Let me say the quiet part out loud: Jira is fantastic at tracking issues, and a little stubborn about everything else.
If you’ve ever tried to answer “are we on track?” or “is anyone drowning right now?” using Jira alone, you know the feeling. All the tickets are right there. The answer is not.
That’s not a knock on Jira. It was built for agile issue tracking, and it’s great at it. But real projects also need planning, timelines, and a clear view of who’s doing what. The good news? You don’t have to abandon Jira to get those things. You just need the right app sitting on top of it.
Here are seven tools worth a look, and how to figure out which one actually fits your team.
Why Jira alone can slow teams down
Most productivity problems in Jira aren’t about people working too little. They’re about people not being able to see enough. A few usual suspects:
- No real timeline. Boards are great for “now.” They’re weak for “when.” Dependencies, deadlines, and the overall schedule are hard to read at a glance.
- No workload view. Jira shows you ticket status, not whether one person is buried under 30 tasks while someone else is coasting.
- Everything lives in silos. Running five projects at once? Jira won’t hand you one clean view of the whole picture.
- Time tracking is thin. Billable vs. non-billable, approvals, planned vs. actual – not really Jira’s strong suit.
- Spreadsheets creep back in. And two weeks later, they’re already out of date. We’ve all been there.
My honest take: none of these are dealbreakers. They’re gaps. And gaps can be filled.
How these tools actually help
Think of Marketplace apps as the missing layer. They don’t replace Jira. They read your live Jira data and add what’s missing – usually four things:
- A visual plan (Gantt charts, timelines, roadmaps)
- Resource and capacity views, so you can spot who’s overloaded
- Deeper time tracking, including cost and billing
- Portfolio reporting across all your projects at once
Your team keeps working in Jira. Managers finally get the view they’ve been squinting for. Everybody wins.
One thing to keep in mind as we go: there’s a trade-off between “light and easy” and “powerful and complex.” More features usually mean more setup.
The 7 best project management tools to boost Jira productivity
Quick note before we dive in. The “best” tool depends on your team, not on some universal ranking. So instead of crowning a winner, I’ll tell you what each one is genuinely good at.
1. TeamBoard ProScheduler
ProScheduler is built for the moment your board can’t answer “what happens when, and who’s got room for it?” You plan visually on a Schedule Board – drag tasks onto a timeline, assign them to one person or several, and set recurring tasks so routine work plans itself. That same plan shows up as a Gantt chart with dependencies, milestones, baselines, and a critical path, so you can see exactly what’s driving your deadline at a glance.
A few things that make day-to-day life easier:
- Auto-scheduling. Move one task and every dependent task shifts with it – no rebuilding the plan by hand.
- Resource heatmap. Instantly spot who’s overloaded and who has room, then rebalance on the spot.
- Two-way Jira sync. Change a date in Jira and it updates on the Gantt, and the other way around. No duplicate schedules to babysit.
- One view for everything. Manage all your projects and portfolios on a single Gantt, plus a calendar view (holidays and days off included) and saved views for different audiences.
It adapts to Agile, SAFe, hybrid, or your own mix of the three. And it fits the tools you already use – you can even export schedules to Google Calendar or Outlook.
Then there’s TimePlanner, the companion app that handles the “what actually happened” half. It adds a stopwatch timer and timesheets your team logs right inside Jira, an approval workflow for managers, and leave and holiday tracking so your plans reflect who’s genuinely available. For teams that bill clients, it also covers billable vs. non-billable hours, billing rates, cost tracking, and invoicing.
Both run on Jira Standard Cloud and will soon be on Isolated Cloud.
Best for: teams who want to plan and track in one connected setup, instead of buying and reconciling two separate tools. If you’ve ever built a lovely plan and then had no clue whether reality matched it, this pairing is for you.
2. Structure by Tempo
Structure turns Jira into something that feels like a smart spreadsheet. You build your own hierarchy – group issues however you like, across projects – and roll numbers up through it. Hours, story points, billable time: it all adds up automatically to the epic or initiative level. It handles thousands of issues without breaking a sweat.
Best for: bigger teams and PMOs who need flexible structures and portfolio-level totals. Heads up: you’ll often pair it with other Tempo apps to get the full experience.
3. BigPicture
BigPicture is the heavyweight. It turns Jira into a full portfolio and strategy platform, with advanced Gantt charts, support for agile frameworks like SAFe and LeSS, risk management, and strategic roadmaps. Budgets and financials live in its Enterprise edition.
It’s genuinely powerful. It’s also a lot, so expect a learning curve.
Best for: enterprises steering many programs at once, across agile, hybrid, and classic ways of working.
4. Planyway
Planyway is the friendly one. It combines a calendar, timeline, resource planning, and time tracking in a single, affordable app that works right out of the box. Drag a task onto the timeline, see who’s overloaded at a glance, and view all your projects in one place. No two-week setup marathon required.
Best for: small and mid-size teams who want simplicity and a break from planning spreadsheets.
5. ActivityTimeline
If your team bills clients, pay attention here. ActivityTimeline adds real resource and finance muscle: capacity and availability planning, leave management, detailed timesheets, cost tracking, billing rates, and profitability reports. Its planned-vs-actual reporting is especially handy for spotting where estimates quietly went sideways.
Best for: agencies and consultancies where utilization and accurate billing genuinely matter.
6. Projectrak
Projectrak takes a different angle. Instead of managing issues, it manages projects – status, dates, priority, and more – as first-class data on top of Jira. You get List, Board, and Timeline views, dashboards built from project gadgets, and formula fields that calculate things like budget remaining. It comes in Standard and Advanced editions and can track project budgets and capacity too.
Best for: PMOs and project leads who need project-level governance, not just issue-level detail.
7. GanttTable
GanttTable keeps things refreshingly simple: a spreadsheet-style table on one side, a Gantt chart on the other. You get portfolios, custom columns, saved views, and the usual milestones and dependencies – without a heavy rollout. It’s built on Atlassian’s Forge platform, so your data stays inside Atlassian’s cloud, which security-minded teams tend to appreciate.
Best for: teams who want an Excel-like Gantt, fast. Just check the current pricing, since it became a paid app in 2026.
How to actually pick one
Don’t start with the feature list. Start with your biggest headache. Then match it:
- Struggling to plan ahead? Look at ProScheduler or GanttTable.
- Can’t tell who’s overloaded? ActivityTimeline or Planyway.
- Need billing and cost control? ActivityTimeline or ProScheduler with TimePlanner.
- Drowning at the portfolio level? Structure, BigPicture, or Projectrak.
Then sanity-check three practical things: your team size (small teams rarely need enterprise tools), your budget and how the app charges, and how long setup takes.
My rule of thumb: the best tool is the one your team will actually use. A powerful app nobody opens is just an expensive shortcut to frustration.
And you don’t have to marry the first one you try. Most offer free trials. Run a real project through two or three for a sprint, and let the work tell you which one fits.
Getting your team to actually use it
Here’s the part most “best tools” lists skip: buying the app is the easy bit. Getting people to open it is where things usually fall apart.
A few things that help, learned the slightly hard way:
- Start small. Don’t roll it out to a dozen teams on day one. Pick one project and one willing team, and let them kick the tires for a sprint or two before you go wider.
- Give it an owner. Tools without a champion tend to quietly die. Someone should own the setup, answer questions, and nudge people along.
- Don’t switch on every feature. Most of these apps can do a lot. That doesn’t mean you need all of it in week one. Turn on what solves today’s problem, and grow into the rest.
- Plug into how people already work. The best setups feel like a natural extension of Jira, not a second system to remember. If your team has to leave their normal flow to update the tool, they simply won’t.
The goal isn’t a flawless rollout. It’s a tool people reach for without being reminded. Get that, and the productivity gains tend to follow on their own.
Final thoughts
There’s no single “best” project management tool for Jira. There’s only the one that fixes your gap while keeping Jira as your source of truth.
If your team keeps hopping between one place to plan and another to track time, an all-in-one setup like ProScheduler and TimePlanner is worth a serious look – that back-and-forth is exactly what it’s built to remove.
Whatever you land on, remember the point isn’t more tools. It’s more clarity. Pick the one that gives you that.
FAQs
Does Jira have a built-in Gantt chart or workload view?
Sort of, but not really. Native planning is limited, and there’s no true “who’s overloaded” view – which is the whole reason these apps exist.
Can I use more than one app together?
Often, yes. Plenty of teams pair a planning app with a dedicated time-tracking one, and several of these tools integrate with each other.
What’s the difference between planning and time-tracking apps?
Planning looks forward (who does what, when). Time tracking looks back (what actually got spent). Some tools, like ProScheduler with TimePlanner, do both.
How do these apps usually charge?
Most price by user tier, tied to your Jira license count. Always run your numbers through the Atlassian pricing calculator before you commit.
Will adding an app slow Jira down or raise security concerns?
Reputable Marketplace apps go through Atlassian’s security checks, and some – like GanttTable – run on Atlassian’s Forge platform, which keeps your data inside Atlassian’s cloud. It’s still worth skimming an app’s security details and reviews before you install, especially for larger teams with stricter requirements.
Do I have to migrate my Jira data to use these tools?
No. These apps sit on top of your existing Jira data and read it live, so you’re not moving anything or keeping a second copy in sync. You install, connect, and start planning – your issues stay exactly where they are.
