ConceptDraw PROJECT vs. Wrike

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.

Negotiations often involve long timelines and multiple rounds of discussion. Wrike allows us to assign clear ownership, track due dates, and monitor progress so that nothing stalls or gets lost. Redlines, proposals, and finalized agreements can be stored and shared within Wrike, reducing reliance on scattered email chains and ensuring everyone is working from the most current version.

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.

• different views to accommodate different users workflow
• predecessors and successors to tie tasks together and adjust dates as a group
• Being able to see other people's workloads so when I am planning my projects for the upcoming quarter, I can set a project delivery date that is better suited to workload and is more realistic

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.

• Templating.
• For example, let's say we are onboarding a new client. There are certain tasks that need to be done. It would be great to be able to create a new project and have certain tasks preloaded.
• Importing.
• Importing may seem easy, but there is so much nuance to it. The fact that you need to make sure the parent task comes before child tasks is very difficult to do without the help of AI. Also, I am not sure it is possible if you have a thousand tasks to import, to make sure that you have a folder structure and parent/child tasks.
• I also find that the documentation is lacking and the 2 import methods lacking as well.
• Customize my inbox. When I log into Wrike, my Inbox is the first thing I see, but this doesn't show the full picture of what I want it.

Incentivized

I wish that Wrike had more drag and drop functionality that would be connected to assignee and also I wish that the finish date of a task would update to the date where you checked completed. It does not do that. Also finishing a task doesn't move the start date of the next task it "protects your time in that way", but our management team wants us to quickly see what we have down the pipeline rather than having to scroll down the list of upcoming tasks.

Incentivized

I love the way task management is designed within Wrike. The full overview, followed by sequential updates, really works for us - this way, we don't need to go into individual people's work subtasks to find what's happening with a project. That's very useful from a project management perspective. The to-do feature also lets everyone access info in one place.

Incentivized

Over two years of (almost) daily usage without outages. Don't remember any errors. I give it 9 only because some Wrike plugins (for online document edit) are based on NPAPI architecture. These types of plugins are being phased out in new browsers, and NPAPI plugins are disabled by default in recent versions of Chrome so you have to do some browser adjustments when you switch browsers or move to another computer.

Wrike tasks loads fine, but I hate clicking files and wait for a bit of time since it is powerpoint or word, Wrike assumes I want to open those on Wrike. My suggestion is to link it to office 365 so we do not need Wrike based decoder for PPTX and DOCX

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

We've had so many questions during the establishment of Wrike for our team, and the Wrike support team has exceeded our expectations. Our team is naturally curious, and the Wrike support team has always been willing to hold conversations about how we can make an idea work, to show us hidden features that delight us, and to help us plan ways to build out projects efficiently. They meet our questions with multiple solutions and best practices

Incentivized

We had staff in person provide some training

Incentivized

I love the Wrike training options. Wrike Discover has tons of courses, learning plans, certifications, etc. This is an area where Wrike definitely shines! I wish these resources were more in your face for new people, because it seems like a lot of coworkers didn't know all of this training was available to them.

Incentivized

There are a lot of bells and whistles in Wrike, and not all of it is easy or intuitive to understand once it's plopped in your lap. It's easier when there are a few choice people who understand Wrike as a platform and articulate it in such a way where it makes it easy to pass it along to others in the group

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.

Jira did not at all help us get our work done as content creators. I think that was because Jira wasn't quite right for our uses. Wrike fits our needs so much better. I can't tell you enough the relief I felt when we adopted Wrike and I never had to use Jira again.

Incentivized

Wrike has significantly enhanced our workflow and productivity, ensuring accuracy and efficiency meet high standards. Our work now reflects professionalism and top quality. Other departments have taken notice of how organized we are thanks to Wrike, and we take great pride in our work—all made possible by this platform

Incentivized

• Inexpensive way to present a professional project plan when needed

Incentivized

• Wrike has improved our resource management significantly.
• Wrike has improved the request intake process for us.
• One negative impact of using Wrike is that we had to include Workato for some customised automations, which were not supported by Unito, but this can be on a need-to basis.

Incentivized