Why Jira Falls Short for Project Managers' Needs

Project management is about more than just addressing tickets. In fact, you can think of it like running a restaurant.

Back in the kitchen, tickets for food orders flood in — telling the staff what they need to prepare for each patron and in what order. When done right, ticketing can be an efficient system for setting and completing tasks at scale.

The thing is, those tickets make up just one part of the equation. A well-run restaurant needs many other workflows in place to keep customers happy and revenue flowing. And a restaurant manager needs a lot more than just a ticketing system to keep the place running smoothly. For example, they’ll have to oversee inventory, marketing, expenses, and scheduling. And that’s just the start.

All that is to say, project managers need more than just a streamlined ticketing solution to meet their goals.

That’s where this whole discussion about Jira comes in.

What is Jira — and what isn’t it?
Jira is a leading platform for resolving tickets and managing work across an organization. In fact, it was originally built to be a bug and issue tracker. That’s why it’s so popular among software development teams. Because it’s tech-forward and made for breaking complex issues down into manageable steps.

Still, it’s not a project management tool. While Jira did introduce a Work Management feature in 2021, it’s missing some of the key tools and solutions that project managers need to manage their full portfolios.

Here are three ways Jira falls short of being a project management tool — and how you can fill in the gaps.

1. It doesn’t provide a full portfolio view
When you come into work each morning — whether virtually or in-person — you need a way to see your entire project portfolio in one place. This way, you can gauge progress at a glance and quickly make any necessary changes.

While Jira is great for breaking down the nuances and individual steps of each project, it doesn’t provide a way to see all your projects at once. That cross-portfolio visibility is crucial for project managers — especially if you’re responsible for overseeing many projects across different teams.

2. It’s not built for end-to-end collaboration
Jira does offer Kanban boards and timeline views of projects. But it doesn’t have many built-in tools for collaboration across teams — or communication both upstream and downstream.

That’s why it’s helpful to integrate Jira with a third-party platform like Proggio, which can be easily deployed across the whole organization. Proggio replaces spreadsheets and email threads, so you don’t have to chase down people for updates. You can simply set up tasks on the platform, and have people check them off when they’re done.

3. It’s not adaptive to change
Project managers know that one small update just leads to a handful of other updates. So you’re left constantly playing catch-up and manually adjusting your workflows.

To save valuable time and resources, you need a platform that automatically adapts to change. Because changes will happen, and you shouldn’t have to rearrange your whole day to manage them.

With Proggio’s ProjectMap™, for example, you can adapt quickly whenever new obstacles — or opportunities — present themselves. You can even run analyses to predict the outcomes of certain changes, giving you the power to make the best decision for each project in real time.

So, are you ready to pair Jira with a tool that’s truly built for project clarity and collaboration? Or just use Proggio to take your project management to the next level?

Book a demo to get started.