Migrating from Jira to Asana
Asana is built for cross functional project management and task management at startup and scaleup scale. This guide covers the practical steps to move your workflow from Jira across without losing data or disrupting your team mid-sprint.
At a Glance
- Industry standard for software development teams — most PMs will encounter Jira in their career
- Deepest configurability of any project management tool with custom fields, workflows, and screens
- 3,000+ marketplace integrations covering virtually every tool in the product stack
- Exceptionally intuitive and visually clean interface — one of the lowest onboarding friction tools for non-technical teams
- Multiple project views (list, board, timeline, calendar, Gantt) included from lower tiers, giving teams flexibility without add-ons
- Goals feature provides native OKR tracking with clear alignment from company objectives down to individual tasks
You gain with Asana
- +Gantt charts
Migration Steps
Audit and export your current workspace
Before touching Asana, document what lives in Jira: issues, epics, and sprints, custom fields, automations, integrations, and team permissions. Export a full CSV backup — most tools support this from Settings → Export. Pay particular attention to any custom fields and workflow automations that your team relies on daily.
Set up your Asana workspace
Create your Asana workspace and replicate your project structure using tasks and sections. Start with the free tier — it covers the core workflow before you commit to a paid plan. Run with a single pilot team before migrating everyone.
Map your workflow equivalents
Find the closest Asana equivalent for each Jira feature your team relies on. issues, epics, and sprints in Jira maps to tasks and sections in Asana. Asana supports custom fields — recreate your Jira field schema here first. Gantt-style timeline views are available if your team used them in Jira. Prioritise the critical path: task creation, status tracking, and assignment.
Import your data
Asana supports CSV import for tasks and projects and has 20+ native integrations. After importing, rebuild your key automations — Asana's automation engine can replicate most rules you had in Jira. Start with your most active project rather than importing everything at once.
Onboard your team
Run a 30-minute walkthrough covering the daily workflow: how to create tasks and sections, update status, and find your board. Expect a moderate ramp — most engineers and PMs hit their stride within a week. The biggest adjustment is usually the sprint ceremony workflow.
Run Jira in parallel for two weeks
Keep Jira read-only while your team works primarily in Asana. This reduces risk and lets people reference historical context — old decisions, archived tickets, past sprint data — without slowing the migration. After two weeks with no new work going into Jira, archive the workspace and make Asana the official home.
Ready to switch?
Read the full Asana review for pricing, integrations, and team fit details.