Do you find it challenging when you need to choose one project management tool between Jira Software and Asana? This Jira Software vs. Asana article will help you make an informed decision.
The project management tools comparison below helps you learn the strengths and differences between Jira Software and Asana. Ultimately, you easily find out which project management software is the best fit for your current ventures.
What Is Jira Software?
Jira Software’s Work Management Tool is a project management tool from Atlassian. Previously marketed as Jira Core, Jira Software is a rebranded cloud app to help your business teams plan, track, and organize their work efficiently.
Since the tool is online and implements changes in real time, you can collaborate with your team members while adding tasks, changing priorities, or managing task dependencies.
Primarily, you can create and assign tasks, set due dates, track progress, and monitor project timelines. Furthermore, there are customizable workflows you can choose to create a unique workflow for your project.
Moreover, the tool comes with a built-in smart reporting and analytics tool. Using this, your data analyst can create custom reports, automatic reports, and more for client or investor reporting purposes.
Role of Jira Software as a PM Tool
Most software and business entities use Jira Software and Confluence in Agile and DevOps projects. However, Atlassian lacked a project and task management tool that could integrate with its products. Hence, those who used Jira Software needed to buy other PM tools that integrate with Jira Software and cater to project and work management.
The introduction of Jira Software changed the above status. All the teams using Jira Software and other Atlassian apps for software, product, and service management moved to this native work management system. The tool is simple and does not require software development skills, so general business persons can also manage projects effectively and affordably. Plus, it comes for free with the Jira Software.
What Is Asana?
Asana is a cloud and desktop PM tool that helps your teams to organize, track, and manage their work effectively. Former Facebook employees Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein developed the tool to make project management software available to everyone–from gig workers to mid-sized businesses. However, the tool can handle enterprise workloads too.
Asana is a pioneering tool to offers a visual interface to create tasks, assign those to team members, and monitor the overall project progress. It provides various features such as task lists, kanban boards, calendars, and timelines to help you keep every team focused and organized.
Here are some of the best kanban board tools for your team.
Role of Asana as a Project Management Tool
Asana transformed the way how business managers used to manage projects. Before Asana, project heads would use Microsoft Projects, which is complicated and not easily understood by anyone on the team.
After Asana, anyone can become a project manager, and you can manage any project on it. For example, managing home chores to business startups for complex software products, and Asana can accommodate all these projects.
Asana is one of the first no-code PM tools with drag-and-drop actions for quick project setup and task assignment. You can onboard a new contractor or employee in your project in less than five minutes by just sending an invitation link.
How Does Jira Software Tool Work?
Firstly, you can create two types of shared space or projects on Jira Software. These are as outlined below:
#1.Company-Managed Projects
Business owners, managers, and workforce admins usually create global projects using this feature. These projects determine the workflow, PM process, and standardization of all teams under the company projects.
#2. Team-Managed Projects
Such a shared space comes under global projects. For example, you created a global project named Web Publishing, under which different teams can set up their own workspace for web development, content production, content publishing, and marketing.
Once you are done creating a project, you can add or customize (if using a template) the following elements on Jira Software for effective work management and monitoring:
Issues
Issues are the smallest units of the project. You can create different issue types like Epic, Task, Asset, Story, and Bug.
Boards
The Jira Software boards are for a visual representation of your work process using the Kanban methodology. It allows you to view the status of each issue as cards that you can easily move across the board. Also, you can track, organize, and prioritize Issues by aligning them with the columns like Pending, Assigned, Work In Progress, Priority, Done, etc.
Cards
In Jira Software, each card represents a specific issue that you work on, offering a concise task summary. You can customize these cards to display key details like due dates, assignees, and priorities, enabling effective work organization.
When you select a card, you can access additional information and options. You have the ability to add necessary fields and information to the card for working on the issue, ensuring easy access to all required details. Additionally, you can leave comments on the card to foster communication and collaboration among team members, keeping everyone updated and engaged in the process.
Workflows
Workflows help you to standardize how the team members should move one task from start to finish. The Jira Software’s project management templates include such workflows for sales pipelines, GTM management, employee onboarding, etc.
Benefits of Jira Software
- Your teams can manage projects on a native platform that matches the interface of Jira Software, Confluence, etc.
- Jira Software is super affordable compared with many other similar PM tools.
- It is a cloud app, so there is no need to worry about PC configuration.
- Jira Software has a low learning curve just like no-code PM tools like Asana and Trello.
- It has templates for many business cases so that you can start quickly.
How Does Asana Work?
All Asana projects are the same; for example, they contain the following PM elements:
- Overview
- List
- Board
- Timeline
- Calendar
- Workflow
- Dashboard
- Messages
- Files
In a broader view, you need to interact with the following app user interfaces to navigate conveniently on Asana:
#1. Home
Home is the global dashboard of your Asana project. Here, you see May Tasks, Projects, and People in different cards. You can customize the Home further by adding Widgets like Private Notepad, Tasks I’ve assigned, Draft comments, My Goals, etc.
#2. My Tasks
My Tasks lets you visualize your active and completed tasks in List, Board, and Calendar views.
#3. Inbox
When someone moves tasks across the board, assigns new tasks, and comments on tasks, all these activities will show up inside the Inbox tab.
#4. Reporting
You can create simple and complex project reports using the Reporting feature of Asana. The Reporting section lets you create the following:
- Charts in different colors and variants
- Reporting dashboard
- Dashboard link sharing
- Chart customizations
Benefits of Asana
- It is easy to get started with project management on Asana.
- The Asana PM tool comes with a limited number of templates.
- It is super easy to add external or internal members to Asana projects via the email invitation system.
Jira Software Vs. Asana
| Features | Jira Software | Asana |
|---|---|---|
| Parent tool | Part of the Jira Software product suite | Standalone tool |
| Focus | Managing issues and tasks and global projects | Project management |
| Workflow automation | Simple to advanced and highly complex workflow automation | Limited workflow automation |
| Agile and DevOps | Supported | Not Supported |
| Reporting and analytics | Enterprise-grade reporting and analytics using the Data & Reporting module | Standard reporting capabilities suitable for mid-sized businesses |
| Integration | 500+ integrations and 3,000+ other extensions. Also integrates with all relevant Atlassian apps like Jira Software, Jira Service Management, etc. | 100+ integrations for third-party apps |
| Issues | Supports up to 5 issues types | It only lets you create tasks, but you could consider them issues if needed |
| Apps | Only accessible via a web app | Offers web apps, desktop apps, and mobile apps |
| Cloud storage | 250 GB and more cloud storage access Maximum attachment size 2GB | All attachment files should be within 100 MB; however no limit on the number of files you can attach |
Use Cases of Jira Software
Jira Software is perfect for any business case but highly effective for Marketing, Operations, Sales, Human resources, Finance, Legal, and Design teams. Find below some popular projects on Jira Software:
New Employee Onboarding
Jira Software lets you recruit new contractors or employees through the offer acceptance process to the induction day of the job post. The pre-configured project board has a Summary, List view, candidate profile, Assignee, Approvers, Complexity, Email, etc.
Month-End Close
If you find closing month-ends challenging and time-consuming, you can use a Jira Software board instead. Here, you can set up a Calendar view and assign tasks to the team members for Month-end date by date for visibility and monitoring.
Asset Creation
Many digital agencies use Jira Software for multimedia, program code, and website code asset creation. In this use case, you can create a Kanban board on Jira Software and set up cards for To Do, Drafting, In Review, Approved, and Created. You can also add Workflow automation so the tasks will move to the next cards automatically when the assignee completes their part.
Use Cases of Asana
Asana is suitable for any project management except where you need to implement Agile and DevOps. Find below some examples:
Event Planning
You can successfully complete a business or personal event by adding and tracking every element in Asana. You could use a pre-configured template from the Asana project library or set up a project from scratch. Include PM Tool elements like Overview, List, Board, Timeline, Workflow, etc.
Bug Tracking
Working on a web and app development project and need to create a job board for bugs? You can use the Bug Tracking template of Asana. It includes everything you need in a debugging project, like Task/Issue Name, Assignee, Priority Status, etc. You can also add workflow automation to move tasks around the board faster.
Creative Requests
You can centralize your team’s creative asset requests using this project on Asana. Gather all the necessary information, such as priority, creative channel(s), and deliverable due date, during the request process. Additionally, you can track your creative workflow in a single location, ensuring clarity on responsibilities and deadlines for everyone involved.
Jira Software Vs. Asana: The Verdict
From the comparison table and features discussion so far, it is clearly visible that Jira Software is the winner. Though Asana packs almost similar features, it is not suitable for Agile and DevOps projects.
Also, Jira Software offers enterprise-grade SaaS PM tools at an affordable price compared to Asana. At the time of writing, for 10 users, you must pay $134.90 a month, whereas the bill is just $50.00 with Jira Software.
Not to mention, Jira Software is free when you opt for software development, DevOps, and issue tracking.
Author’s Note
Asana is an easy PM tool; anyone from the business ecosystem would love to use it. However, if you are using the Basic version, you shall start facing problems with free features after a few months when Asana’s AI tracks that you depend highly on the software. It will block the features you use most and ask you to switch to the premium version.
The lowest premium plan is $13.49/ user/ month, which is approximately thrice the Jira Software cost. However, upon switching to Jira Software, I did not have to get a premium plan yet because it does not track your usage and blocks you until you pay up.
Hence, start doing new projects or moving existing ones to the Jira Software. Because it is affordable, it has many features and supports Agile and DevOps, and big techs and enterprises rely on Jira Software.
Now you can easily pick the right work and task management tool! 😀
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