Project Management apps ceased to be a brand-new thing years ago. There’s dozens of them vying for your attention, with flashy interfaces (or extremely minimalist interfaces, as tastes change) and Google Adsense targeting you when you’re searching for a new app. But there’s only one sure way to know if an app will actually do the job it’s designed for, and that’s to take it for a test drive. After all, no amount of eye candy can make an unusable app more usable.
In my quest for the best project management app, I came across Planscope. Its gorgeous interface caught my eye, but is beauty only skin deep?
The Workflow
A New Project
I’m used to see either a help wizard or a redirect to an empty dashboard after logging into a new project management app. As a welcome change, Planscope asked me to integrate my time tracking app, and all popular apps were listed in the page. After integrating with a time tracking tool, as you work in Planscope your timesheets will be sent over automatically for inclusion in your next invoice. A nice feature indeed, but I don’t use a time tracker and I just skipped this step.
Planscope lets you create a project as an estimate or an active one. This way, you can use the standard hourly charge of yours to keep track of time and invoicing.
Tasks and Milestones
Immediately after creating a project, I started looking around for milestones. Sadly, I couldn’t find any. So I picked the next obvious choice – creating tasks. Well, what do you know? The option to create milestones was hidden in there. Not a smart choice IMHO. From here, it’s the standard drill – create milestones, add tasks, group tasks into lists, assign it to your team and so on.
Time estimate and budget for tasks is bound to be a useful addition. And, tasks can be quickly moved around milestones by simple drag and drop.
Working on a Project
Besides a fabulous interface, the built in timer is another USP of Planscope. Did I say timer? Scratch that, you can activate the timer for each and every task and keep them all running simultaneously. As the timers start ticking, the duration determines the overall progress and budget expenditure of a project. Instead of clicking every single timer, the option to select multiple ones at the same time would be a welcome addition.
Progress Bars
It’s extremely productive to have the progress bar to the right side pane. It saves a jump to another page or tab in the app. To update a client on the progress, just click on the status update button and they’ll be sent an update. It’s great that the app lets you pick the tasks you want the client to stay updated on, instead of sending them all away.
To assign tasks to your team or to create related sub tasks, access the respective tasks from the list. If you are working with a team, the activity feed is the go to place to stay on top of who did what exactly on a project.
Pricing
Planscope – Plans and Pricing
There isn’t much to talk about the pricing plans. You get unlimited projects for an affordable price across all plans and the size of your team will determine your monthly bill. Unfortunately, there isn’t a free plan and there is just a free 14 day trial period. That’s totally justified, and I’m with team Planscope for keeping zombie accounts off their servers. But, it’s rather annoying that they ask you to put down your credit card details for the free trial. A risk free trial period is still a nice thing to have these days, isn’t it?
Final Thoughts
When you create a new project, Planscope redirects you to a bland screen built with Twitter Bootstrap. It makes me wonder why is there such a deviation from the design scheme when the rest of the app is in a near perfect shape.
Also, I tried a lot, but I couldn’t find a way to add minutes or hours manually to a task. Often, one might forget to start the timer before starting the work and it might not go down well with the client when a status update email is sent with fewer minutes. The app relies very much on time tracking and, not every professional has the need to track time diligently. That limits the app to a niche.
A simple user interface coupled with an even simpler workflow makes Planscope an ideal tool for freelancers and professionals who consider time is money!