Proper project management is essential for software launch success. This includes planning, organizing, monitoring, controlling, and controlling all activities involved in software development. It is also important to periodically report on the status of your project to all stakeholders. This may seem like a daunting task for project managers, considering that large software projects often involve many developers.
It doesn’t have to be this way if you use a quality software project management tool. Jira and Asana are popular tools for project management, but they use very different approaches. Both tools recognize each other as an alternate, so they are almost identical. This article will discuss Jira, Asana and the key differences between them.
What is Asana?
Asana, a cloud-based task manager, allows businesses to organize, manage, collaborate, communicate and organize their tasks. It can handle multiple projects simultaneously and is suitable for all companies. Asana is an organizational tool that helps to streamline projects. Asana allows workplaces of all sizes to track their progress and address any issues in one place. This eliminates the need for frequent meetings, emails updates and memos.
Asana offers a variety of features to assist companies and their teams in finding the right system to make things run as smoothly as possible. Asana’s most important feature is its task and project management tools. To host projects, you can create boards or lists. These will list all of the meetings, initiatives, and programs. To make it easier to manage, you can divide the projects into tasks or subtasks and then list the steps required to complete them. Asana’s reporting tools allow you to organize project updates and remind people when needed.
Asana can be used to create “Goals” and “Milestones”, which will keep everyone on the same page. You can also create status updates for portfolios and projects to quickly send messages to your teams. Also, check your Dashboard to view the status of all ongoing tasks and projects at once and to identify any problems. Asana’s app integration is one of its strengths. Asana can be used with a variety of apps. Asana comes in three tiered packages: Premium, Business, and Free. Sign up for any one of these packages at Asana’s website.
Pros:
- It is like Facebook for task managing. Asana’s best feature is its design. It is simple, elegant, smart, and goal-oriented.
- Asana’s user interface is extremely friendly and makes task management much more enjoyable than with other products.
Cons:
- This product is in no way to be criticized negatively.
- This can make it difficult to see conflicts in the Timeline view.
What is Jira?
Jira is now the most widely used tool in IT and other industries. Jira is widely considered the best tool for project management. Jira is a highly customizable and easy-to-learn tool that can be customized to suit the needs of each team. It is also free for small organizations with up to 10 users. You can store up to 2GB of data. Software teams must plan. With Jira Software users can communicate easily, share issues and assign tasks. Users can track progress and see where data needs to be changed or added.
Jira is a great tool for project management. It is widely used to create and track tasks from the beginning of their lifecycle to the end. Jira offers a simple default workflow that tracks the transitions between tasks. Jira allows you to create custom workflows according to your project’s needs.
Jira also has a project board that shows the progress of tasks. It is a tool that helps to organize large amounts of work through the use of releases. Jira’s release feature allows teams to create release names. Start date and end dates can be added to a release to define its duration. These versions can be linked to issues to mark them as a release. Jira also offers many other useful features, such as Project Analytics, Logging, Customization, Email Notifications, and Preparing Product Roadmaps.
Pros:
- It can be used to track a variety of tasks, including new features, issues or bugs.
- It is like a super-powered ship with many functions and features that can take you wherever you want. It’s a hidden weapon that can decide the outcome of complex projects.
Cons:
- Some breakdowns of the problem are not specific enough. There are also character limits on some requests that should allow them to provide more information.
- Developers tell that Jira is too confusing.
Jira vs Asana: Key Differences
Features
Asana is heavily text-based. It offers a text-based format for creating and assigning tasks, adding due dates or recurring dates, uploading or linking to documents, writing comments, and adding tags. Asana allows users to create custom fields that allow them to track any information they wish. Team members can post comments and questions directly to tasks to allow others to respond. This allows team members to communicate in real time, reducing the need for lengthy meetings. It also lets team managers view all of their projects.
Jira Software offers Scrum boards to help teams focus on the task at hand. Kanban boards give insight into tasks, workflow, output, and cycle times. You can access many reports such as sprint reports and burn-down/up or velocity charts, which offer real-time insight into the performance of a team. Jira, a portfolio management tool for agile teams, can be used to create roadmaps and other project plans. It includes a visual roadmap that can be updated in real time, multiple scenarios planning, the ability to estimate start and finish dates for projects, resource management, and unlimited hierarchies.
Boards
Jira software offers two types of main boards: Scrum boards or Kanban boards. Scrum boards can be used to facilitate collaboration and allow teams to manage complex projects. These boards are accessible to any member of the team at any time. Scrum boards allow team members to stay focused by providing transparency. Kanban boards can be used for visualizations. They are best suited for software development in DevOps. Kanban boards are transparent, and optimized for efficiency. Kanban boards are more visually appealing and allow team members to spot and fix any bottlenecks. It also provides agile reports through real-time visual metrics.
Asana boards work in the same way as sticky notes. They are useful for developers to stay focused on their projects. They can be moved between sections or projects. You can add items to your boards in a List view. Drag and drop is all you need to move the boards between sections of your project. Asana allows you to add sections or tasks to your boards by clicking the + button. In addition, you can personalize your boards with cover images. Asana boards allow you to sort and filter tasks as well as custom fields.
Support
Your expensive, complex software could become a digital nightmare without a solid customer support structure. It was difficult to find a phone number for Asana’s support staff. I found only a contact form. Asana has more information than Jira when it comes to help guide, FAQs and forums, webinars, webinars, and other use cases. Asana support was slow to respond after I reached out through the form.
Jira has help guides and community forums, but most issues can be fixed through support ticket form rather than phone support. Premium users have access to phone support, but if you need help with time-sensitive issues and don’t have a premium account, a support ticket, or forum, may be more appropriate.
Pricing
Asana’s free software is a great start. It offers a complete version for those who are just starting to learn project management software. The cost of the paid options can add up, especially if you choose Asana’s business option, which includes Asana’s unique Workload features, integrations, and other benefits.
- Basic: Free — Task list, kanban boards and calendars. App integrations available for up to 15 users
- Premium: $9.99/user/month with an annual contract — All features, timelines and custom fields creations, as well as premium Asana Academy content and Admin privileges.
- Business: $19.99/user/month with an annual contract — All features, portfolios and Workloads previously used, forms, proofing, Adobe Creative Cloud integration, and automatic proofing
- Enterprise: Prices negotiated with the customer — All previous features plus user provisioning, data exporting, custom branding, priority support.
Jira offers a free version with a 2GB storage space that can be used up to 10 times. Jira’s standard pricing starts at $7.00 per user per month. This can be scaled up to 20000 users. This price includes 250GB of storage and support during local business hours. Jira Premium Pricing starts at $14.50 per month. This includes unlimited storage and 24/7 Support.
Integration
Asana has over 100 app integrations to help you manage all aspects of your projects. These integrations include:
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Dropbox
- Microsoft Outlook
- Slack
- Google Calendar
- Everhour Reporting
- Trello
- Mailchimp
Jira doesn’t choose to integrate with a large number of popular programs. Instead, it prefers to integrate with lesser-known apps. Jira tries to justify the use and function of each application on its market, such as:
- io diagrams for Jira
- Better Excel Exporter for Jira
- Script Runner automation for Jira
- Jira Workflow Toolbox
- Insight Asset Management
- Google Drive & Docs For Jira
- Zapier for Jira
Final Thoughts
So that was all about Jira, Asana and their key differences. Both tools have their strengths. Asana and Jira can be used for different tasks and are well-suited for teams with particular priorities and needs. Get started today with any one of these project management tools.