roadmap will be good enough to manage along with the project board - experience?

While I used JIRA for bug tracking in the past, I've never set up the projects so any suggestions welcome.  Hoping for a bit of a discussion on best practices.

[Kalos Bonasia]

you have to see Jira as a "database server" and BigPicture or Portfolio for Jira or Structure as "specific programs that access data in the Jira database". If you see things this way you immediately understand how excellent Jira is compared to a wax tablet from 13,000 BC as a microsoft project.