Jira excels in empowering teams to manage tasks in projects, but managers and product owners who oversee multiple teams and multiple projects can become overwhelmed. Jira, especially the standard plan, doesn’t offer a lot for tracking deadlines, dependencies, and deliveries across multiple projects.
You need a way to get a 360° view of your projects, to monitor workloads, spot risks and share your teams' challenges and accomplishments with other stakeholders.
Fortunately, there are solutions to be found in the Atlassian Marketplace, which offers a variety of apps to help managers get the Big Picture. But be warned, you may not want that picture to be too big, too difficult to use, or too expensive.
The Features You Need in a Simple UI
With literally thousands of project management apps available in the Marketplace, you want to fina an the app that has the features you need, and can grow with your teams. At the same time, apps that are too huge – with steep learning curves and steeper prices may be overkill.
Before you shell out the cash for BigPicture, consider the alternatives.
Portfolio by HeroCoders, a new offering in the PPM corner of the Atlassian Marketplace, makes it easy to plan work, track progress, and balance workloads. And you won’t have to spend months learning to use Portfolio. It’s so simple you can just install and get started.
| Feature |
Portfolio by HeroCoders |
BigPicture |
| Portfolio Visualization and Planning |
Multi-Project Portfolios
Use JQL or simple filters to create portfolios with multiple Jira projects. |
Y |
Y |
Multiple Views
Multiple ways to visualize a portfolio. |
Y
Table, graph, pie chart, tree map, Gantt |
Y
Table, board, roadmap, Gantt |
View Hierarchies
Support for native and custom hierarchies. |
Y |
Y |
Share a Portfolio View
Shareable portfolio views for easy collaboration. |
Y |
Y |
Export a Portfolio
Export a portfolio as a shareable CSV or XLSX file. |
Y |
N |
Search
Instantly find any work item in your portfolio. |
Y |
Y |
Filter and Group
Use filters and groups to view work items by hierarchy, type, assignee, project, status or priority. |
Y |
Y |
See Capacity Alerts
Add a Capacity Alert column to instantly spot Assignees who are overbooked. |
Y |
N |
See Delivery Alerts
Use Delivery Alerts to get a heads up if a child work item’s end date is later than the parent item’s end date. |
Y |
N |
Track Progress
Display a progress bar to track time spent or completion of a parent’s child items. |
Y |
Y |
Edit Work Items
Make bulk edits or inline edits from the portfolio; or drill down to access individual work items. |
Y |
Y |
Create New Work Items
Add new Jira work items directly from the portfolio. |
Y
|
Y |
Add Fields and Their Values to Work Items
Add new fields, with their values, to Jira work items (even if the field is not currently on the work item screen/layout). |
Y |
N |
| Capacity Planning |
Easy Filters
Filter by groups, teams, or users |
Y |
Y |
See Capacity at a Glance
Instantly view team member capacity (color-coding to identify under-booked / fully-booked / overbooked) |
Y |
Y |
Assign Work Items
Drag and drop to assign unplanned work items. |
Y |
Y |
Manage Time Off
Manage time off, with time off calculated into capacity |
Y |
Y |
Skills & Roles
Track team member skills and roles
|
N |
Y |
Resource Requests
Search resources by capacity, skills, or role |
N |
Y |
| Infrastructure |
Runs on Atlassian
Built on Atlassian Forge – no data stored on third party infrastructure |
Y |
N |
| Price per User |
| 11- 100 users |
$1.30 |
$5.21 |
| 101- 250 users |
$0.80 |
$4.36 |
| 251-1000 users |
$0.40 |
$1.44 |
Portfolio by HeroCoders is a relatively new app, and we continue to roll out new features. Next up is adding skills tracking and resource requests. That way you’ll be able to search for the team member who’s a perfect fit for an upcoming task.
That being said, choosing a Jira PPM tool isn’t just about feature lists — it’s also about how quickly you can onboard, how well the tool fits your teams' maturity needs, and finding a solution that fits your budget. Portfolio gives you the power to plan, track and manage your teams' workloads, at a quarter of the price of BigPicture.
