Migrating from Asana to Jira
Jira is built for issue tracking and sprint planning at startup and scaleup scale. This guide covers the practical steps to move your workflow from Asana across without losing data or disrupting your team mid-sprint.
At a Glance
- 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
- 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
You leave behind
- −Gantt charts
Migration Steps
Audit and export your current workspace
Before touching Jira, document what lives in Asana: tasks and sections, 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 Jira workspace
Create your Jira workspace and replicate your project structure using epics, stories, and sprints. 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 Jira equivalent for each Asana feature your team relies on. tasks and sections in Asana maps to epics, stories, and sprints in Jira. Jira supports custom fields — recreate your Asana field schema here first. Prioritise the critical path: task creation, status tracking, and assignment.
Import your data
Jira supports CSV import for tasks and projects and has 20+ native integrations. After importing, rebuild your key automations — Jira's automation engine can replicate most rules you had in Asana. 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 epics, stories, and sprints, update status, and find your board. Jira has a steeper learning curve. Budget 2–3 weeks for full adoption and schedule follow-up sessions after week one.
Run Asana in parallel for two weeks
Keep Asana read-only while your team works primarily in Jira. 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 Asana, archive the workspace and make Jira the official home.
Ready to switch?
Read the full Jira review for pricing, integrations, and team fit details.