Jira Work Management vs. Microsoft Planner

Jira Work Management suits projects involving multiple teams, such as product development. In our case, the design, development, and QA teams use Jira to track tasks from ideation to deployment. Custom workflows and real-time updates ensure that all teams are on the same page, and the ability to link related tasks helps manage dependencies effectively.

Incentivized

There are a few examples where MS Planner would be suitable for employees at a mature organization. In my opinion, if you have Outlook or Teams, you already have built-in calendars and to-do lists. If you need a project management tool, you have two options: either pay for MS Project or use an alternative tool like Monday, Asana, or Jira. Regardless, their free versions are much more sophisticated than Microsoft's (MS Planner). Any team wishing to put together a halfway-decent project management board will need to look elsewhere, as MS Planner is only suitable for a personal to-do list.

Incentivized

• Provide a roadmap of all epics
• Provide a backlog in which you can see all the possible work to be done to create your sprint plan
• Have all our projects within reach
• Have a dashboard with editable columns to manage your work
• Be able to filter by person
• Be able to see past sprints

• I love the ability to tag and untag others as needed
• I love the ability to customize the tag labels and that there are so many options
• I love the ability to add comments and it notifies the others tagged in the task
• I love that the task description can be changed as needed without notification to others assigned to the task

Incentivized

• More clarification on where to find useful tools and resources for new users.
• Breakdown of Projects, Tasks, Sub-tasks, bugs is hard to follow and cannot be changed once created.
• The ability to customize the dashboard/home page to fit the needs of individuals could use some work.

Incentivized

• Would be nice to see a calendar view instead of a list view
• Permissions aren't configurable, anyone can delete any task at any time and there is no recycle bin
• Notifications aren't great, you have to be attached as an owner to a task to see comments and be notified of changes, and even then notifications aren't shown for a lot of things

Incentivized

It's not up to me, but if it were, I would not recommend using this. It is another work productivity app, which, while it has its benefits, can actually detract instead of enhance work productivity.

Incentivized

As we are Atlassian users overall, this entire ecosystem is truly built from a 360 perspective. It becomes the one source of truth, and we can easily see where we are in our projects and where to emphasize focus in the upcoming period. There are some areas for minor improvements, but they are more a matter of preference rather than business necessity

Incentivized

The board-and-bucket layout makes it easy to organize tasks, track progress, and prioritize work at a glance, even for first-time users. I also appreciate how Planner seamlessly integrates with tools like Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint, enabling users to collaborate, schedule tasks, and access their plans without needing to switch platforms. I also like how it’s accessible not only on desktops, but also on mobile devices.

Incentivized

The evolution of Jira Service Desk to Jira work management is accompanied by lot of new features like the List View which allows inline editing, easy column management, the Calendar View bases on extensible modal and state categories, the Timeline View supports tasks and subtasks, the Boards which allow the categorization of status and allow the visibility of subtasks on the cards, Forms can be created very easily, Project templates can be used based on the business area.

Incentivized

Many areas of the company still use Trello to organize their activities and tasks, but gradually Microsoft Planner must replace the activities. Users are often "attached" to familiar technologies, but Office 365 takes advantage of the more organized use of the tools. This year we will not renew the Trello contract.

• For our marketing team, Jira Work Management caused us to lose valuable work time due to manual updates that could have been automated.
• Due to lack of creative review tools within Jira Work Management, our team had to pursue other tools that do not integrate with Jira Work Management, thus creating additional OpEx.

Incentivized

• In my experience, productivity is negatively impacted because assigning subtasks aren't clear on Microsoft Planner
• Managers aren't able to track direct reports' tasks across multiple boards -- leading to poor visibility for us
• Notifications aren't always sent to inbox, so you rely on people's own project management skills to follow the communication on tasks they're assigned to. In my experience, this leads to missed deadlines impacting customer relationships.

Incentivized