A couple of months ago I started a new PM role. Previous role was managing fewer, but larger projects and easy to manage with a spreadsheet / notebook... New role is smaller (~£0.5mil) projects but will be juggling far more of them with mostly external delivery partners. Each delivery partner provides me with a MS project G-chart for their projects but I need bigger picture to see quicker were individual projects are slipping.
My previous toolkit is proving a little unwieldy and as we ramp up I know will not be as tight as I need.
Is there any new useful software out there to provide the bigger picture?
I'm currently looking at project online implementation and the roadmap functionality looks to be what you are talking about.
following. Tried the web version of project and its shocking. Currently paying for the full version and its very complicated
If everyone uses their own platform are you talking about something that will allow you to upload from the various platforms into it? (I'm asking but I'm not sure I have a good answer here).
Or are you looking to have a high level roll-up plan in your own tool that the aggregate information into manually from all the sub-projects?
Tried the web version of project and its shocking
project for the web, or project online? they aren't the same thing.
MS Project has always been horrible to use.
My preferred PM tools over the years are Monday.com, Asana and ClickUp. All have their pros and cons. Fire up some free trials and see what works best for you.
IMO ClickUp is better for getting a snapshot across multiple projects, but it often requires more upkeep to maintain this degree of visibility. You'll also find yourself clicking a lot to get insight on different tasks, views, dashboards etc. Very customisable. Their support has always been excellent IME, although a number of users in recent months have been complaining a lot.
Monday.com is very colourful and customisable. A bit quirky too, but it really excels with certain workflows.
Asana is also very good, and probably the easiest/quickest to navigate around. Probably the least flexible though. Having said that, it's strength IME is showing me what I need to focus on now in My Tasks - something it does better than all other PM tools I've used.
Things like automated task flows are becoming better across all these apps too.
Is Monday.com not just a Jira board with a nicer interface over it? I had a quick nosey at it ages ago and reckoned it was the same as Jira/Confluence so then dismissed it.
I create a summary project in MSProject for my use that references, and has links from the supplied sub-project tasks from external vendors. I define the linked tasks & milestones that I need with the suppliers (major milestones, document sign offs, reviews etc.) and reference them in the summary I use. As long as the filename and location is constant, it'll update on opening.
You could look at Smartsheet. When I reviewed it a year or so ago it had loads of helpful functionality and templates to display info. as well as ways of importing MS Project plans. I'm currently trying to get my work to pay for it.
We currently use Sharepoint list that feeds into Microsoft BI reports, but it does mean a lot of double keying from the MS project report into Sharepoint.
Is Monday.com not just a Jira board with a nicer interface over it?
Not sure TBH. I last used Jira 10+ yrs ago when it was pretty basic.
