BigPicture and Tempo Planner are both planning apps for Jira, but they differ more than one may imagine. Tempo Planner is great for “preventing resources from being wasted”, while BigPicture will help you “get a complex project done”. Tempo Planner keeps its eye on “squeezing” teams while BigPicture delivers… yes, the big picture of your organization to help team members complete high-level goals.
For predictable and repeatable circumstances, Tempo Planner delivers in spades, whereas BigPicture is a proven project management tool for both standard projects and multiplex undertakings.
Table 1: BigPicture vs. Tempo Planner
| BigPicture | Tempo Planner | |
|---|---|---|
| In a nutshell | All-in-one Project Portfolio Management app for Jira for short- and long-term planning, tracking progress and managing teams. For both agile and waterfall projects. | One of the triad: Tempo Timesheets – Tempo Planner – Tempo Budgets. Tempo Planner is a resource-biased app aimed at “squeezing” resources and short- and long-term planning. |
| Key phrases | reach goals, align teams, effectively supervise/manage/control involved projects or portfolio of projects | estimate task, capacity of a team, plan work, maximize efficiency |
Modules |
||
| Roadmapping (planning) |  SAFe compliant roadmaps, with drill-down feature for various planning horizons |
use Team Timelines as roadmaps to visualize short- and long-term priorities |
| Dependency board | |
|
| Gantt chart including milestones, markers, baselines, dependencies between tasks |
|
|
| Risks | |
|
| Resources | |
|
| Teams | |
|
| Work Breakdown Structure | Up to BigPicture 6 WBS is present within Gantt chart module; in BigPicture 7 WBS is a standalone module. |
|
| Reporting | |
|
Resource planning |
||
| Skills (roles) | further developed in BigPicture 7 |
|
| Capacity planning | |
|
| Story points | |
|
| Create teams of Jira groups | |
|
| Find available team members filtering by roles, availability |
|
|
| Put cost rates on roles | |
|
| Workload plans | |
|
| Holiday plans | |
|
| Multiple workload and holiday plans per resource | |
|
| Member/team capacity reporting | |
|
Selected functionalities |
||
| Visualizing app? | |
|
| Sync- and re-sync with Jira | |
|
| Track progress of projects/programs | |
available with Tempo Budgets |
| Focus on short-/long-term planning | both short- and long-term | more short-term than long-term |
| JQL filters | |
|
| Dependencies between issues (e.g. task A blocks task B) | |
|
| Drag&drop tasks | |
|
Project management paradigms / methodologies / levels |
||
| Project/program-level management | |
|
| Portfolio-level management | |
available with Tempo Budgets |
| Iterations (Scrum) | |
|
| SAFe® |
Team and program levels up to BigPicture 6; starting BigPicture 7 portfolio level, too. |
|
| Waterfall | |
|
Import/export features |
||
| Integration BigPicture <–> Tempo | Big Picture Enterprise (an extension of BigPicture) integrates with Tempo Planner, Tempo Timesheets and Tempo Budgets. BigPicture with Enterprise add-on can display Tempo teams, resources, roles, workload schemes, holiday schemes. |
Tempo Planner/Timesheets/Budgets are not capable of accessing BigPicture data. |
| Supported file types | mpp, mpx, pdf, jpg, png, xml, csv, xls, xlsx, doc, docx (with BigTemplate – an extension of BigPicture) | csv, xls, xlsx, pdf, “print” (printable view) |
| Sample import/export features | With BigTemplate, an extension of BigPicture, you can export an entire project in MS Project native mpp/mpx formats or export individual issues to pdf, jpg, png files. You can also import MS Project mpp/mpx files. | Export/import plans from team timelines to csv files. |
Requirements & platforms |
||
| Works with | Jira Software, Jira Core, Data Center, Service Desk | Jira Software, Jira Core, Data Center, Service Desk |
| Jira Server / Cloud | Jira Server & Cloud BigPicture Enterprise – Jira Server only |
Jira Server & Cloud Tempo Budgets – Jira Server only |
| Mobile app | |
|
Business data & Pricing |
||
| Launched | 2014 | 2014 |
| Jira Server, 100 users, Atlassian Marketplace | $1500/instance | $1500/instance |
| Jira Cloud, 11-100 users tier, Atlassian Marketplace | $2.5/user/month | $1.5/user/month |
| Available through | Atlassian Marketplace, Atlassian Solution Partners | Atlassian Marketplace, Atlassian Solution Partners |
| User rating (stars) | 3.4/4 | 2.5/4 |
| Developer | SoftwarePlant | Tempo |
| Atlassian Top Vendor? | |
|
Effort was made to gather accurate data, but these apps are to a large extent incomparable. Data is current at the time of writing. Help improve the table – e-mail marketing (a) softwareplant.com.
Feb 2020
If you’re after dependency arrows in Jira, then consider BigPicture the leader. Read a guide on strong and soft visual task dependencies in BigPicture/BigGantt and how to map them to Jira task links. More.
Feb 2020
BigPicture is becoming an optionally standalone enterprise agile planning tool. With the new edition, called BigPicture.one, you’ll be able to do project portfolio management without Jira. BigPicture for Jira will remain our core product, though, and will be developed concurrently. More.
Dec 2019
We’ve been doing custom development for years, but have now released its official guide. Need a new feature in BigPicture/BigGantt? You’ve got options.
Upcoming events
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- Las Vegas for Atlassian Summit, Mar 31 – Apr 2, 2020
- Tallinn for Atlassian in Baltics, Apr 23, 2020
- The Hague at European SAFe Summit, Jun 10-11, 2020
