Notion is a project management product that I have been playing with recently. When I use project management software, I am looking to make my life easier in the following areas: task tracking and organization. After toying with notion for half an hour, I feel like I have a clean setup that will make tracking and organization clean and easy.
Notion isn't my first project management tool. My main experience with project management software has been with Jira. After years of working with Jira, here are my first impressions of working with Notion.
Jira is DEFINITELY more powerful and robust than Notion. Unlike Jira, Notion doesn't allow users to create workflow automation. Notion also has no built-in sub-task system. Notion allows you to search for tasks but does not come close to the advanced querying abilities of Jira. I constantly found myself hacking features into Notion that Jira supports natively.
Despite falling short of Jira, Notion does allow users to set task status, assignee, and even custom text fields. The user also can create useful attachments on tasks like chart, links, and even inline Kanban boards.
Unfortunately, Jira's powerful features DO come at a cost: it is difficult to set up. I spent HOURS in Jira configuration trying to get a working ticket system. In Notion, however, you can create statuses, tags, and links on the fly. Also, because there is no workflow automation there is no workflow to configure. Task templates in notion take a fraction of the time to configure when compared to Jira.
Whenever I got stuck in Notion I was easily able to find the answer in Google. Even if the feature I wanted didn't exist, someone had already asked the question first. Rest assured, you will be able to lean on Google whenever you get stuck in Notion.
While lacking in features when compared to Jira, Notion lets you get started faster. Notion does have decent features, providing more than bare-bones solutions like Trello. If you find Jira intimidating and Trello lackluster, give Notion a try!
