| Trainyard | BigPicture | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Self-hosted, open source; hosted; Jira app and Azure DevOps extension | Jira plugin |
| PI planning | Integrated: PI planning, team breakouts, PI objectives, confidence vote | Within Jira |
| ART and team boards | ART and team boards, PI planning board with milestones and dependency strings, ROAM, WSJF, retrospectives | ART board, ROAM, WSJF, team execution |
| Beyond planning | Portfolio Kanban, roadmaps, SAFe canvases, value stream identification and mapping, AI portfolio, dashboards | Project planning and reporting, OKR and risk widgets |
| Integration | Jira and Azure DevOps, two ways; imports from iObeya, Miro, Mural, monday.com | Jira only |
| Priced by | Trainer or train; people in the room are free | Every Jira user on the site |
When BigPicture is the better pick
BigPicture is the better pick when project portfolio reporting inside Jira (Gantt, resources) matters more than the planning room itself.
When Trainyard is
- The room holds people who are not tracker users: business owners, customers, a class. Trainyard counts trainers or trains, so they cost nothing.
- The plan must flow back to Jira or Azure DevOps and come from it: features, stories, risks and dependencies sync two ways through an inspectable queue.
- You need more than the board: Portfolio Kanban, value stream identification and mapping, SAFe canvases, PI Outcome Planning, an AI-native portfolio, dashboards.
- You host your own tools, or want to be able to: one Docker Compose, Apache-2.0, every feature.
- You train: Leading SAFe, SPC, Advanced SPC, POPM and RTE class boards, and your own Miro class boards imported.
Moving boards over
Boards from iObeya, Miro, Mural, monday.com, Trello, CSV and JSON import as they are; Jira and Azure DevOps data syncs rather than imports.
BigPicture is a trademark of its owner. Capabilities are from public pages and a side-by-side evaluation; products change, check the vendor. All comparisons.