Web2 and More is pleased to welcome a guest posting from Web Project Manager Dina Garfinkel.
In the very full playing field of Project Management tools, one comes out on top (for me at least, and I am here to tell you why) not just because it’s web based and enables an environment of sharing and collaboration, but also because it’s designed around the unavoidable fact that projects can change, schedules can change and project managers need a system that will easily adapt to that change. That tool is LiquidPlanner.
How does LiquidPlanner accomplish this goal? After spending many hours and days trying to figure out how I could enter ranged (low-high effort) estimates into MS Project and failing, I learned about LiquidPlanner.
In LiquidPlanner all tasks can be entered in low-high effort ranges, and LP will automatically calculate several expected finish dates. Not only does estimation in ranges allow for a more realistic project schedule, but this allows you to better manage your resources. And, as priorities change across one or all projects, you can easily adjust the assignments of your resources to make sure critical deadlines are met.
LiquidPlanner has a nifty colour-coding system to show what tasks are at risk, in my agency where we always seem to have a deluge of design work and shortage of design resources, LiquidPlanner allows me to drag & drop reprioritize project tasks until I turn my red (at risk) project schedule nice and blue. With the robust filtering and search available, I can quickly find and sort the appropriate tasks and keep the schedule real. There’s a great video that illustrates the power of task lists/project folders here – http://www.liquidplanner.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=112
So, how about project collaboration? Seems to be the popular thing these days, and LiquidPlanner is doing it right. There are many different ways to collaborate in the LiquidPlanner system, such as:
- Description – Brief introduction to the project task
- Discussion – Twitter like commenting
- Detailed Notes – Rich text edit area (I’m just crazy about this feature, the interface for editing content is so nice!)
- Links
- Documents
I am also an experienced Basecamp user, and one way I think LiquidPlanner does collaboration better over Basecamp is by providing a collaboration area for each task, any level of folder or subfolder, or the main project folder. This way all the details are easily organized into the right area. I find that Basecamp can get pretty messy once there have been lots of messages and files going back and forth, I don’t have this problem with LiquidPlanner.
LiquidPlanner just recently launched Client portals, so now project teams can collaborate and communicate project status more effectively with clients and stakeholders.
And there’s much more, LiquidPlanner has plenty of other useful features & functionality, such as:
- Email Integration
- Personalised To-do lists
- 50 GB of document storage
- Custom Filters
- Time Tracking & export for billing
- Dependencies (on tasks and folders)
- Reporting on projects, workload, specific resources
- Online training and support resources
And some nice stuff coming soon…
- API
- phone app (link to sneak peak: http://www.liquidplanner.com/blog/2009/08/05/liquidplanner-iphone-app-sneak-peek)
Pricing
If you sign up for a 12 month license then you’ll pay $25 per user per month. You can also have as many virtual (read: free) users as you’d like (can be helpful for managing outside contractors/freelance, people who might not need to collaborate on the workspace). There are no extra fees for setup/cancellation/support, and the support crew there is very helpful and responsive.
There are more great videos on the website if you want to learn more – http://www.liquidplanner.com/Front-Page-Items/welcome-video-done.html
LiquidPlanner has changed the way I manage my projects in so many good ways, I wanted to make sure to share the goodness.
Biography
Dina Garfinkel has been a Web Project Manager for five years and was a web programmer for many years before that. After learning about software estimation techniques and uncertainly in project estimation, she was frustrated by the fact that the project scheduling tool she was using at the time (Microsoft Project) was forcing her to use single point estimates. She wrote a blog post comparing the uncertainty of project schedule to the uncertainty in schedule when shutting toddlers to day care in the morning. (http://thecriticalchain.blogspot.com/2008/06/title-including-uncertainty-in.html). It was from this blog post that the LiquidPlanner people found Dina, and that was the beginning of a wonderful relationship
More about that here – http://thecriticalchain.blogspot.com/2009/05/story-of-my-never-ending-love-affair.html)
Blog: http://thecriticalchain.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @dinag
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