Smartsheet

My company was already using Smartsheet for basic task tracking when I started. Upon discovering how we could use dashboards, our utilization took off! We have now designed solutions for departments company-wide, improving management's visibility to workloads and processes. It's impressive how many problems Smartsheet has been able to solve.

Vorteile

- Ease of Use - No need to involve programmers to create custom solutions
- Versatility - customizable sheets and dashboards for different departments and needs
- Support - AMAZING user forum, help pages, support department

Nachteile

Row and cell link limitations - I bump up against the cell link limitations often, although I can work around them by saving my metrics into multiple sheets.

This software makes everything we do so streamlined and easy. We literally load all of our projects into smartsheet so that we can all manage them. I don't think that I could do my job as efficiently without it. There is s certain project we do once a year where we update pricing on all website items with all of our suppliers. Being able to keep this data in SS, then send our suppliers update requests to load in the data has been a life saver! Keeping track of work along with managing the project has become a breeze.

Vorteile

The thing I like the most is the transparency or the collaboration. To be able to easily see what others are doing and manage them together, set reminders and send update requests is what makes our company run well.

Nachteile

I think there have been a few times that we have maxed out on number of lines. I don't know why that there is a throttle there, but that's probably my only complaint is that some of our sheets get large and max out!

While as an overarching company, my employer does not use Smartsheet, I have continued to use it personally on my projects to track progress in simple to update, easy to baseline format. I have used Smartsheet in this fashion for years -- its a much needed tool to keep you my back pocket.

Vorteile

What I think that Smartsheet really does well is how easy it is to use it. It is very similar in function to Excel, but has a lot of the important features that you need to baseline and track a project of any size. Its a welcome deter from the intensity of other PM software like Microsoft Project, without losing essential functionality.

Nachteile

Smartsheet is very simple to use - but because of some of that scaled back UI, there is some lost functionality. Some of the tricks and maneuvers you have to pull for things like conditional formatting or cell types can be a bit off-putting. It's also sometimes difficult to tell where user error plays a role in mathematic mistakes. I'd like to see more effort put into these areas.

One of my team members was able to create a content calendar for a broad editorial group within the platform and it worked great and had excellent adoption from a cross-functional team. Vet it carefully for your particular needs before making an investment -- SS has a lot to offer for the right projects.

Vorteile

SmartSheet provides a lot of great features: easy-to-use "card view", quick Gantt charts and easy entry of tasks. I really like the simplicity of the tool as it feels very much like Excel at first blush. The two levels of access -- one for power users and one for light editors -- helps keep the tool in a very affordable price range. I absolutely love the ability to create a web intake form within minutes that can be published live for use without a login to the system. The form is highly configurable and is a great way to grab structured feedback or details from individuals.

Nachteile

SmartSheet is not a fantastic project management tool for software development. While the web-based intake form is decent for reporting bugs and it is a relatively simplistic tool, tracking items from beginning to end and creating validation loops should be easy but is not. Granted, we were using the tool for something it wasn't technically designed for, but much of the functionality is available within the platform for "light" development teams. Unfortunately, the implementation of specific task-driven items simply wasn't where it needed to be.

Satisfied. I manage >25 projects that vary in size and detail. I would not rely on any other project management program that I have used in the past.

Vorteile

Easy to get in, set up, and maintain small-medium size projects. Quick to learn, easy to use.

Nachteile

I would like more intelligence around the columns: 1) more specific formatting choices, like setting the duration to hours, separating effort and duration; 2) Predecessor columns that intelligently follow the task, not only the row number.