Compare Jira Project Management apps

How do they compare to each other? BigGantt, BigPicture, BigPicture Enterprise, and other Jira apps. Check our comparison chart below.

A picture is worth a thousand words. As a rule of thumb, our apps focus on visualizing. Sure, Jira does a great job managing projects. We do even better presenting, aggregating, and filtering 100k of tasks, and in a comprehensible format.

Standalone is half of our Jira apps. BigPicture and BigGantt require just Jira and no other plugin from the palette. On the other hand, in order to be able to use BigPicture Enterprise you also need a BigPicture license. BigTemplate, an importing/exporting extension, requires BigPicture or BigGantt.

Table 1: Compare Jira project management apps by SoftwarePlant

Functionality	Example or specific feature
Overview module with predefined Box types	Take a bird’s-eye view on the whole portfolio. Drill down to project/product level. Check progress of individual projects products.	¹
Number of available Box type slots	Combine agile, predicitive, hybrid PM methodologies using the unlimited Box type slots in BigPicture Enterprise.	unlimited	3	3
Unlimited configuration of Box types. Create new Box types.	Think of Boxes as high-level, custom management spaces, such as portfolios, projects, phases, ARTs. They behave depending on how you program them.
Re-label modules	For instance, re-label ‘Gantt’ to ‘Schedule’ or ‘Roadmap’. Relabeling works per Box or per Box type.
Gantt chart	Graphically represent tasks’ duration in time	¹
Create a collapsible project’s structure that will group tasks and task templates		¹
What-if scenarios	Demonstrate optimistic, realistic, and pessimistic schedules to stakeholders. Compare an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) product schedule to a loaded variant.	unlimited number of private and public scenarios per Box	1 private and 1 public scenario per Box	1 private and 1 public scenario per Box
Visualize critical path	Filter out five of 100 tasks that directly influence the project’s finish date.	¹
Project work grouped in numerous ways	As in Excel pivot table. Group foods by meats, bakery, poultry. In project management language by status or resource. List untouched tasks.	¹
A project’s Work Breakdown Structure	Subdivide your project into easier-to-tackle smaller projects.	¹
Scope – a standalone work breakdown structure module	Do top-down planning; observe your project using customizable views; aggregate story points, time; filter 100k of tasks with quick filters, text filters, and JQL; more	¹
Roadmap module	Set objectives, expressed in a free text, descriptive format, for the upcoming sprints and Program Increments. The further into the future, the more approximate your plan is going to be.	¹
Program board module	Plan the upcoming iterations and Program Increments: assign tasks from the backlog to teams.	¹
Program board module	Synchronize Program Increment (PI) # between Program Board and Jira issue detail view (2-way).
Resources module with individuals, teams, and skills tabs	Filter out underallocated resources and assign extra work to them. Filter out overallocated skills and pass that information to your hiring manager.	¹
	Workload contouring	Flat, Front-loaded, Back-loaded, and Manual modes	Flat, Front-loaded, Back-loaded modes
	Show all the tasks across all Boxes to which your resources are assigned; cross-Box resources view.
	Synchronize your Workload Plans, Holiday Plans, Teams, and Skills with their counterparts in TEMPO Timesheets, Planner, Budgets. Until BigPicture Enterprise 8.1 available for Jira Server and Data Center hostings only. Starting BigPicture Enterprise 8.2 available for Cloud, too.
Import / export from MS Project / Excel	Import your “Launch new bicycle line to the market” plan from MS Project.
Risks module Risks matrix and register	Screenshot Use a predefined matrix or define your own titles of the axes and their values. For instance, you can build a SAFe ROAM matrix.	¹
Calendar module	Preview task for today, tomorrow, or for a whole month using calendar grid. More	¹
Reporting	Quickly check how much work remains to be done – more on measuring progress.
Reports module	Use five predefined drill through reports measuring progress. Choose their format: bar/pie charts, spreadsheet-like reports	¹
Reports module	Add new reports. Customize the grid of the Reports module.
Reports overlay in the Roadmap and Board modules	measuring the progress of Program Increments and iterations	¹
Export issues to a printable format	Print Letter/A4 overview of an issue; templates are configurable.
Export whole Gantt charts	in xlsx, pdf, png, jpg, bmp formats
Export/import MS Project files	in mpp/mpx format, more
Permission levels	App admin, app user, groups, permissions inheritance in the Box hierarchy	¹
Select the geographic location of your data server. Available for Jira Cloud.	GDPR in the European Union and various US regulators may require that you store your data in a home country or region. Read more.
SAFe – methodology		¹
Portfolio Level
Solution Level
Program Level		¹
In-depth comparisons		BP Enterprise vs. BigPicture		BigGantt vs. BigPicture

¹ BigPicture Enterprise is an expansion pack for BigPicture app.

Note that there is also BigPicture for Trello, featuring a Gantt chart module. For the moment Trello BigPicture does not have, however, other modules present in BigPicture for Jira, i.e. Overview, Scope, Roadmap, Program board, Risks, Resources, Calendar, and Reports.

Not sure which Jira app to choose?

Our recommendation: go with BigPicture. It is the most comprehensive of our apps and designed to meet the demands of today professional project manager, such as Stefan:

Support feedback, review

What do the users of our plugins say?

Also check:
6 signs your organization should upgrade to BigPicture Enterprise
BigPicture reviews — BigGantt reviews