Today’s businesses operate in an ever-changing digital environment. Rapid advancements drive competition and make staying on top of business processes even more challenging than before. To keep up, businesses are turning to new project management software that automate processes and streamline workflows so they can focus on what matters most.
As the demand for faster workflow and more robust project management software increases, so does the number of available tools.
Asana vs Jira: which is right for your business? Are you looking for a tool that caters to specific needs, or are you willing to experiment with several different options until you find one that works?
The debate between Asana and Jira is never-ending. Some find it easy to use the intuitive interface of Asana, while others prefer the advanced features on offer with Jira. The truth is, both project management tools have their advantages and disadvantages. One of these would better suit your specific needs than the other.
Let’s take a closer look at what each one has to offer in order to make an informed decision.
TL; DR: Asana Vs Jira
Asana and Jira are both tools for project management. They are both designed to keep your team on track and give them visibility into the work you do. Both tools are excellent at managing tasks, but they have different strengths.
Jira is more of a technical tool, while Asana is more focused on collaboration. Jira is great for teams that need to break down their work into smaller chunks with a lot of detail, while Asana is better for teams that need to be able to see everything in one place.
What is Asana?
With its easy-to-use nature, we believe Asana to be one of the best work management tools available today. In addition, it has a thoughtful workflow builder that allows you to customize your projects and tasks just how you want them.
With Asana, you can manage your team while staying on top of your tasks and deadlines. These features like Forms, Milestones, Views, List, Calendar, and Board all add to its capabilities
Advantages and Key Features of Asana
Asana is arguably one of the most popular project management tool out there. With features that make it easy to work both as an individual or as part of a team, what are Asane’s chief assets?
- Different Views – Asana comes with prebuilt templates with views like List, Calendar, Timeline, Kanban Boards which are instrumental in managing teamwork and data easily.
- Workflow: Here is the simplest way to make sure that your company has clear goals. With Workflow Builder, you’ll be able to create a workflow for the entire team.
- UI/UX: everybody who has used it can tell you that they do a good job with UX/UI
- Workload Management – Asana can help reduce the workload of your team to prevent them from getting overwhelmed with Workload Management.
Disadvantages Asana?
Although Asana may be a great project management app, it has some limitations which should be taken into account. The main drawbacks are:
- Not preferable for software project management – to manage a software project you need features like time tracking, burn-down charts, etc. Jira is a great tool and it has these features but Asana doesn’t that’s why it’s not a good choice if this is your requirement.
- You might think that Asana is expensive, but they focus on enterprise clients now. SMEs should think twice before making the switch.
- No Contact Management – Asana is a great project management tool and can be used for marketing campaigns, however it lacks one crucial area – contact management. This means you won’t be able to trace the context and intent of the leads, which is important for doing lead nurturing.
- Customer Support – Asana offers customer support but does not have a live chat service.
Typical Use Cases for Asana
Asana is a versatile app that can help a team manage various aspects of their marketing efforts. Here are some ways it can be used:
- Plan campaigns and manage an effective social media calendar,
- Track budget and analyze the performance of digital advertising to maximize ROI,
- Create personalized customer communications, such as emails or newsletters.
- Sprints: Planning, running and monitoring sprints can be time consuming. This is partly because tasks such as prioritizing service requests and tracking product roadmap development have to be done continuously. And Asana can be used for this
- Management: Employees often feel neglected when they first start at a company, but using employee onboarding templates can really help with this. With Asana, this is easily achievable.
Apart from all of these use cases, Asana can also be used for Designing, Architecture, Accounting, and more.
What is Jira?
Atlassian has designed a new set of powerful functionalities for Jira that fit the agile software teams’ need for streamlining management. You will have access to things like a storyboard, scrum board and burn-down charts, which will help productivity and balance out the workflow in your team.
One of the things that makes Jira powerful is its many customization options, especially when it comes to managing projects.
Jira is one of the best workflow management tools out there, but it has a reputation as an overly complicated piece of software that makes it tough to collaborate.
Advantages and Features of Jira
Jira focuses on flexibility and customization – it’s a project management tool that is perfect for agile teams. You can find out what you need to know by exploring the following five areas:
- Reports – Jira provides some fantastic charts for tracking your app development. There are burndown charts, sprint reports, velocity charts, control charts, cumulative flow diagrams, workload reports and time tracking reports available to help you manage everything.
- Code Deployments – You can explore the code and look at the latest releases of Jira in the Development section. You can also check for issues that might need to be resolved in the Issue panel.
- Scrum Boards – With Scrum Boards, you can track product developments and code commits in a single view. Creating user stories is also easy because you can break down your bigger tasks into smaller tasks that are more manageable
- Dashboards – Jira dashboards are a great way to track team progress and performance at the same time. It makes it easier for you to see where your team can improve and enables you to report that information.
- Templates – Consider using templates when creating complex projects, as they provide a great starting point. They include tools that can help you with projects related to process control, scrum and project management, among others.
Disadvantages of Jira
Jira was started as a bug tracking software, but grew over time to take on other functions. It can be used for anything from bug tracking to task management.
Jira as a project management tool is liked by people in tech-heavy industries. However, less technical teams have found it difficult to grasp the program’s steep learning curve and confusing user interface.
Here, we uncover the disadvantages of Jira:
- Non-IT people – If you are not in the software development business, Jira won’t do much more than take up your time. You should prefer tools like Asana and Trello that are easy to use but powerful as well. To give you a better idea of what other options you have, we will list some alternatives below.
- Mediocre UI – If you’re more visually motivated, Jira’s UI might not be for you. Asana has a better appearance and is comparable to doing tasks in Trello, ClickUp or Monday.
- Steep Learning Curve- Jira may seem overwhelming for people outside of IT, but Asana is easier to understand.
Typical Use Cases for Jira
Jira is a prominent tool for any IT company looking to manage its product development or software design.
It provides real-time visibility and brings everything together to make the complicated tasks of running a business easier.
It’s truly invaluable for software companies, when you need to deploy code in different stages of the development process and keep track of everything that’s going on in your tech stack
Asana vs Jira: Key Differences
Both Asana and Jira have their advantages and disadvantages. Here, we will compare and contrast the key differences between both products to find out which is the right tool for your specific needs.
Features
- Boards – Asana has Kanban boards for managing your Marketing team, Sales team, and Engineering team. Jira Scrum boards can be used for deployment of projects, code commits, and more.
- Customized Views – Asana provides a variety of project management tools, with specialized views such as List, Timeline, Board, Calendar & Board. Jira is really a Kanban board geared towards software development teams.
- Reports – One of the major features of Jira is that it has various agile metrics such as burndown chart, velocity report, sprint report, workload report, burnup report, The other project management tool, Asana, doesn’t have such a comprehensive range of agile metrics.
Pricing
Jira is the more expensive project management software with a price tag of $75 per month for the standard package while the business package costs $145 per month with unlimited projects.
Jira offers significant features that make it worth the investment. Asana offers a free trial and starts at $11 and $25 per month for their premium and business packages respectively.
Though Asana doesn’t have as many features as Jira, it comes in a more affordable package. Additionally, Asana’s tools are easy to use and are great for beginners who don’t need all the bells and whistles of Jira.
Support
In terms of customer service and support, Jira offers 24/7 service through phone calls, chats, email support as well as online tutorials and videos.
On the other hand, Asana offers 24/7 customer service only via email. They don’t offer live chat during business hours like Jira does.
Alternative to Asana and Jira
Asana was so close to solving all my organization needs but the lack of some features like calendaring and video conferencing, time-tracking and support are critical drawbacks.
Here are more alternative project management software:
Monday
The Monday project management software offers a lot of features to make the project management process easy. It is designed to be used by all types of people and companies.
It has a clean interface that makes it easy to use for both beginners and advanced users. The software is user-friendly and can be customized according to the needs of the user.
It also has an integrated calendar, which can be synced with other calendars in order to make sure that there are no scheduling conflicts.
Monday also offers many integrations, which allow it to work with other applications like Slack or Trello.
ClickUp
The ClickUp project management software is a great tool for any project manager. It provides a central hub for all the different aspects of the project and it allows you to collaborate with your team on tasks, track progress, set deadlines, manage budgets and much more.
It has a free plan and has a beautiful interface that makes it easy to use. The only downside is that it can be overwhelming at first because of how many features there are. But once you get used to it, you’ll never want to go back!
Trello
Trello is a free project management software that can be accessed through desktop or browser. It is designed to be highly visual and intuitive.
There are many features of Trello that make it stand out from other project management software. One of the most notable features is the Kanban Board, which allows users to visualize their projects in a very clear and simple way.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a project management software that is designed to help teams organize and collaborate on projects.
Basecamp’s features include:
- a shared inbox for team members to communicate and share files with each other
- a calendar for planning out meetings, deadlines, and milestones
- shared documents that can be edited collaboratively
- a chat room for real-time communication
Frequently Asked Questions
Jira vs Asana: Which is Better?
Jira is more traditional in look and feel, while Asana is more user-friendly and modern. Both platforms offer excellent project management features, but Jira’s toolset is stronger in areas such as issue tracking, collaboration, and task management.
Asana also offers kanban board and some powerful time tracking features that make it a better choice for organizations looking to better understand how their projects are spending their time.
Ultimately, it depends on your specific needs. If you’re looking for an agile development solution with strong project management capabilities then Jira is worth considering. If you’re looking for an intuitive tool that makes managing projects easier then Asana would be a better option.
Who Can Use Jira Software?
Jira is a popular issue-tracking software used by software developers for various software development projects, project managers, engineering teams and others in the software industry. It is designed for individuals or small teams working on projects of any size.
