The hidden cost of manual project portfolio management in Jira

Jira allows you to get great granularity about your projects from a work item perspective. When it comes to managing multiple projects, from the very first minute, it might be overwhelming, especially if you’re doing it manually. That’s why in this blog, we will share how to avoid this productivity sink and learn how to transform those hidden costs of manual changes within your project portfolio management and transform results into faster responses. 

As a project manager, part of the PMO, a team lead, or Jira admin, you know what I mean. Managing projects one by one it’s more costly than some others think.

Performing manual actions within project portfolio management activities might feel manageable at first. Still, over time, it becomes a slow process with high possibilities of errors, promising to drain your team's focus (this is unacceptable, especially in the era of AI). 

As the PMO, imagine you're at the beginning of a new quarter, which usually means new projects and initiatives, you’re in a status meeting with your project managers, and you need to refresh dozens of statuses for different projects, what would this suppose?

•    Opening individual projects to update specific attributes such as progress, status, priority, and custom fields.
  
•    Scrambling across other tools to find dependencies, risks, or updates we might be missing.
  
•    Creating "real-time" reports for executives at 5:00 PM on a Friday.
  

When not having this data centralized, it might be time-consuming, a big factor for errors, and, no doubt, stressful...

Managing projects it’s already an exhausting task that requires attention on different aspects simultaneously, the main reason why the data shouldn't be scattered around, especially if you’re managing more than just one project.

Why manual project updates in Jira are so costly?

Managing multiple projects in Jira without the right means represents some manual work will be done, clicking through individual project settings, editing custom fields one by one, or updating spreadsheets by hand, are silent productivity killers.

The overhead of not solving this earlier grows exponentially with each new project added to the portfolio, which means more manual work, such as multiple status fields for multiple projects, milestones get missed, and it might provoke making decisions based on outdated information. What starts as a few extra clicks per week snowballs into hours of lost productivity, increased reporting overhead, and a huge frustration for project managers, PMOs, and Jira admins alike.

Beyond wasted time, manual updates introduce a serious margin for error. When teams depend on human input for critical project data, they open the door to inconsistencies, rework, and miscommunication. 
The impact? Slower decision-making, delayed deliverables, and portfolio-level blind spots can cost organizations hundreds of thousands per year.

In a fast-moving business environment, relying on manual project updates isn't just inefficient,  it’s a liability, especially for those companies working with a lot of projects. In short, we can summarize what it costs:

1. Delayed visibility and misinformed decisions
   Nearly 47% of employees lack access to real-time project metrics, and over 50% spend at least one full workday per week manually combining reports. As a consequence, these factors are leading to misallocation of resources and misguided directions, slowing progress and strategic alignment.
   
   
2. Rework cycle and reporting overhead
   According to PMI’s 2023 Pulse survey, PMs spend an average of 21% of their time on rework, roughly one full day every week, chasing missing updates, fixing errors, and re-compiling reports. Additionally, 53% of employees still rely on manual processes for updates and duplicated work. Making teams waste hours every week on duplicate work.
   
   
3. Lack of accountability and tracking
   Only 33% of projects consistently meet their schedule and budget goals, while 47% of teams say project objectives aren’t clearly defined. Manual updates make it nearly impossible to track who made the last change, when, or why, and here’s where accountability comes into play.
   
   
4. Escalation of chaos       
   Research shows that ineffective communication, and by extension, delayed or missing updates, are the cause of half of project failures, exposing US$ 75 million of risk for every US$ billion invested. This clearly shows that escalation cycles become frantic and costly with projects reacting too late, and enabling possible crises.
   
   
5. Data errors       
   Entering data manually is prone to errors, we’re humans after all; studies estimate that 11.4% of resources get wasted due to inefficiencies in low-maturity project management operations. Meanwhile, duplicated effort affects 37% of projects, and 53% of teams still rely on manual updates. Typos can cascade into misrouted budgets, ignored milestones, and stakeholder confusion.

To avoid these costly errors and inefficiencies caused by manual updates in Jira, there’s a way to get a structured, automated, and visual solution for project portfolio management that transforms how teams manage project data, cut waste, boost accuracy, and drive informed decisions. 

If you haven’t yet. The Atlassian Marketplace offers different solutions for different pains using Atlassian apps (Jira in our case), and a solution like Projectrak for Jira that helps based on a set of specific features, project management-ready, such as:

•    Different views: Allows, by means of the List, Board, and Timeline views, to manage projects by directly modifying different aspects of projects, depending on the context. 
  
                                                               Projectrak's List view offers a detailed list with project data
  
  
•    Milestones: Allows adding, tracking, and managing project milestones tied to work items, easy to spot in the project’s timeline.
  
                                               Within Projectrak's Timeline view, it's possible to spot project milestones.
  
  
•    Dashboard gadgets: It allows for reporting on specific aspects of projects, and across them, to report in real time, about projects directly to executives.
  
  
  
•   And many other granular features that allow you to jump manual work and stay on top, where the day-to-day work happens: Jira.

How to prevent manual update errors and start saving money

When managing a large project portfolio in Jira, small inefficiencies compound quickly. Missed updates, outdated dashboards, and endless back-and-forth between spreadsheets and Jira fields can quietly eat into budgets and timelines. That’s where Projectrak for Jira steps in, turning manual work into healthier project management. Let’s see how it works and how it can help you save your money:

1. Eliminating delayed project visibility with project data
   With Projectrak data for projects (like status, health, deadlines, stakeholders, and more), which is central to the solution, is also visible to everyone involved, and instantly editable from the List View, eliminating delays 
   
   The impact of using a solution like this in Jira, and according to Wellingtone, 47% of organizations lack real-time project visibility, which represents a big saving, encouraging that project visibility Projectrak easily provides.
   
   
2. Prevents rework and duplicate work
   Projectrak's Advanced Edition enables bulk changes for projects, such as changing the project priority, fiscal year, status, or other aspects you need to make massive changes with fewer clicks, instead of doing it manually. 
   
   Implementing this feature for an organization with 10 project managers, it represents approximately 4,200 hours/year lost to preventable rework, and by using this feature, which could represent even a 25% reduction of the work, it equals 1,050 hours/year saved, which means €63,000 saved annually (at $60 per hour).
   
   
3. Get stakeholder accountability
   Projectrak tracks the project history changes, showing a trail audit specifying who changed what and when. This visibility enforces accountability and ensures milestones, dates, and statuses are current and auditable, which for a €1M project portfolio, that’s €122,000 potentially wasted, and by using Projectrak you can reduce that risk by 25% drop in miscommunication which could mean €30,000+ saved per €1M portfolio.
   
   
4. Reduce escalation delays
   The Timeline View is crucial for project managers, as well as for the PMO. It allows for adjusting project schedules visually by dragging blocks to shift timelines, and the milestones within, tied to Jira work items, offer clear progress tracking, allowing faster escalation, better planning, and early detection of bottlenecks.
   
   By reducing the need for late interventions, directly improving project stability and potentially saving 5–10% of project overruns, or €50,000 per €500k per project.
   
   
5. Prevent data entry errors
   Instead of typing into complex Jira configuration menus, by using Projectrak’s different view types, it’s possible to minimize typing mistakes, standardize inputs, and cut human error. Especially if we consider that manual input errors account for 20–30% of operational waste, and for a mid-sized team managing a €1M portfolio, that’s €200,000–€300,000 in avoidable waste.
   
   A 10% reduction in those errors could mean €20,000–€30,000 saved per portfolio by using Projectrak for Jira.
   

In short, here’s a breakdown of the potential cost of not using Projectrak vs. the savings it brings for a medium-sized enterprise managing a project portfolio worth $2 million annually.

Managing your project portfolio often means falling back on manual updates, disjointed reporting, and unreliable data, leading to miscommunication, missed deadlines, and project failures that cost real money. The statistics speak for themselves, and we have shown them: project overruns, data entry errors, and reporting inefficiencies stack up to hundreds of thousands of euros per year.

Projectrak for Jira, especially its Advanced Edition, changes that reality. It turns Jira into a quick and simple tool for some project portfolio management solutions, adding real-time visibility, bulk editing, timeline and milestone control, and automation to your project workflow. With the ability to act faster, report cleaner, and cut down on tedious tasks, Projectrak doesn’t just improve your Jira experience; it pays for itself many times over.