Citrix Podio Review

Having outgrown the features of our trusted project management software, we began to explore options to allow for the sustained growth of SIX AD.

The first solution that we explored was Podio. Our first impressions of Podio were positive. It has a feel of Facebook in terms of strong ‘intranet’ social media integration and the simplicity of layout. The icons and general appearance are attractive, which was important for us, as Basecamp had also offered an attractive user interface.

Going deeper, the project structure seemed to offer what we needed. A considerable benefit of Podio however, was the modular approach to structuring the features. The internal app store allowed us to download and then customise the name and function of pre-built apps, but also provides an interface in which you can create new apps and share them with other Podio users.

At first glance, there was only the Gantt chart element that was missing from Podio and we were hopeful that this was something that we could add by creating an app from the constituent parts in the toolkit. In trying this, it became clear that we were trying to overcome a gap that would require regular maintenance and after a few days, we decided to look for another solution to our practice needs.

Wrike

Our second trial was with Wrike. Having established the functions that were important to us with Basecamp and Podio, the full feature set of Wrike was immediately obvious. The project / task organization structure allowed us to go deeper than with Basecamp and it’s possible to apply several tags to the same task, meaning that it can be indexed in several places (i.e. project, team member task list) without the need to duplicate the task. The Gantt chart view was a huge step up from anything possible in Podio.

The negatives for Wrike were largely in terms of our perception of it. After we’d used it for a few days, phrases such as “can you just add that note to Wrike” slipped in to meetings, but it felt like a very alien term to us, whereas Basecamp seemed to make sense and even Podio sounded friendly – Wrike sounded too much like ‘Reich’.

The other aspect that we were at first willing to overlook, but subsequently came to be less popular, was the user interface. The hierarchy of the projects are ordered in panels from left to right, so project list, project tasks, task details as you look over the screen. The elements that require attention are brightly coloured, but the rest of the screen is neutral. It seems that there is a balance of function / aesthetics that in this case was a little too stark. There was no single reason why we moved on from Wrike – it didn’t let us down in terms of useability, there was just a perception that it wasn’t quite the right fit for SIX AD.

LiquidPlanner

It was surprising that it took more extensive searches to find LiquidPlanner. The core feature of this option, is that the database is fluid (hence the title) and is constantly updating itself according to priorities across all projects, team members available to undertake work (it accounts for holidays and part-time staff) and the estimated hours left to complete a task.

Amongst the many things that we liked about LiquidPlanner, was the fact that once data is entered, the software considers the task ‘live’ until you tell it otherwise, so the Gantt charts keep updating, as opposed to other options where the charts become out of date unless they’re regularly maintained.

LiquidPlanner allowed us to easily replicate templates, create a basic (and searchable) CRM system, prioritise workload and track time spent on projects. We like the name, we like the interface and we’re confident that it’s scalable in terms of managing additional team members and growth in project values / numbers. Although other solutions would allow additional features, such as allowing external contributors to access specific projects or work stages via the internet, LiquidPlanner allows us to create a web-portal that we can brand with our own practice logo, as well as the relevant third party logos, creating a stronger sense of cross-discipline ownership and collaboration.

As a bonus, LiquidPlanner is launching a feature in May 2014, called ‘Card View’. This will take us back to the days of our wall mounted cork board, only this time the ‘task cards’ will be part of the same database we currently use, but we can track them through the various work stages, from left (just started) to right (completed).

Summary

We considered LiquidPlanner to be the most suitable solution for our needs as a practice. As all of the features of our ‘wish-list’ are incorporated in one web portal, we find we’re getting much more out of the data that we input at our weekly review meetings, as well as the information that we feed in over the course of the week. It’s worth considering this in the context of our cork board and Basecamp, i.e. what we had available to us before the move to LiquidPlanner.