Project Management Tools

This week I explore a couple of tools designed to help Project Managers with their planning and scheduling tasks.

Smartsheet - Project Tracking Online

 Smartsheet - https://www.smartsheet.com/

Several years ago while working for Pearson Education Inc., I found I needed some decent project management software to help keep track of tasks and schedules. As I was lucky enough to have a copy of Microsoft Project, I tried that. I soon found a major drawback however, I could not share the data directly with coworkers unless they also had a license for Project, which almost none of them had. Most vendors we were working with at the time also lacked copies of Project. I could export data, but that would mean extra work every time a change was made. It also meant I had to be the one making all the edits. Pearson US had built some custom server solution that we reviewed, but onboarding even internal team members was going to be a political, technical, and logistical nightmare.

I wondered if a better solution existed somewhere. Surely I was not the first person to have this issue? Sure enough, when I looked online there were a few other options. The one I found that best met team needs was Smartsheet. At the time they had a free account option where one person could create several sheets and share them with multiple people. That seemed perfect to try out on my current project list. While Smartsheet did not replicate all the functions of Project, it was certainly good enough, and far cheaper. It was so good I suggested to management, on several occasions over the next few years, that the company invest in an enterprise license for Pearson Canada. Nobody listened to me, but thankfully some team in the US also discovered Smartsheet, and did a better job convincing their managers, because about three years ago Pearson purchased a global Smartsheet license.

So, what is the good, the bad, and the ugly about Smartsheet? The first draw for me was the lack of any software to install. Most Pearson Canada employees at the time needed to get approval from a manager to install new software, and then book someone from IT to come and install it, a major barrier to getting buy-in for a new workflow process. With Smartsheet’s web interface, I could just send co-workers a link and say “check your tasks and due dates here”. The interface was also simple enough it was easy to get collaborators to update their progress or change due dates without a big learning curve. The third main selling point was that it was easy to import and export from Microsoft Excel and Project. This meant easier integration into existing workflows, or migration from old workflows into a new Smartsheet workflow.

The main drawback was that Smartsheet is not as powerful a spreadsheet program as dedicated spreadsheet software like Excel, nor as powerful and deep as Project when producing reports or charts. But for the project managers I worked with, the ability to easily share and collaborate with other project team members was well worth the trade-off. This might not be true for many PM’s with large complex projects, but it was for us.

That was my background on Smartsheet, based on experiences several years ago. I have been off work sick for a few years now, so I was not up-to-date with the current state of Smartsheet. Checking up on it for this assignment I discovered a few interesting things, but first, I will describe Smartsheet a little more.

As mentioned earlier, Smartsheet is mainly accessed via web browser. Customers can either use the main cloud instance, or an on-site license. You can also now use either an iOS or Android App to access your projects and many features (Titterington, 2016). The free version is now gone, replaced by tiers of monthly subscription, and an enterprise license (Titterington, 201). Smartsheet has four main “views”, Grid, Card, Gantt, and Calendar. The grid view is similar to a basic spreadsheet, and you can start with a general, or custom template, depending on your project type. You can set up basic dependencies, and use drop-downs for prepopulated content. The Gard view can be used for Agile style project views where tasks are arranged in columns based on progress, from “Not Started” to “Complete”. The Gantt view is a fairly typical Gantt display of tasks over time, including any set dependencies. Calendar view can be used to display tasks based just on start date, or with the full duration.

In addition to project scheduling, Smartsheet also supports Resource management (“Resource Management & Allocation”, n.d), but I was not able to review this with the free trial version. Including this feature helps Smartsheet provide better one-stop support for project management tasks. Other features that make Smartsheet better than a regular spreadsheet program, are the ability to attach files, add comments to task lines, track changes, set up notification emails (when a task is overdue for example), and generate a variety of reports.

Smartsheet helps you track project tasks including who they are assigned to, when they are due, and overall progress. It provides several views and reports to help surface data. You can share viewing, or editing rights with various other team members, or anyone with internet access and a web browser.

Float - Project Resource Management

 Float - https://www.float.com

The second resource I found is Float. This tool is primarily aimed at resource management, specifically employee task and time management. Float provides a calendar view of team activities, or, as they say on the Float web site at www.float.com  “Float gives you a bird’s-eye view of who’s working on what and when”. If you use a non-enterprise version of Smartsheet, or some other tool that lacks resources management features, Float may come in handy.

                Beyond the basic overview, Float has several other important features. You can tag workers with skills, and then search for those skills when forming a project team, and then assign teams to projects with just a few clicks (Noorani, 2016; Perez, 2012). The Reports view is a dashboard that displays a lot of useful information including available hours, scheduled hours, and overtime hours. This data can be filtered for all staff on all projects, or by specific projects and specific people. Being able to clearly visualize this data is very helpful when trying to maximize efficiency and keeping resources at 100% capacity, which is an important goal for project managers (“Project Management and Resource Planning”, n.d.; Watt, 2014).

                Float is designed to be simple, and work alongside other project management tools (Perez, 2012). It is probably best used by large agencies, that need to keep track of many workers that move constantly from project to project (Perez, 2012), making it much more about “people” scheduling than “project” scheduling.

                It did find the interface fairly clean and light, but had some trouble with the view/filter system. I kept looking for navigation tools to get me to the view I wanted, only to finally realize I needed to reset the filters. After drilling down to an individual team member view to see their hours allocated for example, there is no button or link to go back to the full team view, you have to deselect the team member name from the search field instead. I’m sure I would get used to this in time, but it would increase the learning curve.

Robin

References:

Noorani, M. (2016, February 14). Float software review: overview – features – pricing. Project-Management.com [Web site]. Retrieved from https://project-management.com/float-software-review/

Perez. S. (2012, February 28). Float does simple scheduling for teams (and simple is hard!). TechCrunch [Web site]. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/float-does-simple-scheduling-for-teams-and-simple-is-hard/

Project Management and Resource Planning. (n.d.) Project Insight [Web site]. Retrieved from https://www.projectinsight.net/project-management-basics/project-management-resource-plan

Titterington, J. (2016, December 1). Smartsheet review. merchantmaverick [Web site]. Retrieved from https://www.merchantmaverick.com/reviews/smartsheet-review/

Resource Management & Allocation (n.d.). Smartsheet [Web site]. Retrieved from https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/1346969-resource-management-allocation-team-enterprise-only-

Watt, A. (2014). Project management. Retrieved from http://open.bccampus.ca