Projity’s Project-on-Demand Review

I’ve already shared my general opinion about the Project-on-Demand as a product. I thought I’d also share some details which popped up when I was playing with the application.

Issues

• Problems with actualizing tasks. While a “developer”, who changed his progress, has seen it all OK, in a “project manager” view sometimes the changes weren’t visible. There’re probably some issues with rights to open/update project file, as far as I can guess.

• Working with project files. I soon ended with an opened project file, which I couldn’t close. Unlock option didn’t work either in that case. Neither helped a restart of a browser.

• Task dependencies disappeared once. I ended up with a project file, where I had resources, tasks, etc, but every single dependency between tasks was gone. I have no clue how it happened (and how I helped to make it happen).

• Inconsistent work of views. In the same place sometimes I was made happy with one view and sometimes with another. I don’t say that MS Project is perfect in the area, but at least I know what I can expect to see. Generally random work of the application isn’t the best design decision you can make.

• Adding resources to existing project. I must have been doing something wrong. I just couldn’t see new users in old projects. I must have been doing something wrong, because I don’t believe they could have limited the application there.

• Freeze. The application occasionally froze while saving a project file, leaving my Firefox in a state which could be ended with killing the process from task manager only. It happened to me twice, but in the same place, so I guess that there could be some corrupted data or something.

Definitely, there’re too many of issues for a final version of the application. Definitely, there’re too many of them for just few hours of playing with Project-ON-Demand. Definitely, there’re too many of them to give high quality user experience.

Cool things

• It’s web-based. For me that’s enough to become interested and spend some time with the application.

• Very usable interface for team members to actualize tasks status. That’s the place where Project-on-Demand definitely beats Microsoft Project (at least in version 2003).

• Nice import from MS Project feature allowing to migrate mpp files easily. It would be nice if the process automatically added resources to POD, at least those which can’t be mapped with current resources available in the application. Now, when you can’t map resources tasks become unassigned.

• Quite intuitive interface. I’d say that they copied Microsoft Project wherever it seemed reasonable and came with their own ideas where it didn’t. The effect is that Project-ON-Demand should look friendly for both people who are biased working with Microsoft Project, and those who have just started working with a project management application. I don’t say that’s the perfect choice of interface, but with Projity’s target group (MS Project users) it’s very reasonable way to follow.

• Gorgeous “loading” screen. I really like it.

The application as a whole isn’t bad. There’re some nice ideas exploited there, but I wouldn’t consider range of features as main thing to work on now.

My opinion

Projity’s Project-on-Demand has many bugs, way too much to use it professionally. It has wide functionality, authors even boast of having more features than Microsoft Project. However, I think they should focus on stability of core functions instead of adding new ones.

As I don’t use vast majority of Microsoft Project features I wouldn’t use them in Project-ON-Demand either even if I were regular user of the application. That’s definitely not the solution I was looking. I’d love to see Projity making a lite version of Project-on-Demand, with limited set of features, possible free of charge or with very affordable monthly fee. And of course stable. That’s what I was looking for.

If someone asked me to give an advice what to do with Project-ON-Demand I’d tell about three things:

• Lite version.

• Improving user interface even if it means differing it much from Microsoft Project. Nice job was done with UI for a regular user. I’d like to see more with UI for a project manager.

• Leave the competition with Microsoft. It isn’t the challenge which can be won. Focus on those for whom Microsoft solution is too complex and/or too expensive.