What is the difference between JIRA Align and JIRA Portfolio?

[Sam Manzi]

We are just deciding as a company to take on JIRA Portfolio to add to our existing compliment of tools.  however i have just seen JIRA Align .... not wanting to make a mistake when acquiring tooling... what are the differences?  and is Portfolio being 'sunsetted' - cheers 

[Josh Berman · Accepted solution]

Portfolio for Jira and Jira Align both help you visualize your work, plan for the future, and track progress along the way. Both use Jira as the team level system of record for work, but provide different sets of capabilities beyond the team level.

Learn more about the differences between Portfolio for Jira and Jira Align.

[Fong Thai · Accepted solution]

Short answer: Jira Portfolio is focus on small number of team (less than 20 - maybe) while the newly announced Jira Align (after Atlassian acquired AgileCraft) is more on connecting from top level strategy to a bigger amount of teams.

You should contact Atlassian to make sure you get the right product for your company and should use as a trial before you make a decision.

Cheers!

[Julian Cook]

Don’t think this is a complete response and more explanation is needed

The highest level marketing blurb on Portfolio states it’s for multiple teams

[Fong Thai]

@Julian Cook You're right, of course it's not a complete answer for the different between 2 products, but it's one thing we can point out.

Also a good feedback from you, Portfolio is for also for multiple teams. I updated my answer. Thank you!

[Allan Flatoff]

I just attended the Atlassian conference last week, looked into this topic and here's my take on it.

1) Atlassian was throwing out the number of 500 users as a benchmark.   If you are under this, it may be more likely that Portfolio will work for you, if you are above this mark, Jira Align might be better.   They acknowledged this is not a hard and fast rule, but more of a way to gauge at a high level where you might land.

2) portfolio has a much smaller feature set.   

- You can forecast schedules based on velocity and estimated work and a few other factors like dependencies and any hard dates you might have on your efforts.

- you can do "what if" scenarios to calculate what happens to your schedule (e.g. Add another team member, reprioritize your work.   You can see what your schedule looks like before committing the change.

Aaaand . . . that's about all portfolio does.  It has some reports and stuff, but this is the main functionality.

Jira Align does a ton more (and is a ton more expensive.)

e.g.

- Dependency visualizations

- more and better reports for everything

- "rooms" to collaborate at different levels of a program

more at https://agilecraft.com

[samrobertsofficial]

@Allan Flatoff I'd agree with point 1. However there's more to Portfolio than just the forecast scheduling and scenario planning. These include things like:

• Planning across multiple Jira teams and projects in one place
• Setting up unlimited issue hierarchy in Jira (e.g. above the "epic" level)
• Visualising your roadmap 
• Powerful filtering and bulk actions to help you deal with lots of issues at once.
• Tracking dependencies across teams (we don't support "string" type dependency visualisations at the moment though)
• Planning capacity for your teams 
• Getting realtime information that is always in sync with Jira. (E.g. exporting to excel or powerpoint can become outdated quite quickly)

We're working hard to make Portfolio a planning tool that is both powerful and simple to use. If you're willing, I'd love to set up some time to chat about how we can improve, and the biggest gaps you feel the tool has. 

[Greemo]

Hi Sam, I am currently in my trial period for Potfolio, and am disappointed to see I cannot assign skills to tasks and have Portfolio take this into consideration when planning the roadmap. Am I doing somethnig wrong?

[Tom Gelhausen]

We were interested in this feature as well. However, as far as I understand, this functionality has been removed: https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiraportfolioserver/future-releases-and-limitations-953663163.html

[Russell Avre]

I completely agree with LG too, Portfolio was very disappointing to say the least and we spend a sizeable sum monthly for a team of 156 and I dont think we are getting the value. Test driving Align would probably be the panacea I have been waiting for.

[Prakash · Accepted solution]

Jira Align is only for enterprise with 1K+ team whereas Jira portfolio is for small and mid-size companies with 4-20 teams.

[Sam Manzi]

Excellent - exactly what i was looking for ... we are 12 teams with room for 15 so Portfolio is perfect! thanks

[Nir Haimov · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Please see this article:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Introducing-Jira-Align/ba-p/1068047

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

Nice share, thanks @Nir Haimov !! 👍

[Russell Avre]

Very useful share, thank you

[Russell Avre]

Aside all the beautiful answers given above, I would like to share my experience using Portfolio; for a lack of better word, portfolio is redundant. We struggled with making sense of it and leadership couldn't really get any actionable data to make any informed decision about the portfolio. So much so that I was tasked with finding a replacement from the Jira Marketplace, and then Align came to the rescue.

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

@Russell Avre great share Russell!
How is Align working much better for you guys? Any key metrics or KPIs you'd like to share?

[samrobertsofficial]

Edit: I linked to something that wasn't quite ready to be shared yet, my mistake!

[David Sokolowski]

Not showing up for me. Any special permissions needed to see this? Thanks

[samrobertsofficial]

@David Sokolowski  that was a mistake on my end. I didn't double check the link before posting it. 

I'll make sure the right people see this thread however. 

[David Sokolowski]

@samrobertsofficial Thanks for checking in. Is there an official FAQ for Jira Align? Google links to that same forbidden page.

[B Hemker]

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Align-articles/Get-to-know-Jira-Align-FAQ/ba-p/1167347

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

Thanks for the share @B Hemker ! I would not have found it otherwise.

[Friendziontech]

Jira Portfolio is center around a modest number of group (under 20 - perhaps) while the recently declared Jira Align (after Atlassian gained AgileCraft) is more on interfacing from high-level methodology to a greater measure of groups

[Friendziontech]

Jira Portfolio is focused on a little number of the group (under 20 - perhaps) while the recently announced Jira Align (after Atlassian acquired AgileCraft) is more on interfacing from high-level technique to a greater amount of teams

[Nyssa Watkin]

I have a question regarding this one:

Would it ever be possible (necessary) to have both Portfolio/Advanced Roadmaps and JIRA Align?

My company is quite large and we recently introduced Portfolio/Advanced Roadmaps to manage at our Tribe level (across multiple products with teams ranging from 5-80). 

We are now looking at JIRA Align at a high level and to introduce some of the strategy tracking capability. This would be across all our Tribes and other areas of the business (managing around 800 projects and around 5000 users).

Would it make sense to keep JIRA Portfolio/Advanced Roadmaps for our Tribes to manage their work but then also introduce JIRA Align for tracking at a higher level OR will JIRA Align essentially do what Portfolio does at both a lower and higher level?

P.S. I do have a demo for JIRA Align set up soon, but thought it would be good to hear from the community first. 

[Friendziontech]

Yes,

because Advanced Roadmaps and Jira Align serve different use cases, some businesses may find a need for using both.

[Marcin Geb _SoftwarePlant_]

Another standpoint is how the two products are integrated with core Jira. Portfolio does much better here; it exchanges more information with Jira. Jira Align, on the other hand, although it can live as a standalone app, you might wish to use it combined with 'regular' Jira. And the integration between Jira Align and 'regular' Jira integration is loose. This comparison explains the thing: https://softwareplant.com/bigpicture-jira-align-portfolio-aha/

BigPicture sort of combines Jira Align's powerfulness and Portfolio's tight integration with Jira.