How does Jira Compare to Other Tools? An In-Depth Look at Jira vs Monday, Trello and Asana in 2023
This blog will be taking an in-depth look at Jira vs Monday, Trello and Asana, comparing all the latest details, functions and prices so you don’t have to.
All the compared software tools will help with project management, organisation, and timekeeping. Despite having similar purposes, all the applications achieve them slightly differently, leaving pros and cons of each. It’s crucial to get software that works for your company and teams. By integrating these applications everything is bound to run smoother, from project management to cross-departmental communication.
So, let’s give a little background:
Jira is mainly used for tracking issues and project management and is extremely popular among agile development teams as it can track bugs, stories and epics. The application even boasts the title of #1 software development tool for agile teams making it a tough competition for other project management software.
Trello, in many ways, goes hand in hand with Jira. It is one of the most popular project management tools and maintains a large amount of the market share with Atlassian claiming that there are over 50 million users worldwide. At its core are the principles of Kanban project boards which visualise workflows. Trello uses boards, lists and cards to create visualisations of a project and the information within it. These tools can be used to detail the progress towards completion and ensure smooth team collaboration.
Similarly, Monday’s purpose is to help teams run projects and workflows, and ensure that collaboration can run smoothly. Like the others, it boasts a personalisation aspect where teams are able to customise their workflows to their own unique patterns.
Finally, Asana aims to streamline communication across companies and is customisable to allow users to break down projects into clear goals and tasks. Workplaces of any size are able to analyse and track their progress on projects all in one place. This reduces the need for constant meetings and email updates.
A Closer Look at Features
At a quick first glance, all the apps appear to be ideal for all types of project management; they’re also each well-reviewed and popular. Let’s do a more in-depth comparison of what each app’s top features are and how they compare.
Customisation
Trello
Trello software is renowned for allowing a team to create a visually organised, aesthetic layout for their projects. This is particularly helpful for more complex tasks and projects when organisation may become cluttered and checklists become long-winded.
Trello also offers advanced checklists. You can add these checklists to any card and write further tasks and lists to be assigned to a team member. Additionally, you can link the checklist to a due date. This allows everyone on a team to have a clear understanding of all the subtasks involved and prevents tasks from becoming lost on a busy board.
If your team has the Calander Power-Up enabled, you can also assign checklists to a calendar view. Practically guaranteeing that nothing will be forgotten and giving a level of customisation that works for your team’s needs.
Jira
Not only does customisation help with the visualisation of a project, it helps implement future change and identifies areas where automation can be added or a work structure needs to be removed. Jira’s customisation functions allow your boards to closely reflect the goals and aims of your project.
Moreover, you are able to change the behaviour of a field, such as description and visibility, as well as add your own values. There are also more advanced customisation options such as choosing which screen should be displayed for each issue operation and workflow transition.
The biggest difference between Jira and Trello is that Trello only offers Kanban boards whereas Jira offers, Kanban, scrum and sprint boards. This gives your team more room for customisation and finding the ideal workflow and pattern for them. With more options, there is more choice and a greater chance of success with a tailored board.
Monday
Like Jira and Trello, Monday organises work into boards that they liken to virtual whiteboards on which everything can be planned, organised and structured.
The boards are customisable through the addition of extra columns. For example, the People column assigns tasks to team members and the Numbers column, if added, can keep track of budgets and expenses.
These columns are a simple and quick way to customise the boards and maintain transparency, keeping relevant stakeholders informed. However, unlike Trello, Monday offers less aesthetic appeal and the colour coding aspect is insignificant when compared.
Asana
Asana’s customisation comes in the form of custom fields: a way of surfacing key information which can keep a project moving on time and within budget.
Available fields include ‘Priority’ - which helps to keep teams focused on the critical parts of a task and allows them to communicate the reason for this. There are also ‘Estimated Hours’ and ‘Actual Hours’ which are both useful tracking features that can keep a team and client involved in the process. These fields can help with future projects that may be similar or identify any knowledge gaps in the team that may be leading to delays.
These custom fields can be likened to Jira apps - such as Crumbs: CRM for Jira - which allows a team to add and rearrange custom fields on customer cards. This is an efficient way of keeping customer information in the same place and organising it effectively. Therefore, Jira would win the comparison against Asana as there are far more customisation options, especially when the Atlassian Marketplace is considered.
Agile Reports
Jira
Jira’s agile reporting is crucial to the smooth running of a team and ensuring that decisions are informed and made correct. Teams have over a dozen reports they can access at any time with actionable insights into how the team is performing throughout a sprint. As you will find out, Jira is one of two of these applications that has agile reporting and has the most advanced capabilities, a clear indicator of its superiority in terms of efficient and helpful reporting.
Reports and dashboards in Jira give key insights into work ensuring teams are always up to date. It also means teams are able to consider data, such as agile reports when making decisions. Work management is made simpler with the use of these reports.
There are a vast number of options for the type of reports available, to name just a few: issue analysis, time tracking, and recently created issues reports. Each of these options can help keep your teams focused and on track, making the best decisions possible based on data.
Trello
Trello boasts a great and time-effective way to produce reports, as well as agile reporting - meaning the experience runs smoothly and efficiently. The software has even given itself the name ‘the Swiss Army Knife for Agile teams’.
Moreover, from your board and using your cards, you can make visual email reports from a number of sources. These reports are different from text reports as they contain the visual representation of the cards you have picked on the board, instead of just plain text. These reports can also be automatically produced using Butler: Trello’s automation feature which will be discussed further on.
Monday
When comparing Trello and Jira vs Monday, it is clear that Monday is inadequate in terms of agile reporting. This can reduce the ability of teams reporting methods and can result in less efficient management. However, Monday does offer some other reporting options. For example, there are different ways to track budgets and expenses on a project. One option is through an additional column on the project board. However, there is also a chart view function which allows budget visualisation. This can help with the illustration and graphics of budget reports and also make budgets easier to understand at a glance.
Asana
Similarly to Monday, Asana also does not have agile reporting. It is much the same as Monday with the added option of exporting data into Google Sheets. This would allow deeper analytical evaluations of a project across your organisation or within a team. Google Sheets offers the option to create visual graphs, but this does not compare to the ease of using Trello automation to produce visual representations.
Roadmaps
Jira
Roadmaps are a key feature of Jira and keep team organisation in sync. Their purpose is to help you release more predictability and stay on target for your goals.
Ladders help you work up to an epic level and see your team’s progress in real-time. They offer quick and simple planning. Roadmaps are crucial to planning and tracking how multiple teams are making progress. They give an overview of what is going on in the company and can be expanded to find out more in-depth information.
You can also track a team’s bandwidth to see how they are coping with the work they have and whether there is the capacity for more to be taken on. This is a useful tool when considering team burnout and the coordination of tasks.
The ability to share Roadmaps and keep them in sync means there is no need for constant meetings and email updates as every team can view what other teams are working on. This also helps with cross-team collaboration.
Monday
Although Monday does have project management planning tools such as time and expense tracking, it does not have a comparable feature to the road-mapping features within Jira. Roadmaps within Jira can be the difference between a project going out on time and to the correct specification or not. It gives you the ability to plan timelines, create visual dependencies and communicate the work status to stakeholders. Jira’s Roadmap features are a step ahead of what Monday has to offer.
Asana
Asana does not have a Roadmap feature, making it a less obvious choice in terms of timelining plans and updating priorities.
It has some unusual and helpful options when project managing, although when compared to Jira Roadmaps they can seem insignificant. For example, the pin-to-the-top feature is useful when attaching revised versions of work or when a team member needs to give feedback on a document or project.
It allows the most important versions of a thread to be visible at the top of the page. This can be more efficient and save time when someone is doing an overview of their feedback it also makes sure that the most important comments don’t get missed.
Trello
Although Trello does not have as advanced Roadmap capabilities as Jira, it does offer a selection of templates to get projects started. These can be really useful in planning and throughout the progression of a project for keeping data and tasks in the right place and up to date.
Automation
Trello
Trello is not unusual in having an automation function, however, Butler automation is known for its ease of use. Butler allows you to set up automation, rules and commands on Trello boards to reduce repetitive workloads.
Butler’s value is that it doesn’t require advanced coding skills; it is easy to use and does the small and repetitive tasks for you. For example, you can set an automation so that when a Trello card is checked as ‘Done’ all members are removed from the card and the checklist is checked off.
Similarly, you can add buttons to cards that - when clicked- automatically change aspects of the project. For instance, you can add a button that adds a couple more days onto the due date of a project if the process is running late.
This automation can be especially useful for busy and complex projects where time is precious.
Jira
Jira also hosts a no-code automation feature, which means you can auto-assign and sync work across projects. The possibilities are endless.
The no-code aspect means that anyone anywhere can build an automation rule quickly. You can do this by accessing the wide range of templates they have available. You’re sure to find something that will represent what you want to automate. This makes your job easier and more efficient, allowing the team more time to focus on important tasks.
The Jira automation uses a simple if/then logic. This means that you can dictate what you want to happen if a series of factors are met and Jira will automate the rest. For example, you could set a rule that states: if the due date of a project is within five days then email the product team a reminder. The automation takes this dictation and automates it so you don’t have to worry about emailing the products team. This logic can be used for lots of different automation and is super helpful in terms of reducing repetitive and tiresome workload and freeing up valuable time.
Asana
Likewise, Asana has a range of templates on offer to create automated rules. Again, this increases productivity in a team by allowing automation to do the repetitive tasks and enabling your team to continue with important projects.
Monday
Much the same as the other software applications, Monday allows users to create automation that can be helpful when planning workflows and tracking the progress of projects. Like the other applications, automation in Monday can also be used to assign certain tasks to certain people, ensuring work is never left out of a process or forgotten.
Collaboration
Jira
Jira offers multiple ways to collaborate such as Kanban, sprint and scrum boards. These boards are all built with team management in mind, making them ideal for complex projects and day-to-day tasks. Collaborating effectively can be simple when you’ve selected one of Jira’s boards.
Specifically, Scrum boards are a great way to help agile teams break up large tasks. This is especially useful if the tasks are made up of individual complex components. Scrum boards can be used to keep work focused and get faster shipping results. They foster a culture of collaboration by uniting a team around a single goal. At the centre of a Scrum board is the sprint. A sprint is a designated amount of time for teams to build a releasable product advancement. The scrum board is built specifically to improve team focus and organisation during this sprint period. It keeps track of milestones and provides transparency by breaking the project down into stages.
Scrum boards can also be used by non-technical teams. For example, marketers that manage large and complex projects such as content calendars and product launches can use a scrum board to break up these projects. If a product launch is upcoming the marketing team can use Jira scrum boards to keep on track.
Trello
With Trello, you are able to use the Unsplash Gallery or add your own photos to cards. This changes the cover display and makes the board easy to navigate.
This tool is especially useful in remote working situations or for large companies. One way Trello suggest you can use this tool is for Team Directories. This means you can assign a card to every employee in a company or team and add their name and a picture. Helping teams avoid communication issues and helping with collaborative projects where people may not be familiar with each other. It is also useful as an ice breaker in these situations as personal details such as hobbies can be added to each person’s personal card.
Asana
Asana automation, workflows and customisation aspects can make collaboration simpler for teams and especially remote teams. They offer a wide range of features that help with communication, team project planning and tracking. There are also over 100 integrations available for bringing different workspaces together. This is something that can be very useful when compiling data remotely.
Monday
There are a few key features in Monday that aid collaboration. For example, the timeline column gives a visual way to manage workloads and time-sensitive projects. Similarly, there is a ‘my week’ section that allows everyone to see what everyone else is working on and the key information to do with their projects. This enables everyone to stay up to date in a team and collaborate effectively.
Agile Support
Jira
Jira offers a wide array of support for Scrum, Kanban and many other areas of the software. Teams can begin to progressively increase the features they want to add to their Roadmaps and workflows while feeling secure that they have the support they need.
Trello
Although Trello is a streamlined, simple tool - it can certainly be used by Scrum teams to designate what gets worked on in sprints. This is a type of agile support that enables teams to get their work done efficiently using the high-quality tools Trello offers.
Asana
Although Asana does offer support features they are not as extensive as what Jira offers. They offer a help centre where you can find FAQs and contact their support team, but needless to say it is not a patch on the agile support available with Jira.
Monday
Similarly, Monday does not offer as extensive a selection of support as Jira. They do, however, offer a knowledge base that consists of articles and videos to help tutor their clients through any issues they may have. If these don’t work they also have a contact centre. It is clear when comparing Jira vs Monday that Jira is more advanced in terms of Agile support.
REST APIs
Jira
With Jira, you’re able to integrate the tools that your team is already using and leverage them with a robust set of APIs.
A strength of this REST API is that it gives total support. This means teams can carry out basic operations like recovery, projects and issue links, in comfort and security.
Moreover, there is an element of simplicity to Jira REST API as it uses HTTP. This means it’s easier to use and understand than the typical Web API. This - among other reasons - is a key factor in why Jira’s REST APIs are popular among developers.
Trello
Trello also has REST APIs meaning teams have an easy-to-use programme that encourages collaboration, automation and security. It is an invaluable feature that Trello has incorporated into its streamlined software.
By incorporating REST APIs Trello provides its users with a great deal of flexibility. This is because data is not tied to resources or methods meaning REST APIs can deal with multiple situations such as returning different data formats and making structural changes.
Asana
Asana also has REST APIs comparable to Jira and Trello, meaning Monday is lacking significantly in this respect.
APIs help teams stay connected enabling collaboration and project success. Just like Jira, Asana’s REST API provides a way for software and scripts to read information and output it outwith Asana. It will automatically react when things change and is helpful for repetitive and tedious tasks.
So, is there a Best Option Based on Features?
Well, you came here looking for an answer; so here it is. After a lot of comparison and research, we believe Jira is the best tool with Trello following closely behind. It doesn’t take an expert to see from our comparison table that these two applications have the most useful features.
Although many of the features and tools the software applications offer are similar, there are a few distinguishing, key features about Trello and Jira. Jira, for example, offers agile support, so your team always feels confident with what they’re doing and the unique style of Jira Roadmaps opens up a world of collaboration, planning and task management. Similarly, both Trello and Jira offer REST APIs and brilliant customisation options.
Jira or Trello are the way to go in terms of supporting your team, guaranteeing effective collaboration and creating the potential for a successful project.
At New Verve we are experts in Jira, Trello and all other types of Atlassian software. Our value lies in the solutions we design and build for customers. Why not contact us for a no obligations chat?
Related Reading
If you enjoyed this blog and want to find out more about Jire, try reading Jira for Marketing Teams: How to use Jira to Run Successful Campaigns.
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