Jira Agile apps and Jira Align comparison

Use case: configurable hierarchy

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: You can easily configure multiple levels of hierarchy beyond the epic > story > sub-task hierarchy, adding issue types above epics or below sub-tasks. Configuration is global to all plans.
• Structure: You can configure unlimited hierarchy levels on a per-structure basis. Hierarchy is manual and ad-hoc unless synchronizers are used. Enforcing hierarchy requires synchronizers, and depending on the complexity of the hierarchy, administration can become more complicated with new issue links required in addition to the synchronizers. Synchronizers can result in bulk unintentional reranking if not used carefully. Synchronizers also add complexity and are known to cause performance issues. Incorrect synchronizer configuration may lead to conflicts when one synchronizer reverses the actions of the other and vice versa. There is a safeguard mechanism that stops the cycle and sends warnings, but the next user action might trigger it again, so there's a possibility of wasted CPU cycles and overgrowth of the structure change history.
• BigPicture: The work breakdown structure section of a program's settings is, simply put, an automatic hierarchy builder. It will arrange the tasks according to common traits between them, such as the projects they are in or the epic they belong to. There are also manual options that can only be done at the program level and can be overwritten. Given this, it seems that the hierarchy is not necessarily enforceable.
• Jira Align: You can configure multiple levels of hierarchy above epic. Epics, stories, and defects are synced with Jira. Two-way sync is in place.

Use case: capacity planning

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: This app includes built-in capabilities around capacity planning for teams and individuals based on sprint capacity (for Scrum teams) and weekly capacity (for Kanban teams).
• Structure: Capacity planning is done by simply looking at the rollup of points for a sprint or team member. There is no automatic indication of being overbooked.
• BigPicture: This tool compares the number of hours spent on all tasks for a given day to the maximum availability of the particular resource and color codes it as red (over-allocated), green (under-allocated), or yellow (equal to allocation). The number calculated in allocation is compared against the capacity defined in the administration section. You can view in a variety of scales (week, month, quarter, half-year). The resources section is the target of a major overhaul in the 6.x series of the tool.
• Jira Align: The capacity planning report details the team's capacity throughout the sprint and is especially helpful to scrum masters as they determine whether the overall goal of the sprint can be achieved with the available team members.

Use case: forecasting

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: This is a tailor-made solution for PPM that provides comprehensive capabilities for dynamic capacity and resource planning, forecasting, and roll-up reporting. Work is slotted in the schedule based on a number of variables such as dependencies, estimates, release, etc., and any changes you make to the roadmap warn you of any negative down-stream impacts. Forecasting can be dynamic through various scenarios and changes are not committed back to Jira until you’re confident in the plan.
• Structure: This is a universal tool to organize issues and aggregate information in a hierarchy. Data can be rolled up from lower-level hierarchies, but it's not a forecasting tool in that there is no predictive or scenario-based planning available. By adding the additional app Structure.Deliver, customers get project forecasting for Agile teams in Struture. Structure.Deliver is an extension for Structure for Jira.
• BigPicture: This tool allows for auto-scheduling, which organizes the work based on issue links. It arranges items by work and duration, but it does not appear to account for other data points that may alter forecasting.
• Jira Align: Release and program-level forecasting are supported by this tool.

Use case: issue limits

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: Currently there is an upper limit of 100 projects and 5000 open issues per plan due to performance restriction related to the complexity of forecast calculations. This can be mitigated by configuring your issue sources for import to limit issues that are not needed.
• Structure: The recommended limit for the number of issues in one structure is 100K. With this, Structure already might be working noticeably slower, especially if there are many users working with the structure board at the same time. It is recommended to distribute the issues between several smaller structures (5-10K issues per structure works perfectly). The number of structures does not affect the performance that much.
• BigPicture: There doesn't appear to be a documented hard limit, but you can set a global limit on issues loaded automatically via the admin screens to help scale back what is loaded in the event that there are performance problems. As this tuning in the case of performance issues is mentioned in the documentation, it is likely that performance issues could occur at some threshold, but that threshold may vary per instance.
• Jira Align: No documented limit.

Use case: agile board integration

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: This app integrates with agile boards to pull in sprints, points, and velocity. It also has a bi-directional sync for rank. There is limited visibility back to the agile boards. Fields such as Parent Link, Team, and Target Start and End Dates can be displayed on the issues in Jira.
• Structure: Structure can bring in the sprints and points, and the hierarchy of the issue is also revealed in a special tab on the issue view on the agile boards.
• BigPicture: BigPicture Enterprise edition provides the most support for this in that it allows for a separate board for each team with sprint synchronization. Otherwise, sprints are synced, but it is best suited for a scenario where a single board is used.
• Jira Align: Allows the hierarchy tree to be expanded/scaled above teams and projects to include program and portfolio planning. Integration with Jira boards does have some constraints: issues that exist in multiple synced boards or parallel sprints can cause synchronization issues.

Use case: read-only reports

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: Read-only sharable links enable you to share or embed views elsewhere.
• Structure: Read-only sharable links enable you to share or embed views elsewhere.
• BigPicture: Read-only access may be granted to users in a program set up in BigPicture. It does not appear that reports can be exported or embedded. Depending on the purpose of the report, the read-only view may be sufficient. It's possible that some of the gadgets to display certain views on Confluence may help in this space as well.
• Jira Align: Jira Align is equipped with over 150 reports which can be linked to. There are also business intelligence and insights capabilities which allow you to pull data into reporting tools or data lakes.

Use case: templates

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: Templates are not an available feature, but since hierarchy configuration is global, and that is the most common need, the desire for templates is less significant than in Structure.
• Structure: Structures and their issues can be cloned as a starting point for additional structures.
• BigPicture: You can insert artificial tasks which are only in BigPicture and not in Jira itself in the same way you can insert a template, which is a set of such tasks.
• Jira Align: Jira Align does not offer any templating capabilities.

Use case: custom fields

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: Most custom fields can be added to the scope table. Some field types are unsupported, and some are read-only. Others may be modified directly in the scope table. The list of supported fields continues to expand, so check current documentation for the most up-to-date list of supported custom fields.
• Structure: Custom fields may be revealed on the table view in Structure. Whether they are editable or not depends on field and project screens.
• BigPicture: BigGantt and BigPicture add-ons may use custom issue fields to store Gantt chart data. Those custom fields are configurable under Gantt configuration in System Administration.
• Jira Align: Jira Align comes equipped with its own fields, and certain custom fields in Jira can be mapped to Jira Align fields so data can be reflected in both instances.

Use case: folders

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: There is no concept of a folder for grouping of issues.
• Structure: Folders may be created in the structure to hold issues.
• BigPicture: There is no concept of a folder for grouping of issues.
• Jira Align: There is no concept of a folder for grouping issues.

Use case: the same issue in multiple hierarchies/views

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: Issues exist only once in a hierarchy.
• Structure: Issues may exist multiple times in a single structure modeled via different relationships.
• BigPicture: Unsure. Needs testing.
• Jira Align: Issues exist only once in a hierarchy.

Use case: rollup

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: Estimates and work are rolled up either via the numeric fields representing points/hours or in the progress bar.
• Structure: Estimates, story points, and logged work may be rolled up in a summation field as well as any other numeric field.
• BigPicture: The roadmap module offers aggregation of story points and time values (original estimate and remaining estimate) for all tasks assigned to a given cadence.
• Jira Align: Similar to other tools, estimates are aggregated in parent issues to reflect the sum of estimated work to complete a particular issue.

Use case: releases

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: Introduces the concept of cross-project releases to help manage releases in multiple projects rather than one at a time, project by project. There is also predictive scheduling of releases, awareness of an overbooked release, and reporting on those information points.
• Structure: Can surface the release in the table.
• BigPicture: Milestones help determine whether a project is on schedule and assist teams to stay on track. When you include milestones in your project, you have a better view of the project's key dates.
• Jira Align: Release planning across projects is supported, which includes the ability to report on release forecasting, dependencies, and missed milestones.

Use case: what-if scenarios

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: Allows for experimentation and what-if scenario planning without impacting the underlying issues or agile boards in Jira.
• Structure: Changes made in Structure are immediately reflected in the underlying issues and agile boards in Jira. However, the extension Structure.Gantt 3.0, which is an additional app, introduces sandbox mode, where you can quickly see how different changes would impact your project timelines without disrupting your charts. 
• BigPicture: You can insert artificial tasks which are only in BigPicture and not in Jira itself.
• Jira Align: In addition to what-if scenario planning, Jira Align has the built-in ability to run Monte Carlo simulations on the data in the tool.

Use case: dependencies

Notes

• Advanced Roadmaps: Dependencies are indicated in the schedule view by color changes on the ends of each item in the view. Clicking on the item with a dependency will highlight the related items in the schedule view. There is also a dependencies report that provides a list of dependencies with relevant information for each dependency. You can configure it so that Task A cannot begin until Task B is complete when Task B blocks Task A.
• Structure: Relationships between issues may be visualized graphically.
• BigPicture: A roadmap view that is fully compliant with The Scaled Agile Framework™ displays dependencies. In this view, links between items on the roadmap are indicated with colored strings and these relationships are editable on the screen. The BigPicture Enterprise edition provides the ability to synchronize team rollup with cadences.
• Jira Align: Dependency mapping across teams, projects, and programs can be tracked, as well as backlog dependencies. Support for dependency negotiation is also available.

Insights and conclusions