ConceptDraw PROJECT vs. Rocketlane

For small and medium companies or independent departments of large companies where usually an individual plans the projects this is the best tool without all the overheads of complex software like Microsoft Project and without any privacy concerns of all online project management tools being used today. Not that convenient when you want your employees to update timesheets, etc., as everything needs to be fed into the tool by the project manager.

There is project management tracking from the start till the end (onboarding till hypercare). The bifurcation of project stages and pre-built templates is good; you can assign client tasks. Less appropriate: Raising tickets for developers because there is no escalation management option. Let’s say the developer didn’t reply in 24 hours for a high-priority task; this should be automatically escalated to their senior.

Incentivized

• PROJECT is tightly integrated with Diagram and MindMap, the two other tools in the CD Suite. This allows me to do initial scoping in MindMap and then switch to PROJECT and go back and forth as new requirements are exposed and tasks are developed.
• For projects that entail the development of mechanical or electro-mechanical systems it is necessary to develop a topology of the system. By using MindMap I can define the required elements of the system, switch to Diagram to develop an initial layout of the components of the system and then switch to PROJECT to start defining the task to develop the system. Once the system has been defined I use CD Solutions to generate presentations that incorporate the reports and dashboards generated by PROJECT.
• PROJECT is cross platform (Mac and Windows). We are a Mac shop, so the ability to import Microsoft project and Visio charts and export to those formats as well saves a lot of heartburn when so many of our partners and potential customers are Windows users.

• The project timelines and tasks feature is nice.
• Status updates can be published, which can be seen by external stakeholders/clients even though they are not on Rocketlane or they have not taken Rocketlane subscriptions.
• Timesheets can be easily tracked through which resource utilization can be planned.

Incentivized

• We had to spend a good amount of time to understand all the features so some interactive built-in tutorials would have made getting started easier.
• The UI does not look so good in macOS Catalina Dark Mode and I often switch to light mode when working on this software.
• Multiple people working on the same project at a time cannot update as there is no way to synchronize changes so we put the file in our code repo but manually co-ordinate to make sure only one of us is changing the plan at a time.

• Project Opening time
• Automated time tracked should be there
• Every phase has a option to make a call and zoom so time tracked real time

Incentivized

It really helps to support us in supporting our customers.

Incentivized

Because of the impact, it has created in terms of saving resources and time by helping them with project-related timelines.

Incentivized

Customer service from the ConceptDraw sales team is relatively quick and they do a good job of answering basic questions. However, the user base for ConceptDraw products is not huge so finding answers online for anything beyond basic help-file questions is difficult

Incentivized

Microsoft Project is a typical Microsoft product - too much programming overhead, poor graphics, confusing and fussy interface. OmniGraffle is close to CD PROJECT but has its own fussy parts, plus it is a lot more expensive than CD PROJECT; it is in the middle between Microsoft and CD.

Ease of User, User Friendliness, Customer Onboarding, Task Management, Effective & Efficient communication, Project Management, E-mail reminders/notifications, Publishing status report, Overview of all projects, Templates, Resource management, Timesheet

Incentivized

• Inexpensive way to present a professional project plan when needed

Incentivized

• As an admin and end-user, Rocketlane has saved me at least four hours of work every week. Multiply that across the entire team, and we're saving two full days of work by removing all the manual tasks.

Incentivized