Gone are the days where project managers find themselves constantly updating spreadsheets, caught up in meeting marathons, or lost in a pile of post-its. Project management tools have made it a much less tedious role: they give you the option to automate mundane tasks, view your project progress at a glance, and get everyone on the same page. It’s a game changer.
Now, there are dozens of project management tools – it could be overwhelming to decide which of the endless options is the right one for you. Asana and Jira are the two names that often come up, but which of these two collaborative tools comes out on top?
Let’s take a look at both tools and compare their features to determine the right tool for your team.
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What is Asana?
Asana is a project management tool created in 2008 by Facebook’s co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-engineer Justin Rosenstein. Running on cloud-based technology, this platform is designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their projects.
Asana focuses on improving team collaboration and simplifying project management. The tool allows you to create projects, assign work to team members, and communicate directly on the platform.
You can organize your work in multiple ways, including Gantt charts, lists, boards, and calendars. The platform offers 200+ integrations with tools like Zoom, Dropbox, Slack, Microsoft Office 365, and Miro, among others.
What is Jira?
Jira is an agile project management tool that helps you plan, track and manage your software development projects. Initially designed for software teams, it is an issue-tracking software that helps teams track software bugs as they continue working on a software product.
You can also create tasks, assign work, plan sprints and roadmaps, and track progress inside Jira. Jira integrates with Clearcase, Concurrent Versions System (CVS), GitHub, Mercurial, Perforce, Subversion, and Team Foundation Server.
Asana vs Jira: main difference
The main difference between Jira and Asana is that Jira mainly targets software developers, teams and project managers working on software products. It is designed for technical teams running on agile, so it’s much less intuitive than Asana.
Non-software teams may find Asana more applicable to their work management needs. Asana offers video conferencing, discussion boards, calendars, content, and contact management, while Jira does not. Document management and real-time editing are also capabilities offered by Asana and not Jira.
On the other hand, Jira is an excellent choice for teams seeking an advanced project management tool for software development. It offers advanced issue tracking capabilities and many other agile-focused features that Asana does not.
Let’s now jump into the key features of each tool to demystify the Asana vs Jira dilemma.
Asana Features
As discussed in the ClickUp Vs Asana review, Asana has a minimalistic, easy-to-navigate interface. It is more user-friendly for non-technical teams, making it a great collaboration tool for all teams across the broader organization. Its Workflow Builder lets you automate your work processes and easily coordinate with teammates to meet deadlines.
Using the Workload feature, you can track how much work each team member has on their plate, set goals and report on the project’s progress in a jiffy. Other advanced features such as custom fields, task dependencies, and tagging are available with the upgraded business, premium and enterprise versions.
Like Wrike, which we also compared, Asana offers integrations with many collaboration tools such as Slack, GitHub, Excel,… That being said, Asana’s integrations with GitHub and other software-focused tools are not as robust as Jira’s. That is because Jira is more geared towards software teams.
Jira Features
Jira is a better option if you are a software team looking for an agile-focused tool. It lets you create scrum boards where you can break down large, complex projects into various sub-tasks and has Kanban boards to deliver insights into tasks. Some other notable features include visual roadmaps, multiple scenario planning, and resource management.
With Jira’s robust integration with Git, software teams can view code and deployment statuses at a glance. Jira gives you complete DevOps visibility from the planning stage through to the coding, deployment, operation, and collaboration phases of a software project.
Pricing: Asana vs Jira
Asana offers four plans – free, premium, business, and enterprise varying from $10.99 to $24.99 per month. Jira’s subscription fee falls in the range of $7-$14 per month. While Jira seems like a cheaper option for teams under 11 people, Asana offers more features that justify its pricing.
Asana’s priced packages are listed below:
Basic plan – This is a free plan fit for individuals or small teams that are just getting started with project management. Up to 15 teammates can be accommodated.
Premium plan – starts at $10.99 per member per month. Best for teams that want to create project plans with confidence. There is no team member limit on this package.
Business plan – starts at $24.99 per member per month. Best for companies that need to manage work across initiatives. It has more features than the premium package, and there is no team member limit on this package.
For bigger companies with larger needs, a customized enterprise plan is a great choice for you. The price is also negotiable.
Let’s now look at Jira’s packages:
Free plan – This package is always free for up to 10 users. Best for small teams to plan and track work more efficiently.
Premium plan – starts at $7.50 per user. It mostly comes to an average of $75 per month for ten users. This one is for growing teams focused on building more together.
Business plan – starts at $14.50 per user per month. It usually comes to an average of $145 monthly. Best for organizations that need to scale how they collaborate and track work.
Enterprise is a special package for companies with global scale, security, and governance needs. It is billed annually and caters to teams of 801 members and above. The price varies depending on how many users are to be accommodated.
Still haven’t found the project management tool that fits your needs? Check out Tara!
Tara is a product delivery software designed to help teams plan and track product updates in one place. It has an intuitive, zero-config interface, making it easy for teams of all sizes to get started. Tara is designed for agile teams looking for utmost efficiencies when building complex products.
Tara has several unique features when compared to Jira and Asana. Unlike Jira and Asana, Tara has a sprint-focused workflow with drag-and-drop capabilities, allowing you to run recurring, structured sprints both weekly and bi-weekly. Tara also brings together docs and tasks: you can group tasks under a requirement to tie specifications to development tasks or create epics and stories in one view.
Another feature that Tara offers is the smart effort estimation feature that lets you predict future sprint load based on past performance. Additionally, you can track estimated effort against actual effort applied to daily tasks. This feature is not available in both Asana and Jira software solutions.
In terms of pricing, Tara is more affordable than the other options. In addition to the free plan, Tara’s premium package goes for $5 per user monthly. The Co-pilot package is $10 per user monthly, while the Enterprise package is customized according to client needs.
Feature overview
Tara’s main features include issue tracking, requirements management, sprint planning, and progress tracking.
The platform allows you to write technical specs and define project scope with tasks in one view. Project managers can easily keep track of project requirements, set priorities, and align their teams. Note that with Tara’s Teams feature you can assign docs to different teams or departments – from engineering to growth – and work together while maintaining visibility.
For software teams practicing scrum, you can groom your backlog and set up your sprints through Tara’s intuitive sprint planning page. Prioritization is seamless with the drag-and-drop feature and #labels, and you can view all tasks from one single dashboard. It also provides smart sprint insights, such as overload alerts, to help you identify blockers, plan smarter sprints, and prevent burnout.
Tara offers integrations with GitHub, GitLab, or Slack to help teams collaborate from requirement to release in one platform. It syncs to your Git pull request workflow and automatically updates task statuses in real-time. With this bi-directional sync, you can plan sprints and manage issues across multiple repos and teams.
With Tara, you can also get a better understanding of team performance by viewing code check-ins, commits and team progress from one focused dashboard. The platform allows you to identify and release blockers for faster turnaround, enabling your team to ship faster.
Jira vs Asana, which is better?
While Asana is a project management tool that best suits the needs of teams across all areas of an organization, Jira is more ideal for developers and software teams. There’s no absolute answer to this question- both platforms offers a wide range of features that help them meet their own user story.
If you are still weighing between the two options, consider another alternative like Tara. It is another easy to use, powerful and intuitive project management tool suitable for all teams of all sizes and departments. Get started with Tara today and enjoy a new intuitive experience in project management!