Asana or Jira for Project Management
The question of whether Asana or Jira solve the same use-cases for project teams comes up quite a bit. Previously I worked for a company that sold collaboration software for marketing professionals. While working there I used Asana daily and many of our clients used Asana as well. Currently, I work for a company that uses and integrates with Jira so I have become very well versed in both solutions.
The answer: It depends on who is using it.
I would love to hear what you think so comment below what department you are in and your thoughts.
I have found that those who are less technical for instance marketing, operations, and non-technical professionals thrive in Asana. It is very visually appealing and easy to use. In a sense, Asana comes across as a friendly, less complicated version of Jira. Asana is generalized to focus more on cross-functional communication. If you need something that allows you to focus on commits, sprints, and bug tracking this may not be the solution for you.
Most organizations will use Asana to display updates and track the progress of features that are managed in Jira. For instance, if the executives need a way to easily align the company mission, objectives, and prioritization with their roadmap they would use Asana. Asana can help communicate their overall goals and ensure that their roadmap is helping work towards those goals.
Jira’s strong suit is its ability for developers to manage tasks and bugs. If you have a small team I believe you could get by with Asana for a little while. Eventually, as your organization grows, you would need to add a tool like Jira for software tracking.
Jira's usefulness is a direct reflection on how it is configured. It works best in an environment where there are standard processes that are being consistently followed across all teams. If you are considering adding Jira to your stack consider waiting until you can ensure you have a very capable Jira admin. The default UI can be slow and confusing and requires quite a bit of front end work, plugins make the experience. It’s common for leaders who use Jira to setup workarounds to get data that could be provided from Jira since they don’t have the time and/or knowledge required to configure it for maximum usage.
Jira is great for automating work, and ensuring work isn’t forgotten. If management isn’t willing to enforce consistent use and proper setup, run. This is a great tool for agile software teams but requires compliance across the board since the insights are only as good as the information entered on the tickets.
In summary, I believe Jira is a great resource for developers when configured correctly. Managers may not find Jira to be as useful and often resort to additional tools such as Asana or Excel. Asana is a great tool for non-technical project management. It is easy to use and a great resource for cross-functional communication and alignment of goals.
