At first glace, TeamGantt project management software displays what appears to be a very fresh look. In this TeamGantt review, we take a step back and look at the whole picture. That includes looking not only at the features, capabilities, and user experience, but also where TeamGantt fits into the larger community of PM software providers and users.
Project Management Software Overview
Project management software is available from many providers, with lots of overlapping features across providers, but with differentiation in features offered, platform, ease of use and level of skill required, industry target, size of projects, size of portfolios, and other capabilities.
This section explores the overall feature set offered in varying degrees across the PM software competitive landscape. The intent is to provide some perspective so that in the next couple of sections you can see where TeamGantt has its strengths and shortcomings.
What are the key features of project management software?
The project management function leverages two major approaches, or methodologies, waterfall and agile, with most projects using a combination, or hybrid, approach. To devise a superset of capabilities for project management software, I will use a combination of the two, as provided in the Gartner Magic Quadrants for Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) and Enterprise Agile Planning tools. The result is the following list of capabilities:
PPM
- Project demand management
- Project planning and management
- Time management
- Resource management
- Resource capacity planning
- Project portfolio management
- Project collaboration
- Program management
- Reporting services
- Security and user management
- Integration
- Usability
Agile
- Monthly, weekly and even daily incremental value delivery based on business outcomes
- Support for enterprise agile frameworks like Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
- Product road mapping
- Increased visibility into the flow of work
- Management of work backlogs
- Collaboration capabilities for individuals and teams
- Management of cross-team dependencies
- Release planning and forecasting
- Visibility into the financial aspects of the work being done
In the analysis below, I will look at which of these capabilities TeamGannt has, and how well it does them.
TeamGantt Software Overview
The operative phrase to describe TeamGantt is ‘easy to use’. User friendliness and efficiency abounds from the moment you start using the software. The interface if very intuitive, and extensive online help is available at every point. In addition, TeamGantt is platform agnostic; it works on Mac’s, PC’s, and mobile devices alike.
Below are highlights of the key features:
Basic project scheduling
- Change start and end dates, reorder tasks, and adjust timelines using drag and drop
- Use or create project plan templates for common situations.
- Set project dependencies visually, including use of colors
- Import spreadsheets into TeamGantt schedules
- Good ease of use in every feature
Calendar, list, boards
- Workers select to see tasks in a calendar view or list format
- View work of self and others in kanban board
Collaboration
- Share and collaborate right from schedule with internal and external stakeholders
- Focus on areas of interest with extensive task filtering capabilities
- Add notes that all can see on important updates on projects and tasks
- Integration with Slack
- Track a project’s status in real time with shared views
Reporting
- See all projects in a single stop light or gantt chart
- Utilize portfolio views and reports, including status of all or a subset of projects
- Embed attractive project timelines into any web page
- Print timeline PDFs for sharing and presentations
- Check or report on Actual vs Planned timelines, including original baseline
Workload management
- Manage workloads and team availability
- Access project history, including past updates and comments on project tasks
- Upload, store, and retrieve files and documents related to project tasks
- Categorize by groups and subgroups, nesting as desired
Hourly estimating and time tracking
- Estimate hours collaboratively
- Track hours spent on tasks and projects manually or using timers
- View a select subset of resources for tracking
Now let’s turn our attention to where these TamGantt capabilities fit into a superset of project management software capabilities.
TeamGantt Software Review
First, let’s evaluate the capabilities of TeamGantt vs the superset of capabilities outlined in the top section. From there we can outline the pros, cons, and pricing of TeamGantt.
TeamGantt PPM Capabilities Analysis
- Project demand management – TeamGantt provides for single screen reporting of status of projects in the portfolio, but does not provide a robust system for developing the portfolio of project and linking back to strategy.
- Project planning and management – TeamGantt provides a strong capability to schedule and management projects. The document management feature enables incorporation of written plans within each project.
- Time management – Time tracking and management is a core feature of the TeamGantt software.
- Resource management – Resources can be readily managed, including sharing across projects, identifying when a resource is over or under utilized, and viewing resource usage over time on projects and across the portfolio.
- Resource capacity planning – Yes – same as above.
- Project portfolio management – Capability of TeamGantt here is limited. While project portfolio management is supported in terms of status views across projects, it provides only limited support for the portfolio management process and linking back to strategy.
- Project collaboration – TeamGantt offers a robust interface for sharing documents and collaborating in real or intermittent time.
- Program management – There is not a clear way to create a strategic program within TeamGantt and to construct supporting projects around it.
- Reporting services – Reporting is strong within the bounds of the capabilities otherwise stated.
- Security and user management – TeamGantt supports, but the level of granularity was unclear, so it depends upon requirements.
- Integration – TeamGantt imports spreadsheets, but major integration capabilities with accounting and other systems does not have out of the box support.
- Usability – TeamGannt rates extremely high on this, not only for the intuitive interface, but for the immediate and ongoing support.
TeamGantt Agile Capabilities Analysis
- Monthly, weekly and even daily incremental value delivery based on business outcomes – There is no forcing function related to business values. It is assumed that the project has business value that is documented elsewhere.
- Support for enterprise agile frameworks like Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) – No. TeamGannt is scalable in many areas, but there is no apparent support OOTB to scale for a 100+ person software development project.
- Product road mapping – There is not a formal road map feature.
- Increased visibility into the flow of work – It is strong and intuitive how each task can be linked back to supporting collaboration and document sharing. There was no other feature related to workflow.
- Management of work backlogs – Formal backlog and sprint management is not a part of TeamGantt.
- Collaboration capabilities for individuals and teams – Yes, there are strong features for sharing documents and conversation threads.
- Management of cross-team dependencies – Dependency management is a part of the project interface, but it was unclear, except for resource management, if it cuts across projects.
- Release planning and forecasting – TeamGannt does not go to this level of sophistication.
- Visibility into the financial aspects of the work being done – This is very limited, as financial management is not apparent in the product.
Base on the above analysis, here are the pros and cons for TeamGantt.
Pros
- Extremely user-friendly, even allowing non-project managers to get up to speed
- Highly educational – context sensitive training and assistance throughout, downloadable PDF about how to manage projects, video help at just about every turn
- Good premium features such as collaborative discussions and kanban boards
- Ability to upload documents and link them directly to tasks
- Easy to access personal view so people can see their tasks and overall schedule
- Strong for an agile, decentralized company
Cons
- Less desirable for a large enterprise that needs to control projects closely and consistently in a waterfall fashion
- Limited to small to medium size projects, whether in a small, medium, or large size company or business unit
- Extensive agile features do not exist at this time
- Limited support for portfolio management, especially the process of deciding on projects and linking back to strategy
Pricing
There are basically three (3) plan options. While the Free option is limited in functionality, you can mange a single project with it, and it has no expiration. The Standard and Advanced options are free for 30 days and can be cancelled at any time. Key differences between the Standard and Advanced options are that Advanced includes:
- Hourly estimating and resourcing
- Portfolio management
Pricing is granular to the exact number of users. Here are the breakdown for the three plans:
- Free: up to 3 people with limited features (anything I marked premium is not included)
- Standard:
- Graduated pricing from $24.95/mon for 1 user
- Up to $512.50/month for 50 users
- Custom pricing for over 50 users
- Advanced: $29.95/mon for 1 user
- Graduated pricing from $29.95/mon for 1 user
- Up to $762.50/month for 50 users
- Custom pricing for over 50 users
The pricing is very flexible and fine-grained, allowing small users to enterprise wide users a way to begin and expand the use.
It makes most sense to try the Free option for TeamGantt and see if it will work for your situation. You can dig deep, get phone support for 30 days, get up to speed on many of the features, and get a framework in place to manage a small project.
Strategic Perspective on TeamGantt PM Software
Let’s look primarily from the perspective of where TeamGantt fits into the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
The focus for TeamGantt is on providing a more efficient and easy way to manage a project. It is somewhat disruptive to the old MS Project and Windows way of doing things, but that is not new and unique among competitors in this market.
There is plenty of competition – PM software an open market, and I am not sure how someone can dominate as there are many niches available.
Where does TeamGantt fit in the competitive landscape?
- It is notable the TeamGantt is not included in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. I think that is because it is not large enough and does provide enough of the whole range of capabilities across the market.
- TeamGantt is strong in the ‘creative’ market as these are project centric organizations, projects tend to be small, and user friendliness is important. This makes it somewhat of a Niche player. It seems to support the job to be done in these functions extremely well.
- TeamGantt’s notable strength in user friendliness, ease of getting up and running (even for non-project managers), and flexible and fine-grained pricing structure provide some hints of Visionary, and even disruptive, characteristics.
- TeamGantt is definitely not a Challenger overall, in part because is shows more vision. It is also not a leader because it does not provide for the complete spectrum of needs across the PPM and agile space.
- Despite leaning to the Niche and Visionary quadrants, it demonstrates a strong ability to execute in the current areas of concentration. I can see TeamGantt as a disruptor as it can build capability onto its platform going forward.
Recommended Action
TeamGantt is easy to learn by actually doing it. Rather than an exhaustive study of the features and capabilities, I suggest giving it a trial run on a very small project. If it captures your interest, expand its use.
I have mentioned that TeamGantt is used extensively or smaller projects particularly in the Creative niche. I must also note that it is used to some degree by Amazon, Netflix, Nike, and Intuit. It is an expandable and extensible product – possibly a disruptor – and worthy of a close look.
Try TeamGantt if you have a need and this seems to work – it looks very good, and as long as you are not tided to another platform, TeamGantt looks like a refreshing and efficient solution.
