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Planview’s Enterprise Agile Planning solution aligns strategy to delivery to help you transform on your terms and timeline.
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Jira Alternative

Jira Align vs. Planview’s Enterprise Agile Planning Solution

Watch DemoDrive Agile transformation. See how.

Ever feel like Jira Align isn’t all that aligned with how you work? Every team shouldn’t have to adopt SAFe® for you to get holistic visibility and alignment. And you shouldn’t have to settle for immature, incomplete, and tedious financial functionality. Keep your teams in Jira and partner with Planview’s Enterprise Agile Planning solution — a powerful Jira Align alternative.

5 reasons to consider Planview® as an alternative to Jira Align

  • Integrate disparate Agile team tools and coordinate work. Without forcing change.

    Keep your teams in their tool of choice without compromising on end-to-end visibility, data integrity, or productivity. Seamlessly integrate the most popular team tools with 60+ pre-built, no-code integrations that don’t mandate process changes, data standardization, or re-implementing team tools to connect them together. Translation: Connect with Jira better than Jira Align connects with Jira.

  • Transform your way, on your timeline. Be strictly SAFe, strictly not, or somewhere in between.

    Shift your funding models from projects to products or value streams. Easily implement a variety of scaling Agile frameworks. All in one place, regardless of your Agile journey. With flexible Kanban boards that allow you to use SAFe as a guideline but don’t require you to follow it so strictly.

  • Connect your strategy, teams, and outcomes. No add-ons or upcharges required.

    Get connected, single-pane-of-glass visibility into ideas, plans, delivery, and outcomes. Ensure everyone is focused on shared priorities by aligning and cascading OKRs alongside where work gets done. Use shared, interactive roadmaps to collaborate and communicate direction and expectations throughout delivery. No extra modules required. And you don’t have to pay extra for access to your data.

  • Plan, replan, and prioritize faster. With all your investments in one place.

    Model uncertainty with scenario planning that factors in overall goals, time to market, and other potential constraints. Draft plans faster with access to real-time, cross-team data insights in a centralized location. Manage all your projects and products in one place and get full support for Lean Portfolio Management, without tedious double entry or manual calculations.

  • Work with every team, any methodology, and all your tools.

    Easily accommodate multiple methodologies (Agile, waterfall, hybrid, Flow), workflows, work types (projects, products, or services), and tools. If the solution you choose for Enterprise Agile Planning only works for a subset of tools and methodologies, can it really give you company-wide visibility? Jira Align can’t.

Why choose a Jira Align Competitor like Planview?

  • Planview
  • Jira

    • Adaptable alignment to all teams

      Integrate every team, all your tools, and all methodologies without forcing process change, data standardization, or re-implementing your teams.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Jira Align offers: none

    • Automated Agile costing and capitalization

      Automate calculation of Agile costs based on team activity and progress.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Jira Align offers: none

    • No add-on pricing or upcharges

      Pricing is all-inclusive, with everything you need built in — including access to your own data.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Jira Align offers: none

    • Integrations

      Seamless event-based integration with numerous Agile, DevOps, and collaborative work management team tools.

    • 60+ pre-built, no-code integrations, including Jira Software, Jira Core, and Jira Service Desk, plus Azure DevOps, Rally Software, and ServiceNow

    • Only integrates with Jira Software and Azure DevOps

    • Financial management and capacity planning and management

      Track and manage time-phased budgets and forecasts with configurable metrics including ROI, NPV, IRR, etc. Manage portfolio, value stream, team, and shared services capacity.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Jira Align offers: 50%

    • Dashboard, analytics, and reporting

      Share status with pre-built and customizable resources and connect your data to Power BI out-of-the-box.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Jira Align offers: n50%

    • Work intake and prioritization

      Rank epics manually or automatically based on WSJF or various custom scoring models, such as financials, schedules and risks. Support different prioritization methods from the portfolio to the teams.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Jira Align offers: 50%

    • Scaling Agile frameworks and embedded objectives and key results (OKRs)

      Easily configure Kanban boards to implement Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®), Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS), Disciplined Agile (DA), Spotify, and more. Get a clear line of sight into OKRs and associated work, from portfolios to teams. Full support for Lean Portfolio Management.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Jira Align offers: 50%

    • Dependency visualization

      Visually identify and map interrelated work across and between teams.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Jira Align offers: 100%

    • Agile work delivery

      Support for iterative and incremental approaches to work delivery.

    • Planview offers: 100%
    • Jira Align offers: 100%

Planview’s Enterprise Agile Planning Solution

Plan, fund, and manage any combination of Agile, Lean, and traditional portfolios. Connect strategic plans to Agile costs and delivery. Support a blend of work methodologies. All while your teams stay in Jira, ADO, and their other team tools.

  • Deliver faster and more predictably

    Connect and collaborate across your organization with shared outcomes and holistic strategy-to-execution visibility that speeds delivery and improves time-to-market predictability.

  • Do more with the teams you have

    Reduce rework and workflow inefficiencies with shared goals, visual dependency management, WIP alerts, and capacity alignment to the priorities that matter most.

  • Confidently invest in the right priorities

    Iteratively plan and fund to match strategy and change dynamics. Leverage scenarios and make trade-offs to build and confidently invest in the best plans.
Learn more

What is the difference between a comprehensive Enterprise Agile Planning solution and an Agile project management tool like Jira Software?

Agile Project Management tools, like Jira Software, provide a means for developers and project managers to plan, track, and manage many aspects of Agile software development projects. Mostly geared toward bug tracking, ticketing, and code check-in and check-outs, they support teams using Agile methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid approaches like Scrumban, in their development of products and services.

Enterprise Agile Planning tools represent an evolution from project-centric, bug-tracking, and ticketing Agile tools. They support a product-centric approach, focused on customers and the delivery of value. Enterprise Agile Planning tools connect business strategy to delivery by supporting both Agile and traditional portfolios while enabling team, program, and portfolio-level planning. While many businesses use enterprise Agile frameworks like Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) to guide their pursuit of enterprise-wide agility, these tools are built to complement their use.

Enterprise Agile Planning solutions further the drive to agility by enabling organizations to operationalize not only how they plan, but also fund and deliver, value. They often provide robust financial management modeling functionality to access different funding, cost, and capacity scenarios while helping an organization stay focused on the outcomes and objectives that are most important. Enterprise Agile Planning solutions also help organizations align to value streams, grouping areas of capabilities or persistent demand into functional groups (or products) for streamlined funding to areas with high-value opportunity.

What are some of the key capabilities to look for in an Enterprise Agile Planning solution?

  • Support for end-to-end holistic visibility
  • Support for dynamic Agile planning and prioritization at the team, program, and portfolio levels
  • Support for a combination of traditional and Agile portfolios
  • Support for businesses making the project-to-product shift
  • Support for distributed Agile teams in the planning, coordination, and delivery of business value
  • Support for Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
  • Support for disparate Agile team tools and their integrations
  • Support for financial management and scenario planning of costs, funding, and capacity
  • Support for capacity planning and management
  • Support for dependency visualization
  • Support for Agile methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid use cases such as Scrumban, and more
  • Support for the use of enterprise Agile frameworks like SAFe, LeSS, DA, and others

Jira Align vs. Jira: what is the difference?

Jira Software was first launched in 2002 as a bug tracking tool for software development teams. As this product and the Agile development space evolved, Jira Software rose in popularity as an Agile project management tool (primarily among Scrum teams) for its flexibility, ease of customization, and low cost. It is most used by teams looking for task management, issue tracking, and project management software, but not for cross-project, cross-team coordination, or organizational-level planning and visibility.

Although Jira Software leverages a data hierarchy with nomenclature commonly used in portfolio-level planning (“portfolio epics”), it does not support this level of planning. In addition, it does not natively support customization of its issue hierarchy. These points, coupled with the fact that Jira Software cannot support cross-project and cross-team coordination involving things like the management of dependencies, as well as other scaled Agile use cases, does not make it a good fit for teams interested in applying the use of enterprise Agile frameworks like SAFe.

Now, here’s a Jira Align overview: In 2019, Atlassian acquired Agile management platform provider AgileCraft, and rebranded its solution as Jira Align. Jira Align is Atlassian’s answer for scaled agility. This tool complements the use of Jira Software by providing a means of conducting portfolio-level planning leveraging select data mapped from execution teams whose projects and tasks are tracked primarily in Jira Software.

We have teams that use Jira Software. Can we integrate Planview’s Enterprise Agile Planning solution with Jira and other Agile project management tools?

Yes. Planview’s Enterprise Agile Planning solution gives teams the flexibility to continue to use the Agile execution tools they are familiar with or that are already tailored to support their processes. Whether teams use Atlassian’s Jira Software, Jira Core, or Jira Service Desk, or other tools like Broadcom’s Rally Software, Microsoft Azure DevOps, or ServiceNow, Planview allows Agile teams to connect their tool of choice into a program or teams-of-teams board with ease – enabling them to continue delivering value without disruption.

How does scaling Agile with Planview compare to scaling Agile with Jira Align?

Planview’s Enterprise Agile Planning solution is a comprehensive work and capacity management platform that integrates Agile scaling with portfolio management, capacity allocation, financial planning, and strategic alignment. It offers features beyond Agile scaling, supporting traditional project and resource management and providing end-to-end visibility across the project and portfolio landscape.

On the other hand, Jira Align is a dedicated enterprise Agile planning tool focused on scaling Agile practices, offering capabilities such as Agile portfolio management, program management, and team-level planning. It integrates with other Atlassian tools.

“While transformation is largely dependent on culture and behavior, it also requires the right people, process, and tools. Planview enables NatWest to maintain a controlled environment and provide transparency of delivery across our Agile teams. At the same time, we are able to track the main-level financial data, outcomes, and business cases, and ultimately the delivery of value throughout our business domains (value streams). You don’t go from one end of the Agile journey in one go. It’s a transition, step by step, and Planview is helping us get there.”

Steve Marjot

Head of Change Centre of Excellence, NatWest Group

“We had to get faster and more efficient in delivering new capabilities to allow us to be more competitive in the marketplace. Planview gave us that capability.”

Charlie Kennedy

VP, Agile Delivery Leader, Huntington National Bank

Read case study • Charlie Kennedy

Our solutions empower over 4500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide

  • Citi
  • Nationwide Building Society
  • Dell
  • Novartis
  • Agropur
  • Allianz
  • DaVita
  • Viessmann
  • VW Volkswagen
  • Box
  • NatWest
  • Walmart
  • Pfizer
  • AkzoNobel
  • UPS United Parcel Service
  • Beam
  • Conagra Brands
  • Volvo
  • Danone
  • Siemens
  • Roche
  • De Beers Jewelers
  • Honeywell
  • MetLife
  • EA Sports
  • BCBS Blue Cross Blue Shield
  • Vodafone Group
  • Commonwealth Bank
  • Abbott Nutrition
  • Thermo Fisher Scientific
  • ABB Group
  • Johnson & Johnson

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Information provided on this website is for information purposes only and offered for your convenience. The accuracy or completeness of this information is not guaranteed and is subject to change without notice. You are solely responsible for evaluating and selecting software and other products and services and determining whether a particular software, product, or service is suitable for your use. Planview is not affiliated with Atlassian. References made and any intellectual property attribution on this website are for advertising purposes only.