What is LiquidPlanner?
What do you like best?
All project management tasks have one true element – their estimates are always wrong. It could take less time, or it could take more. LP is the only tool that lets you add a range of time for the estimate. This creates a cumulative (but not additive) range for the project to complete – a project buffer – that allows the manager to decide the risks and rewards of choosing a promise date. If you want to use the average date using a typical tool? That’s a 50-50 chance in that software. That’s why users manipulate that data because they already know the answer will be wrong. LP allows you to use a confidence range to understand planning completion better.
The ability to easily add dependencies between tasks, set priorities by order, and not overburden resources are great features. Determining Constrained resources by their utilization over a period of time allows for decisions on timing and subordination. The analysis can be performed quickly, allowing for multiple “what if” analyses that keep team members focused, on track (especially at the beginning of a project), and informed.
This product tracks the scheduling of project resources for multiple projects in real-time. It keeps you informed of how things are likely to run, no matter what else is happening.
Say I have a team of people who work on different aspects of a development project, and I have 4 projects that are running with different priorities, but some need to run parallel, as best as possible. What happens if one project gets a scope change that adds a lot of new features? What if one project gets put on hold? What if one project needs to be at a certain stage by a set date (trade show for instance?) What if a key worker gets covid and can’t do anything for a week? This app deals with all these kinds of situations. While always giving you the tools to have the best understanding of how things will go in the future, given the progress to date and the other constraints on people’s time.
Liquid Planner offers a way to plan your resources in a “liquid”, always changing way. The alternative products out there only let you set hard dates, and are difficult to maintain and modify. This product fluctuates properly with our ever-changing priorities and needs.
What do you dislike?
The pricing could be a little better, though in our case we feel like we are getting a return for our investment. I wish there was a better “Calendar view” to see who is where when, but they are continuously adding updates, so that may be an up-and-coming feature.
It’s a relatively new product, still. The basic must-have features are here already, and all work well together. But things are still a little light at the moment. There have always been workarounds for the one or two things I felt have been missing, but I’ll be happier when these things get dealt with more directly. And at the current rate of adding features, I expect this will be soon.
There are currently two versions being used, with the Classic version having some of the Critical Path (and, by extension, the Theory of Constraints Critical Chain) methods necessary for Continuous Improvement and Planning Improvement. Critical Path should be coming to the new version, but it’s a conflict between the features and clean appearance of the latest version with the powerful analysis methods of the past for the time being.
My biggest frustration with LiquidPlanner is that links added in tasks, when clicked on automatically take you away from LiquidPlanner in the same browser tab so you have to hit the back arrow and it does not always take you back to the same place. I wish it would automatically open a new tab and keep your place in the project.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are saving so much time and cutting out so much confusion by using LiquidPlanner. It has been a relief to know all of our projects are being tracked and worked on in Liquid planner. Since we have started using this software we have noticed a huge increase in our ability to get projects done faster and more efficiently!
Before LiquidPlanner, we were never sure how many resources we would have available for an upcoming project. We simply managed our projects on a day-to-day, or at best, weekly basis. With LiquidPlanner we can plan our projects months in advance, and have a great understanding of which projects are getting out when.
It takes regular project planning, and solves the problem you have when somebody asks the big question – “when do you think you can have this work completed?” as well as it can be answered at any stage in a project. It means that you can quote lead times for delivery of work based on real, complex interactions of work and resources rather than just mental estimations and fudge factors. No matter what has been changing.
The most fundamental problems in business have to do with lead time, throughput, and inventory. Project management software may only be about product development time, and LP does a fine job. But in my work, LP is an Engineering To Order tool, allowing my clients to schedule many short projects, usually from a template. This often requires giving quick, reliable delivery dates. I have also used it as a production scheduling tool – small projects that may only last several days but are highly repeatable and highly variable. Having production LP schedules means I can leverage MRP systems to create supplier orders based on the demand of what goes into production.
Features
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Resource Scheduling
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Forecasting
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Reporting/Project Tracking
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Collaboration Tools
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Capacity Management
Pros
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“The product and support are great. If you put the time and effort into learning the tool and you have complete buy-in from your team, you’ll be successful with it.”
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“The ability to see the steps in each project, who is responsible, where they are at with the work and how the timelines are being met.”
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“Great and superb platform for project management.”
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“I love the way that they use a 3-point estimate for likely remaining effort for each task. This rolls up into a very useful, and dynamic estimate of project completion.”
Cons
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“No integration that I know of with Outlook calendar.”
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“It’s hard for me to only see *only* the projects that I own because i’m on at least one task within every project of the department so every project shows up.”
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“There’s lots of gray throughout it, which is kind of boring when I have to stare at it every day.”
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“There’s no ‘undo’ function, so if you make a change accidentally, it can take a while to figure out how to go back.”
LiquidPlanner Pricing
$0
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Yes, has free trial
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Yes, has free version