JIRA Portfolio is a tool that is primarily used for software development. Our scrum teams and product owners utilize it to manage the software development process. We have an extensive internal software development process that is supported by JIRA Portfolio.
The solution is deployed on JIRA's Atlassian Cloud.
The best features of JIRA are its flexibility and configurability, allowing us to tailor it to our specific needs. Additionally, its widespread familiarity makes it easier to onboard new employees, and its associated software development tools are a major plus.
The user interface of JIRA is not very user friendly, and its configuration capabilities are limited when it comes to creating a more user-friendly experience. For example, there is no way to group fields, use bold fonts, or add colors to the interface. This is one of the main drawbacks of JIRA, as it severely limits customization options despite its general functionality.
The reporting and dashboard capabilities have room for improvement. Though there are many powerful dashboarding and reporting solutions available such as Microsoft, Qlik, and eazyBI, they may not be as flexible as desired. To maximize their utility, the ability to extract data, upload it to other tools, and use the data for reporting is desirable. Our company currently uses eazyBI as its primary reporting solution, but having the capability to upload data to other solutions using JIRA Portfolio could be advantageous.
We are working with the project portfolio and its associated reporting and KPIs. It would be helpful to have a tool that is specifically designed to track the KPIs of the portfolio. This feature should come with built-in project portfolio management processes, including KPIs, and a dashboard with preset configurations for managing the project portfolio and its KPIs. This would make it easier to work with the project portfolio and provide better visibility into its performance.
I have been using the solution for one year.
We have had issues with the speed of JIRA's Atlassian Cloud which the solution is deployed on.
We reached out to JIRA, our reseller, and our JIRA partner a few times over the years for support. One of the issues we had was with the speed of the cloud service, but this is a very rare occurrence. Most of the time we find what we need on JIRA's community chat and on Google.
Setting up the new software development process wasn't a difficult task, as there was an external company with JIRA competence in Lithuania we could hire to do the configuration. However, we had to gain more knowledge about the processes we wanted to implement on JIRA. This took some time, but after a few months of learning, members of our internal team were able to configure and develop JIRA by themselves without the help of external consultants.
I give the solution a seven out of ten.
We have 300 people using the solution.
We have customized JIRA to fit our needs in terms of portfolio management. JIRA is a powerful solution that will enable portfolio management activities to be done more efficiently. When portfolio management requires approval and process tasks, then JIRA is the right solution for the job. However, if the portfolio is more focused on reporting, then JIRA may not be so helpful and the user can continue using the tools they are currently using.