LiquidPlanner

Liquid Planner is a Very Effective Tool for Project Planning and Management.

Comments: Our team is fairly small (~50 users across the company) so we do not have dedicated resources to just maintain the information in Liquid Planer. However, Liquid planner is accessible and intuitive so we can have several team members contribute to the maintenance of project schedules as part of their duties. We use Liquid Planner to manage the temporal aspects of project management. The tool is very good for what it is designed to do. There are a rich set of reporting tools that allow for customization to meet our needs. It has done this job for us very well. The support provided has been timely and effective.

Pros:

The product is well designed so that it is a relatively low bar to learn how to use it effectively. It is easy for team members to interact with the software and to enter the information according to each users project role. When used as intended, the software does an excellent job providing the necessary views into project status. The software definitely lives up to its name as modifying project plans and priorities is easy and the impacts of such changes are essentially instantly available. The numerous but intuitive ways to manage project subtleties such as available time, delays, etc. make it straightforward to create realistic project schedules.

Cons:

I do not have any specific negatives with respect to Liquid Planner. Like any software of this class, It does take some training and experience to get the most out of it. My best advice is to spend some time to understand how the designers intended the product to be used use it accordingly. LP has a rich set of features and if used properly will contribute positively to project management.

Liquid planner bridges the gap between manufacturing and construction.

Comments: We sit between manufacturing and construction, this system bridges the gap between a resource planner and project management tool. It is the only system we have found that makes intuitive changes to project dates based on changes to resource or changes to projects and assigned personnel.

Pros:

The software is intuitive combining both resource planning and project management, both systems influencing each other, giving accurate predictions based on real time information and updates.

Cons:

The Gant chart for individual and the overall project portfolio is very basic cannot be exported as a report. When changing priorities the effect of the change cannot be demonstrated against the previous expected finish dates as the previous dates are lost. It would be good if you could mock run a change of the project priority and the system showed the previous finish dates dates against the new dates, demonstrating the effect the priority change has on the project finish.Sending an email on significant project milestones would be a good feature.

[LiquidPlanner Classic] Decent product, feels dated

Comments: Overall, LiquidPlanner does very well in a very limited capacity. However, as our company grows, we are beginning to feel that we have outgrown the platform.

Pros:

We use LiquidPlanner to track ongoing tasks and client budgets/burn rates. In this regards, it is easy to set up clients, projects, and tasks, and from there, to log our efforts to those tasks.

Cons:

Given that prioritization works by the 'higher' a task is in the list, the greater priority it is given, prioritization has been difficult as we list projects alphabetically. That means that all tasks in project "A" will be prioritized over project "Z". We've had to create separate packages for prioritization, which leads to a lot of overhead.We have a lot of 'retainer' type clients, who have monthly budgets. We need to track ongoing work, as well as remaing budgets. In order to calculate how much is remaining in some of our reports, we have had to create tasks with assigned roles (such as "Sr Consultant" or "Jr Consultant") to 'hold' time on accounts for specific skills sets, and then, on a daily basis, go and update those 'holding' tasks. We have validated with LP support and they felt this was the easiest approach, but again, leads to a lot of overhead.The platform has not really changed since I have been using it (the last 6 years). A new version of LiquidPlanner is rolling out, but would require a full migration in order to benefit from new features. We have seen some other platforms that appear to offer significant upgrades in certain areas.

LiquidPlanner Makes Planning Easy

Pros:

It's so easy to assign tasks to individuals and groups alike. The level of functionality is as much or as little as you want. We can track ballpark revenue vs expenses at a glance, allocate projects based on existing workload.

Cons:

It's unfortunate that you can't assign fixed labor costs, or add non-labor expenses to tasks and projects. This could allow for more accurate tracking of total billing vs total expenses at a glance without resorting to using additional software. Being able to generate invoices would also be a great benefit that would negate the need for additional software.

Powerful and Flexible Project and Resource Planning, But Falls Short When Applied To Agencies

Comments: This tool is extremely powerful and robust, but like any other tool, the quality of the data which comes out of it is only as good as the data that is put into it. We attempted over the course of 12 mos. to integrate this tool into our small agency (<25 users). While simple to use, the biggest challenge was buy-in from other department captains in using the tool to its full potential.

Pros:

I was very happy with the ease of use this product provided compared to some of the tools we used previously. It is built in a contemporary look and feel and is easy to navigate and manipulate data points in order to determine trends and better inform decisions. If you have the time and resources to dedicate to making sure the latest project data is always available, that is, due dates, estimated levels of effort remaining and hours logged are all kept up to date in a real-time basis, this tool has the potential to truly provide a wholistic and accurate view of the workload within an organization, along with any potential risks. The way the data are refreshed using the forecasting algorithms is a great feature which allows project managers to shift tasks around to determine how resources are affected.

Cons:

Despite the name of "Liquid" Planner, there were some decidedly "unliquid" principals in which the software was built upon which power the accuracy and overall value of the product. If more then 25% of these principals are not known or regularly updated, the entire product grinds to a halt and the value it provides is completely lost. It's not a fault of how the product was built. I never encountered a time where the service/software was down or unavailable and each time I reached out to the support team they were courteous and prompt with their response. Overall, I felt frustrated by the amount of data the tool needs (and how that data need to be structured) in order for the tool to be valuable and viable. More often than not, I felt myself and the team responsible for the tool were spending more time administering the tool itself rather than using the information coming out of the tool to better our projects.