Choosing a Product Portfolio Management (PPM) tool is more than a software choice, it’s a strategic decision that impacts how your organization aligns, plans, and delivers. And while adopting Jira Align may seem like a logical extension for teams already using Jira Software, it isn’t right for every organization.
The risk? Investing in a costly, time-consuming rollout, only to discover the solution doesn’t align with how your teams actually work.
Below, we provide tips to help you determine what’s right for your organization and introduce a flexible, AI-powered Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) platform as a viable Jira Align alternative.
What Is Jira Align?
Agile Craft was an enterprise PPM solution for Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Atlassian acquired it in 2019 and rebranded it to Jira Align.
While Jira Align is a comprehensive portfolio management tool, to adopt it, companies must have a mature, unified SAFe process, a standardized Jira project setup, and an integrated agile team process across the entire enterprise.
Implementing Jira Align also typically requires a large-scale process transformation that can take months and cost over $1,000,000. These factors naturally limit Jira Align’s suitability to mature, large enterprises without frequent changes.
When to Consider an Alternative to Jira Align
How can you determine whether Jira Align is right for you? Ask yourself if any of the following are true about your organization:
- Are you a product-led or product-centric organization?
- Are customer insights, requests, and feedback central to strategy?
- Do you require portfolio and roadmapping capabilities?
- Does your team not practice SAFe “by the book”?
- Do your teams use varied agile practices, e.g., standard scrum, kanban, scrumban, or uneven sprints?
- Do estimation practices vary across teams?
- Is your company growing or rapidly changing team sizes and processes?
- Does management want a fast implementation and iterative rollout?
- Do you use multiple agile planning tools?
- Do you have a small PPM budget (way less than $1M)?
If you answered yes to any of the above, your business needs a Jira Align alternative, and Dragonboat might be the perfect option.
Why Enterprise Teams Struggle With Jira Align
Jira Align was designed for top-down governance and tightly controlled SAFe environments, not for the dynamic, decentralized nature of modern product organizations. While it aims to connect strategy and execution, it often introduces more complexity than clarity.
Here are some of the most common challenges when using Jira Align:
- Disconnected strategy and execution: Strategy lives in one place (Jira Product Discovery or Confluence), roadmaps in another, and execution in Jira, making alignment a constant manual effort. Jira Align doesn’t solve this disconnect; it adds another layer.
- Poor Jira software integration: Despite being part of the Atlassian suite, Jira Align struggles with seamless integration into existing Jira environments. Teams often face data sync issues, complex configurations, and rigid project structures.
- Rigid and inflexible: Jira Align forces organizations into a one-size-fits-all model. Customizing for varied team practices, whether Kanban, Scrum, or a mix, is difficult, and adapting to change becomes costly.
- Lengthy and costly implementations: Rolling out Jira Align requires significant time, resources, and change management. Implementation can take months (or longer), with slow time-to-value and high dependency on external consultants.
- Low tool maturity: While Jira is a proven tool for engineering delivery, Jira Align and JPD lack the maturity and flexibility product teams need. Constantly adapting internal processes to fit the tool disrupts flow and erodes team confidence.
- Siloed, incomplete data: Without a unified semantic layer, Jira Align leaves key signals like customer insights, OKRs, capacity, and outcomes trapped in silos. The result? Slower decisions, missed dependencies, and lost ROI.
Why Dragonboat Is the Best Jira Align Alternative
Dragonboat is a modular, end-to-end strategic portfolio management platform that connects OKRs, customer insights, strategic planning, resourcing, and agile delivery into one unified intelligent system.
Dragonboat Democratizes Product Portfolio Management
Built upon the best practices of leading companies like PayPal and Netflix, Dragonboat is robust yet lightweight and economical. It only takes hours to get started, and there is no need to immediately change your process or tool stack because you can make adjustments as you go.
The PPM tool stack of Dragonboat + Jira is similar to the Jira Align + Jira combination, with Dragonboat for product portfolio planning, resource allocation, and alignment, and Jira for Agile execution. It forms a complete PPM solution that can handle everything from strategic alignment and administration to product and program management, all integrated with team execution.
A Robust, Customizable 2-Way Integration with Jira, ADO, and more
Within the Jira integration, Dragonboat works well with Jira Classic, Jira Next-gen, Jira Server, and Jira Advanced Roadmaps. Dragonboat also integrates with Azure DevOps, GitHub, Asana, Shortcut, and more and supports the traditional waterfall process.
Built for Flexibility and Scale – No Change To Existing Process
Your teams can continue to work as before, with no changes to existing processes. Whether you use SAFe, Scrum @scale, OKR + Agile, V2MOM + Agile, lean product management, fuzzy planning (e.g., this month, this quarter, next quarter), or quarterly planning; Dragonboat adapts to your operating model. Dragonboat also supports standard scrum and sprints or scrumban, kanban, irregular sprints, and processes with or without estimates.
By supporting diverse agile practices across teams without forcing standard processes, Dragonboat enables organizations to evolve at their own pace while maintaining portfolio-wide alignment.
See real customer feedback on Capterra.
Dragonboat Enables Agile Rollout For Faster Time to Value
Unlike Jira Align, which can take months to implement, you can start Dragonboat for one team, then expand to a few more before rolling it out to the entire organization, taking a minimum viable process change (MVPC) approach. Or, you can even implement multiple instances of Dragonboat, all integrated with the same Jira instance, allowing for process autonomy and smoother adjustment by team members.
Saves Money – Fewer Paid Licenses Needed
Because Dragonboat decentralizes team execution in Jira, it requires fewer licensed editors than Jira Align.
Dragonboat Provides Visibility To the Whole Company Regardless of Jira Access
Use the embedded Dragonboat reports or its request portal (kept in Confluence or an internal website) to provide product portfolio context and visibility to everyone in the company.
Dragonboat Closes the Loop on Portfolio Outcomes
Besides supporting OKR alignment, Dragonboat provides outcome tracking to close the product portfolio loop and guide the prioritization and allocation efforts in the next portfolio iteration.
Built-In Portfolio Intelligence
Powered by a real-time Portfolio Intelligence Layer, Dragonboat continuously analyzes data from native apps and integrated tools to monitor risk, surface ripple effects, and recommend adjustments. This enables leaders to proactively steer strategy and execution based on real-time signals.
What About Atlassian Strategy Collection?
Atlassian’s new “Strategy Collection” combines Focus, Talent, and Jira Align into a suite aimed at connecting strategy to work. While promising on paper, in practice, it compounds the same core issues:
- Built on rigid foundations: Jira Align and JPD are still the base, requiring process standardization.
- Disconnected layers: Strategy and work are in separate tools, furthering silos.
- Not built for dynamic teams: These tools cater to centralized PMOs, not decentralized product orgs.
- Complex and costly: Adds new layers without solving the integration, visibility, or alignment challenges.
Dragonboat, in contrast, was built from the ground up as a modern, AI-native SPM platform for fast-moving organizations.
A Flexible Jira Align Alternative for Fast-Moving Companies
Today’s product teams are dynamic, cross-functional, and data-driven, so their tools must be too. Dragonboat helps companies move from disconnected tools and manual planning to a unified, intelligent operating model. With built-in flexibility, scalable architecture, and AI-powered insights, it enables product leaders to deliver at the speed and scale of modern innovation.
While a great option for traditional companies with established and static goals and processes, enterprise PPM tools, like Jira Align, require a high level of process maturity, intensive implementation, and a staff of Agile professionals to maintain.
You can implement Dragonboat in minutes, not months, and for thousands, not millions, of dollars. And it can be as flexible and dynamic as your team and process.
“Responsive Product Portfolio Management capabilities are needed by every product organization, regardless of whether you have 1 or 100 teams. Dragonboat provides a responsive PPM platform for outcome-focused, dynamic companies.”
Rajesh, CPO, Nium
Dragonboat supports your entire product operating model. Schedule a demo with one of our product experts to see it in action.
