Jira Project Portfolio Management: Complete Guide

Can Jira do project portfolio management? 

Unfortunately, Jira can’t do project portfolio management. 

If you ever had a chance to get a bit more familiar with Jira, you probably noticed that Jira specializes in simple processes and small projects divided into consecutive tasks. However, that’s where Jira project portfolio management begins and ends - in the basic version of Jira, managing multiple projects at the same time is not possible. 

But why? 

Jira as a portfolio management tool

The main objective of a portfolio management tool is to provide the user with a transparent overview of all the company’s projects, along with their details such as finances, allocations, estimates, and more. Unfortunately, Jira cannot offer its customers a majority of these features. 

What can I do if I use Jira as a portfolio management tool? 

If you really want to stick to Jira and use it as a portfolio management tool, you can use it to: 

• create a list of projects, 
• check their details separately, 
• see the individual roadmap for each project. 

However, if you want to manage a group of projects as a whole, you might be disappointed. That’s because Jira can’t help you: 

• manage all the projects and project timelines at once in a Gantt chart, 
• browse the details of all the projects from the list view, 
• manage finances of the projects or create financial estimates, 
• allocate resources to the projects based on their available capacity, 
• complete project accounting for the project,
• analyze the condition of the project in advanced reports, 
• combine the data from all the projects to see their overall statistics for productivity, profitability, and more. 

Then when should you use Jira, and when is it worth to look for other tool? 

Jira project management vs Jira project portfolio management

Jira is much more suited for project managers and their teams - in other words, it provides a small scale perspective not sufficient for CEOs, CPOs or other executives that may want to use the tool to make critical decisions. Therefore, it is not a good choice for project portfolio management - and this approach is reflected in the features it offers. 

Managing an individual project in Jira

Jira has the basics required by project managers and small teams. However, even with such limited demands, it still fails to appeal to the customers in terms of UX and additional features that do not involve task management. While customers expect it to have resource management, comprehensive project plans, objectives and reports, Jira can just offer them task management and basic time tracking. As a result, managers looking for some more advanced options may be dissatisfied.

Project portfolio management in Jira 

For the larger teams and companies, Jira’s features seem even poorer than for their smaller counterparts. 

The reason behind that is simple: as the company grows, its needs change and their number skyrockets, making it unable to focus on just one operation at once. 

But let’s not stop at the empty words and see what requirements Jira project portfolio management would have to meet to attract users who want to see all the data from their projects in a single tool. While customers want to use features such as skill management, project accounting, resource management, objectives tracking and more, Jira fails to meet their needs. In fact, Jira barely offers any options capable of helping you manage numerous projects at the same time. 

In short, Jira project portfolio management is simply not a good choice - at least for those who really care about monitoring their company’s operations. 

How do I create a portfolio view in Jira? 

At this point, you may also ask yourself how to create a project portfolio view in Jira - just for the sake of preparing a list of all the projects. 

We have bad news for you: the Jira portfolio management tool is incapable of that, too. You can browse the list of tasks, but you cannot create an overview of all the projects, making it impossible to manage them properly. 

What are the alternatives for Jira project portfolio management?

However, we also have some good news for you. While Jira portfolio management may be lacking, there are certainly some other alternatives. That’s because Jira offers numerous integrations with other tools capable of expanding its very basic features. 

Primetric is one of such tools! 

Choose Primetric for better project portfolio management

Primetric is a comprehensive project portfolio management tool that was created to help both small and major companies manage their operations. 

In its project portfolio management available for Jira integrations you can find: 

• automatically updated information about your employees and their skills combined with a comprehensive resource management feature, 
• advanced budgeting and accounting based on wages, overheads, and more - a precise way to evaluate company’s finances, 
• advanced reports on every single thing you may want to know about your projects, including productivity, profitability, and more, 
• Gantt chart calendar for both people and project, excellent for monitoring the work. 

In the system you can also find:

• time offs and holidays included in all the calculations, 
• skill management, 
• a wide variety of business intelligence tools and automated features, 
• advanced reporting with real-time updates and automated calculations. 

Sounds too good to be true? Do not believe us, then - just test Primetric right now or book a demo to see its features live. 

Want to know more about Jira features? 

We have prepared additional resources for you. 

Browse our website and read about:

• Jira resource planning, 
• Jira resource management, 
• Jira timesheets,
• Jira invoicing,
• Jira time tracking,
• Jira time tracking plugins.

Or jump straight to our blog for a healthy dose of news from your industry.