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Episode 63 Tools Review:

Smartsheet for Project Management

Podcast, Business Breaks, Smartsheet

Season 2: Tools for Success

Ep. 63 Tools Review: Analysing Smartsheet for Project Management

John Byrne [00:00:00]:

Welcome everybody to this episode of Business Breaks. We've been away for a little while doing our real jobs in our life. So we're back today and we're going to do over the next few sessions slightly different from what we've done before. And we're going to be reviewing project management tools specifically, but it's going to be more from Dante's point of view than from mine because I while I am a project manager, I haven't done project management in a couple of years. I've been mainly doing management consulting. So the more up to date stuff that I use these tools more than I do. And it wasn't really a tool, a type that you could just play about with and expect to be able to give a fair assessment of them. So today's tool we're going to be using yeah.

John Byrne [00:00:51]:

Before I get to Dante and let Dante introduce himself, is Smartsheet. Now this is a tool that even if I had been doing project management over the last while, I've actually only came across once in a project that I did and we did not use I wasn't the project manager. It was not used to its fullest capabilities. It was the project manager at the time hadn't put together a project plan and we were constantly up to let us see the project plan because we needed to see where our piece fit in with the overall project. And one day he came up with the smart sheets and he was the project manager, had signed up for the free version of Smartsheet. And, effectively, all it was was and he may as well have used the the Gantt chart template in Excel. That was literally all he used. It didn't he didn't use it to his fullest extent.

John Byrne [00:01:44]:

I don't think he knew how to. I think he just that was the tool that he just pulled up to do. So and that's the only experience I've had. So I'm looking forward to hearing some of Dante's inputs today on it to see how good it really is and how how, you know, much more useful it would be. So, Dante, do you want to give a little bit of explanation as to how you, you know, you've been using the the tools much more so than I have over the last couple of years. So you're gonna be on the spot for a lot this. So I just want to give some context of your background in digital transformation projects and the system implementations that you use these tools for.

Dante Healy [00:02:18]:

Yeah. Thanks, John. And, yeah, agreed that there are certain cowboy project managers who don't really know what they're doing. But I'm not one of those. Just for context, I started off even though my job title was a project manager. I was actually a business led program manager coming from, corporate finance background. I'd managed finance teams between 6 to about 22 people, both directly and indirectly under me. And I decided to pivot into finance transformation with my motivation.

Dante Healy [00:02:59]:

If you've ever read any of my articles or heard any of my personal stories in some of the earlier episodes, it was basically to future proof my career. So in that context, a lot of what I did was really a more programme just below the portfolio level, where I had multiple projects on the go and multiple project plans. And they were basically set up with what are known as mini milestones that roll up into large key milestones. And those were the ones that tracked with what's more important, as a project manager is the critical path. So the Gantt chart on its own is useful. But what's the key is making sure that the overall project timelines don't slip because whilst individual tasks might end up being extending beyond their original planned deadline, as long as those tasks slip on on the critical path, you can prioritize and just make sure that you meet those key milestones that do tie to your critical path. And I guess with that in mind, my first experience of a project software, and it wasn't Excel, by the way. It was Microsoft Projects, although I have seen project plans in Excel.

Dante Healy [00:04:29]:

And if what you're looking for is a simple list, then it's great. If you want to have something that's an auto generated Gantt chart, then you're going to struggle. What I have done in the past, and I have seen done is where you can get some of these cells in Excel to actually scroll based on formulas. So you can update calendars, and you can have little bars that highlight where on the, shall we say, where on your calendar you are into expected to start a certain task and finish a certain task. And especially in corporate environments, the key is really prioritisation and resource management, and also getting the task sequencing right. So there are key deliverables, which I guess, role are broken down from your overall project goal and your project charter's vision. And then you break them down into specific tasks and you assign responsibilities, deadline dates, and you get that aligned with your resources. So I think that's the project management that I'm familiar with.

Dante Healy [00:05:41]:

Now the the beauty of a project management tool is that once you set it up, it should streamline your reporting. It should also be a database, so a record of updates. So if you have a task that is going going off track, if you have regular project working level sessions where you update it regularly, you can you should be able to see, what what went wrong. So maybe there was a blocker. Maybe there was something that needed to happen that was skipped. Maybe someone who was supposed to do something had some unplanned absence. So illness, bereavement. Maybe they didn't inform you that they had other plans, like going on holiday or training for a couple of weeks.

Dante Healy [00:06:38]:

So these are, like, things that are part of the normal course and, you know, setbacks that can happen. But as long as you've got a good management system, you should be able to keep track and, at any point, know what's going on at any time. So I think with that in mind, Microsoft Projects was great because it had a lot of functionality. It allowed you to set up the task. It allowed you to link them and sequence them. So if any preceding tasks slipped, it would automatically generate the extensions, so you could proactively manage the overall project timelines, by tracking the current task that you had to do in your project and also allow you to pre plan. Because if it takes you, say, a couple of months, if you need a resource but you don't have it and you know you need to acquire it onboard them, it allows you to plan that activity in advance to make sure you have those things upfront. So yeah.

John Byrne [00:07:43]:

And does Smartsheet allow that same type of functionality?

Dante Healy [00:07:47]:

It does if you set it up. Now the way Smartsheet works is it's it's it's a cloud based project management tool, so there's a lot of pros to it. When I started, I was using Microsoft Project Professional, which is a great tool, but it's it's on premise, and you download it. You install it on your device. It's also a very expensive piece of software. Unless you're a large global company, you're gonna end up having to buy it as a one time purchase. I guess for Smartsheet, you have a basic, functionality where you can set up different types of lists. You have different fields that you can use.

Dante Healy [00:08:35]:

And, also, you have an automatically generated Gantt chart with a critical path. And, also, you can do resource management within the tool. Now how you set that up is, is down to the skill of the project manager. But you can also from the schedules that you create, you can also link them. And you can also generate a dashboard, which is one of the better features I find with Smartsheet. It's really good for that. And, also, if you have a project manager who is using, shall we say, a paid version of Smartsheet, one of the best features on, say, the business plan, which is that whilst you may have 1 project manager on a commercial licence, and you're paying a monthly licence fee, you that project manager can allow multiple guests in as free who can access the project without having to need a licence. You can invite them in to view the project plans either as just read only or as editors, so they can make their updates if there's any tasks that you can assign to them.

Dante Healy [00:09:49]:

So it allows for a lot of collaboration. And, also, within the task, you can put in comments. You can also attach files as well and insert links.

John Byrne [00:09:59]:

Okay. That's, very interesting and in-depth there. So I suppose we'll walk through our 10 point plan that we usually go through for scoring these things. And the first one happens to be price pricing and cost effectiveness. So you you that seems very, very good, you know, approximately £20 or euros or dollars, whatever a month, but you can bring in your whole team. So that's that's you know, one license is all you need to to for the whole team. That is excellent. That sounds to me like excellent value.

John Byrne [00:10:34]:

What score did you give it? And, you know, I suppose is there anything else to add as to why?

Dante Healy [00:10:40]:

No. I gave it a 8 out of 10. And you're right. It does sound like excellent value when I think about it. And the business plan isn't even £20. It's £15. It's $20 per month. So at £15 per month, I'd I'd be more tempted to give it a 9 because as if I go through the pricing sheet, unlimited free guests, You get the timeline view.

Dante Healy [00:11:09]:

You get team workload tracking. So it does allow for resource management, which is a new feature that they've given to the business plan, as well as admin capabilities, unlimited automation, so you can set up all automated alerts. So if a team member, say, 5 days 5 working days before the task is due, you can set it up to email them a reminder And, also, 1 terabyte attachment storage for £15 a month. I have to give that a 9, actually.

John Byrne [00:11:42]:

Yeah. And that's and a terabyte storage. That's you know, they they still most other tools are kinda still measuring in in gigabytes, and that's gone up to terabytes. So Yeah. That's that's excellent value there. Yeah. I have to say now. I'm I'm kind of glad now that we're going through this course because I my my experience where as I said at the beginning, it it did not impress me.

John Byrne [00:12:05]:

But that now from what you've said and and and given a chunk which I suppose moves us on nicely because you you've kind of covered a little bit of it there as well. The functionality on the features, it seems like it's a very, very now it was several years ago when I did that project. So maybe at that time, it didn't have as much functionality. And, also, as I said, I don't think the project manager I I think he just did a Google search, found this tool, and said, right. I'm going to create a project plan with this tool to get them all off me back. For that for functionality and features, what what score did you give it? And, you know, can can you give any extra information to justify your score?

Dante Healy [00:12:45]:

Yeah. Sure. So based on my experience working with Smartsheet, I would say it's not completely comprehensive in the sense that I would describe it as a waterfall project planner with some agile functionality in the sense that you can create views that give you the task presented as if it's on a presented on a Kanban board, but you have to do a little bit of manipulation, to actually make sure that you can present the task by status. But, and and it doesn't really do much in terms of it doesn't have burned down charts unless you do some fancy formulas. So I would say, in terms of features and functionality, out of the box, I'd give it a 7. But allowing for customization and workarounds, I probably give it an 8. Although, I haven't when I'm doing, say, Agile projects, I always switch to Jira, which is the one we're gonna review in the next episode. So for what it does, which is waterfall projects, it does very well and very competently.

Dante Healy [00:13:59]:

So I would give it on functionality and features a 7.

John Byrne [00:14:04]:

K. No. That's pretty good still. You know, it's obviously not not as as well, as as competitive as it is on price with functionality. But, I mean, that's still a pretty reasonable 7 is pretty reasonable for the the functionality. And for the liability then or or did you want to add to the functionality piece? Anything?

Dante Healy [00:14:29]:

The only thing I would say is, as I mentioned before, the fact that you can collaborate makes it a very, very attractive tool, especially if you have multiple team members. Let's say one project manager.

John Byrne [00:14:42]:

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And and with most projects, it's, you you do need the team involved. You know, it's, it's long gone are the days where it was just one one dictatorial project manager, and everybody just falls in line. It's it's not that we need to be involved to keep everybody, all the communication lines open. And then performance on reliability, how how reliable and and does the performance act up at any time? Or is that is a pretty sound piece of kit now at this stage, Smartsheet?

Dante Healy [00:15:17]:

It's reasonably reliable. Last year, though, and I've been working with it for over a year, I did have a couple of issues with accessing the tool, though. I think they were making updates, and it was out for about half a day. So I would score it slightly down on that and give it a 7. I mean, other than that, it's been it's been reasonably reliable. And I guess in view of Microsoft going down this last week with CrowdStrike updates, You know, it's probably a little bit harsh, but that was the score I had in mind given the amount of frustration I had at the time because I wanted to provide some project updates that day. So the fact that it wasn't available at the time when I wanted to just review it and quality check my updates, I I remember getting a little bit frustrated, but probably, you know, not unexpected. It wasn't, say, half a day out of 365 days.

Dante Healy [00:16:26]:

Most people would say availability wise, that's probably within any reasonable SLA, in terms of availability. They did let the people know that it was a fault on their side, so I wasn't wasting time. So, and and every time it is available, which is pretty much almost all of last year when I was using it. And and, certainly, I experienced nothing this year. Maybe 7 is a bit harsh, but I remember just even for projects, there are times where you'd need it and you don't want it not to be available.

John Byrne [00:17:02]:

Yeah. I was about to say that. No. I think that's a fair score given given your experience. I mean, it might on to in theory, it sounds it's only half a day, but, you know, they they should be a little bit more able to plan that and do it on a weekend or something when Yeah. Yeah. And and even half a day seems a bit excessive. Like, there's many of these types of SaaS tools that they don't go down for half a day when they're doing an update.

John Byrne [00:17:26]:

You know, the update is well done in advance, and it's just a quick turnover. Maybe a few minutes, you might just have to log back in or something. So no. I think that's a fair score given, you know, that it was half a day in a in a tough situation. I'm sure you weren't the only one. You know, if they have a lot of project management users, maybe they'll learn to lesson from that and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Dante Healy [00:17:47]:

Exactly. And if I were if memory if I recall correctly, I believe it's AWS hosted. So because I was trying to figure out what what was going wrong. Why wasn't it working?

John Byrne [00:18:02]:

That's good. Good to to know. You know, there there are challenges. And, you know, you you'd hope that doesn't happen with the others. You know, maybe it was just bad luck on on your part, but by the same token, they they they you have something for them to improve on at least. You know, we can't give them all minds to be too too generous. So the next section that we usually come to is security and compliance. So, you know, how secure is it and suppose compliance is not too big of a deal with this type of stuff.

John Byrne [00:18:37]:

I'm saying that compliance for some people probably is if you're doing pharmaceutical and project work. I I don't think we necessarily need to go into that type of thing because generally there, there's only a handful of stuff that you can use. I mean, most things aren't compliant. And that's all. For us, compliance is just general compliance, like with GDPR and stuff like that, not, industry specific that if you're doing a thing. So for security and compliance, how do you find Smartsheet?

Dante Healy [00:19:04]:

I give it a competent 8 on the basis that it's never been I've never extensively tested it, but I've never had any security issues either. So you have when you have a admin license, you have full control over the software. And there's never been any problems regarding, regarding setting up accesses and making sure people don't actually access the schedules and sheets that they shouldn't do. And, yeah. So, so in terms of that, like, for example, there are, say, commercial notes that I have mainly around resource budgeting and things like that, and assumptions, say, dealing with 3rd party vendors, and we're assessing who will do which part of the project because there's always competitive tenders. And if you have vendors who are working and collaborating, multiple vendors doing different bits of the project, They're updating the project plan. And you may have certain notes that suggest, we're assessing this vendor. They're not performing well.

Dante Healy [00:20:15]:

We may consider replacing them. Those notes, you don't wanna have those awkward conversations before you're fully prepared to make the call. So, it's it's those sort of things that I've noticed that as long as you're sensible and you're vigilant, you can keep them outside of the schedules, and you can protect those conversations within the decision makers.

John Byrne [00:20:39]:

Okay. That's that's good to know. That's, you know, you you could yeah. Yeah. You you can control what people can access. So, basically, you can give them partial access. They don't necessarily get full access and and things like that. So that's that's good.

John Byrne [00:20:52]:

And then I suppose a little bit leads into that as well. It is, is data management and analytics. It's, you know, the the access bit is a bit of data management there that you you've kind of gone into. So it's a nice segue. The the the order that we have, our scores are as working out today.

Dante Healy [00:21:12]:

Yeah. It's very logical, isn't it? And thanks. I gave this a 7. I have to say the data management and analytics is very intuitive and user friendly. You can create charts. You can create dashboards. And you can also set up sheets to create formulas. So I find it very useful, given my background in finance with spreadsheets and Excel, you know, formulas I find quite natural and intuitive.

Dante Healy [00:21:42]:

And, also, you can create columns with formulas as well within the project schedules themselves. So conditions that provide alerts and filtering. So you set up only views that you want. But, I found that the only reason I'm giving it a 7 and not something higher, is basically because I found that in order to set up some of those fancier reports or features that you need to be a bit of an expert in setting up formulas, knowing essentially some form of data structures. Similar to how and and a lot of it feels like you're managing a very complex spreadsheet. And you know what the vulnerabilities are that you need to build in these checks and balances. Otherwise, those those reports can pretty quickly become inaccurate or incomplete if you're not careful. So that's the only reason I I kind of scored it down.

Dante Healy [00:22:45]:

But other than that, I mean, it gives you flexibility. Maybe, depending on how complicated you make it, it might be a bit too flexible. But, generally speaking, I found it very good, very intuitive. So I give it a 7 because you can literally drag and drop charts. You can have bar charts, which show completion statuses. You can have line graphs, pie charts, gauge charts. And you can make very attractive looking dashboards very quickly.

John Byrne [00:23:19]:

That's good to know. And scalability wise, so, you know, you kind of touched on it earlier that you you can add and with your own teams, they they go, you know, various things. So what so from scalability wise, both of it, managing your team, but also kind of be be fed into anything for managing a program or portfolio, you know, to for other people to get the reports. And that's how did you find it for scalability And how do you score it?

Dante Healy [00:23:49]:

I gave it a 9. It's very effective in accommodating growth. As your projects in your business grow and the project teams grow, you could, in theory, run a whole portfolio. Now, I haven't managed more than a few projects at any one time, as a program manager. But I find that Smartsheet is a great way to consolidate multiple plans and even link them into a much larger plan, if that makes sense.

John Byrne [00:24:23]:

Yeah. That's, like, actually, I was wondering about that. Could could they could they be linked in? And and and so is there a maximum number of people on a team that can have access to it?

Dante Healy [00:24:34]:

Well, in theory, there's unlimited team members on, say, the business plan. So unlimited free, yes. But I haven't tested how that works in terms of concurrent performance. But it doesn't I mean, with projects, you have a few people who provide the updates even even on behalf of teams, even with large scale projects. Unless you're working on a complex piece of software, then I probably wouldn't recommend Smartsheet. I'd use something else, which we'll review in the next episode. But I would say, based on what I know, I'm comfortable giving it a 9 just because I've seen I've seen schedules where there's 100 of people or almost a 100 people updating the same sheet. And and it was a risk and issues list.

Dante Healy [00:25:27]:

So so you can also use it to crowdsource ideas, crack bugs when you're in a comprehensive end to end testing programme. So I think for that reason, I'll give it a a pretty generous 9.

John Byrne [00:25:46]:

Yeah. Sounds good. And you've been touching on it throughout, you know, where where a lot of your your, discussion on on the various aspects of it. So we reached that stage now where you actually have to give it a score based on the user experience and the interface.

Dante Healy [00:26:05]:

Very, very impressed with it. I think maybe I'm biased because I I deal with a lot of I have dealt with a lot of complicated project management tracking tools. I find this one is relatively easy to work with. It feels intuitive and out of the box as a solution. So for that reason, I give it an 8. I feel like the simplicity of Smartsheet is its core strength, that is very easy to set up. It's very easy to understand. And the options and menus are quite easy to navigate.

Dante Healy [00:26:44]:

So for me, I find it's a very, very easy tool to work with.

John Byrne [00:26:51]:

K. So it's it's been getting a pretty good it's setting a high bar for for the other tools that we're going to be reviewing in the coming episodes. So, so far, so that's, it's, it's getting a lot of high, very high scores. So customization and flexibility is our next section. So what options are there to customize the specific product business processes and needs? So how does it fare there? Do do you does it do everything you needed to do in the way you wanted to do it? And do you reckon that if some another project manager came along, who does things slightly different to you, will be able to also customise it to suit their style and their their methodologies.

Dante Healy [00:27:36]:

I find it's very easy to customise. So in terms of building, should we say, project artefacts, it's it's superb, because it has a very simple, I'm sure we say, I mean, it's it's name Smartsheet implies it is sheets. So it does it does a lot of it allows you to create multiple different types of schedules, customized reports, so you can put your brand colors. You can change different charts. You can set it up to do automated alerts, and you can also create links to other applications. So it becomes not just a stand alone piece of software, but you can also tie it to other other tools. So, for example, you can export that data into Power BI if that's your tool of choice for reporting. So I think, in terms of customization, I'll give it probably a 7 because it is it may need a little bit more work to set up, but certainly customizable.

Dante Healy [00:28:54]:

The only reason I screw it down is it's not it's not out of the box customizations. And for configuring Smartsheet to do what you want it to do, it may require a little bit of manual setup. So, for example, when I was setting up my dashboards, it took me a few hours, almost half a day, to get it to do everything I wanted it to do.

John Byrne [00:29:21]:

Okay. So so that's one of its few criticisms then so far that we've gone. And our our next section then, again, you you kind of hinted our in the last one, the integration capabilities. How did you score it down and, you know, what examples have you got of of you using the integration capabilities in your role and on any others that you've come across?

Dante Healy [00:29:44]:

I have to be honest. I don't use a lot of integrations with Smartsheet, purely because all of the things I need it to do from a project manager perspective are already available within the tool. So I try and keep everything in one place, from the reporting to the linking to the project sheets. So, actually, all my dashboards link back to a detailed project plan. And within Smartsheet, I wanna keep everything in one place. That being said, I believe you can integrate Smartsheet with other tools, such as Power BI, Tableau. So if you if you want certain, shall we say, different reporting formats or capabilities, you can always send your data there. It also links with Slack and Teams.

Dante Healy [00:30:41]:

So if you want to do messaging, you can you can collaborate. I'm wondering if it's more the fact that Teams actually is a collaboration tool that it allows allows Smartsheet rather than Smartsheet allowing Teams. You know?

John Byrne [00:30:56]:

Well, they either way, I mean, if and even if it's the other side that allows Smartsheet, I mean, Smartsheet is a well known and popular enough, app that they they other ones feel they need to have integration capabilities with. So I don't think it matters too much whether it's which side is the one producing the the integration as long as it integrates.

Dante Healy [00:31:21]:

Exactly. So I mean, because I think it's more a, should we say, more of the nature of the projects I've worked on, rather than a criticism of Smartsheet. I would say the integration capabilities are somewhat limited. DevOps team, I don't feel like it supports that necessarily. It doesn't it doesn't integrate with your development environment. And, for example, if you wanna do pull requests using Git, it doesn't do that. So for that reason and and those are the type of projects I work with. So for that reason, I give it a

John Byrne [00:31:59]:

7. Okay.

Dante Healy [00:32:01]:

It's competent, but nothing outstanding.

John Byrne [00:32:06]:

Outstanding. Competent, I suppose. Given some of the other stores it's gotten, that's that's still pretty high up. So do do you update frequency on the road map? How you know, are they are they keeping are they adding functionality? Are they sorting bugs when they arise? And and can you see what they're adding in the future? Can you see have they published that type of information?

Dante Healy [00:32:29]:

I I don't have access to their road map. I haven't tried to view it, actually. But, I believe they do give regular announcements on their website. And certainly in their pricing, their pricing plans, they also announced that which features are new. So I I believe there's a good community with Smartsheet. They definitely have regular virtual events as well as in person workshops. So, so they're trying they're continuously updating the tool and looking to move it forward. It is actually looking a lot a lot more like, monday.com, if I dare say, Putting in another another project tool, which I've seen a lot of.

Dante Healy [00:33:22]:

But I haven't actually worked with myself. But yeah, I would say update frequency is good. And commitment to continuously evolve the tool is pretty high. So for that, I will give it a score of 8.

John Byrne [00:33:38]:

Okay. So the lowest score has been a 7. The highest has been a 9, and it's gotten a 9 a couple of times. And 8. So 7, 8, 8 to 9. It's been getting across the board. So if I've totaled everything correctly, I'm coming out with a total score of 77 as that, but you've got as well.

Dante Healy [00:34:02]:

So as well go join

John Byrne [00:34:04]:

77. That's a pretty decent score by our, What we have is anything between 61 and 80 is decent water points as relevant. Well, I mean, it's definitely the high end of that. It's, it's a 4 points short of being exceptional. So, you know, it's, very decent, piece of software. So what what you know, the the fact that you still use it after all this time, I'm guessing then it does come with your it's not just a fluke of and getting the high score. It it it does come with your personal stamp of approval, you know, for for certainly for waterfall projects. You're happy to recommend that to any would be project managers who would be looking to to get some software to get to, like, videos?

Dante Healy [00:34:50]:

Yeah. It's my go to tool. And I never thought I'd say that having used Microsoft Project and being a bit of a snob about it, you know, seeing that as more for the hardcore project manager. But that being said, I feel like Microsoft Projects possibly has way more functionality than I'd ever need on a software development project. And it's also missing certain functionality that I would rather have. And I think that piece that's missing is also somewhat lacking in Smartsheet. But there's a lot more you can do with Smartsheet purely because of the collaboration piece being online and cloud based. So so that's that's the strength.

Dante Healy [00:35:35]:

And, again, I know Microsoft have project options that allow you to go cloud based and online as well. But we'll review those later, at some point. But I I guess, given my personal background, I've always worked with Project Professional, which is the desktop based version where you pay a one off license, a very, very expensive cost of, say, over £1,000 between 700 to over £1,000. And that's that's the tool I've been using when I started. So it's it's it's crazy to think that, you know, these days you can get you can achieve that and and a lot a lot more with a subscription.

John Byrne [00:36:25]:

Just just having a quick calculator out there and too tired to try and work out my head. So a £15 for Smart View a month compared to a £1,000 for Microsoft, you'd get 5 and a half years of a subscription to, and subscription to Smart View. And during that time, you would always be using the latest and greatest version of it. Whereas when you pay the when you get the desktop version of any piece of software, basically, that's what you've got now for. They might fix bugs if they come out, but they're not going to give you the newest,

Dante Healy [00:37:03]:

functionality.

John Byrne [00:37:04]:

Functionality.

Dante Healy [00:37:05]:

And I've got a bone to pick with Microsoft on that. But I've I've got project professional 2019. We're now at 2021, but I don't think they're supporting beyond that. I suspect they'll try and convince new users to sign up to a subscription, a monthly subscription because that's part of their business model rather than these one off costs. But, yeah, it's commercially, it's it's one of those tools where you think where's the ROI? Now, should I be admitting this, but I bought 2019 during the pandemic, And, I had it at a very ridiculously discounted price. I don't know why Microsoft released it for a very low fee. But for some reason, they did. And as soon as I saw it discounted, I I took advantage.

Dante Healy [00:38:03]:

So the the £1,000 is what's listed on their website for Project Professional. I think it's £1100 actually for Project Professional 2021 as a one off payment. But that's not what I paid, thankfully. But I haven't been using it since Smartsheet.

John Byrne [00:38:23]:

Oh, well, that says a lot for Smartsheet and, you know, catch you away from what you pay for. The vendor reputation, you know, we do have a few of our non scored consideration. So, you know, we go through a few of them with smart on Smartsheet. The vendor reputation stability. Now I'm going to say that's pretty good because as I said, it's a few years now since I came across Smartsheet. So the fact that they're still going, they're still growing, and they're still adding things. And I've never I haven't come across any major you know, and I need the news or or any fellow project manager saying anything bad about them. So they seem to have a good reputation and fairly stable at this stage that it seems to have been a success.

John Byrne [00:39:05]:

So you can rely on it to be still around in a few more years time if you decide to go with smart sheet views. Would that be your view as well?

Dante Healy [00:39:12]:

Definitely. Definitely. I mean, I was just looking at the at the software, software comparison sites. So there's 2 that I usually use, Capterra and G2. Just looking at Capterra right now, Smartsheet versus Zoho. Zoho came in at a 4.4 out of 5. Smartsheet, 4.5 across the major benchmarks. So so that's pretty good.

Dante Healy [00:39:41]:

And, yeah, its reputation is solid. It's an enterprise grade piece of software. And if you really want something that is reliable and pretty strong, definitely Smartsheet is the way to go. And, I guess, for finance people who are managing projects, it's pretty good because the fact that it does have that Excel like interface means it's not entirely unfamiliar either.

John Byrne [00:40:12]:

And you mentioned earlier as well that it does have a good a good community and and, you know, reasonable good support as well. In the event that something did kind of go wrong, just there will be plenty places for you to go and get some advice and some help.

Dante Healy [00:40:28]:

Yeah. Yeah. They have a support a support line. And I remember when the system was down, I just sent an email, and they informed me straight away. But I didn't even need to do that because it already had said through its chatbot on the website that it was down. There's a little pop up explaining, sorry, we are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

John Byrne [00:40:54]:

Good. And, how how is for mobile accessibility? Can you access it through your your phone of your

Dante Healy [00:41:00]:

I've got it on my app. And, yeah, I can I can send notifications? I can send chasers to team members. That's actually a good point. Underrated consideration that I can actually manage projects if I have to through my mobile phone.

John Byrne [00:41:17]:

That's a yeah. But nowadays, that's mobile phone is almost more important than a than a desktop. And for trials and demos, as I said, back a few years ago, they definitely had a free version that you could sign up for. And that was the one that I that that the project manager on the project had signed up for for us. So do they still have that? Can you still get, you know, it's limited functionality, a free version of it, just the trial or trial?

Dante Healy [00:41:47]:

They have a trial. They don't have a free tier anymore. They actually have a

John Byrne [00:41:52]:

may have been a trial that that the guy signed up for. You know? I just know he he didn't pay for it at the time. It also didn't last long either. So it could have been a trial that he was Yeah.

Dante Healy [00:42:03]:

That's probably what it was. And I mean, they have pro and then their next plan is business. So the pro plan is kind of like a lightweight version, and the business plan is, yeah, it's more it's more, should we say, more heavy duty. So whilst the business plan is £15, the pro plan is £7. I'm reading it off the website right now. You've got unlimited free viewers, so you can't edit the sheets with the pro plan. But you can have unlimited readers on your project plan. Whereas with the business plan, you can have unlimited guests, And those guests can edit your schedules if you give them that level of access.

Dante Healy [00:42:53]:

You can invite them in as viewers or as editors. The only thing they can't do is make wholesale scale wholesale changes to your plans or schedules.

John Byrne [00:43:04]:

Which most project managers wouldn't want them

Dante Healy [00:43:06]:

to do it anymore. Exactly. Exactly.

John Byrne [00:43:09]:

You have a whole scale change. You'd like send let let's have a meeting. Let me let me decide down, and I'll look. You don't do that on my You

Dante Healy [00:43:17]:

don't change those tasks. No. And you don't insert new things and mess up the formulas. And yeah.

John Byrne [00:43:25]:

And, you know, the the the customer reviews and case studies that, you know, like I said, Eric, I haven't I've I've done a little bit of, you know, research prior to this to to give me ideas as to what to ask you about. And I didn't come across too many people complaining about it, and it's the people who reviewed have given a good reviews on the various things that I've seen. So Yeah. You come across any bad reviews or it doesn't sound like you would give it a bad review in any way. So

Dante Healy [00:43:54]:

I think I've been harsh, to be fair. Actually, I've I've got no complaints. It's just in terms of limitations, I'm nitpicking because I I tend to switch between project manager and scrum master. So, you know, it if if I have to look at it as something that can do both, that's the only thing that I would critique it on. But I don't think you want a tool that does everything.

John Byrne [00:44:19]:

No. If it's a if it's it's one of those things, if it's a tool that does everything, it's a jack of of all trades still, which means it's not great at anything. It's just adequate at best. Yeah. You know, I don't think there are, like, I I don't think there are really too many tools that you could say will be great for waterfall and great for agile. If you, you know, if you're, if you're a project manager, you will go waterfall type tools. And if you're a a scrum master you know? Oh, okay. Some people will call them as project managers.

John Byrne [00:44:49]:

I'm gonna do agile. They won't call themselves a scrum master, but I'm just using that. You know? That is the definition there. So it seems now you've set the bar with smart sheets very, very high for the next few weeks. You touched on Zoho projects. That's actually what I have now at the moment, and I'll be I'm I'm doing a small project. We're using it. So who knows? Maybe in a future episode, I'll win reverse roles, and I'll critique Zoho.

John Byrne [00:45:16]:

I was glad when you said that got 4.4, and, Smartsheet's only got 4.5. So Zoho is pretty close. So I'm looking forward now to using that a little bit more and testing around. You've given me motivation. Is there anything else you would like to add about Smartsheet to anybody who's listening? Any, any advice or comments or anything?

Dante Healy [00:45:41]:

Yeah. On what I've already said, I think it's down to the skill of the user. And probably for what I've used it for, I there's probably more opportunity to streamline my project management even further. But I think in terms of setting up your reporting to feed automatically off your schedules, providing automatic alerts, I would say use those actually, sparingly because I think some project members, team members, they do get a little bit upset if they're pinged every day reminders. So some just have to let people fuss. And, yeah. Other than that, I think, yeah, it's a great tool. And, yeah, I hope if you do try it, you you have great experience and success with it.

John Byrne [00:46:31]:

And and just one last question, and I'm sure, you know, anybody who's thinking of using it might want to know, and you'd probably be able to tell me because this is one that you've started using, you know, not that long ago. Going from, okay, I've never used it before. I'm going to sign up to use it to manage my my project. Going from that to actually being able to use it, is is there a does it take a long time to get to figure out, or is it pretty self adjuse intuitive when you go using it?

Dante Healy [00:47:01]:

There was no there wasn't much of a learning curve for me. That being said, I came from a background of using Microsoft Project. And I never got the full benefit of that tool until I actually did some formal training on Microsoft Project. So I went on a 3 day workshop on how to use it properly. The only thing I didn't cover in-depth in that workshop was resource management because the company I worked for at the time, they didn't really place too great an emphasis on that, at least not formally tracking it. So I would say for me, it felt intuitive, and I gave it my my scores. But if you're struggling, I'd understand why. I don't think you should.

Dante Healy [00:47:56]:

But I would say coming from something like Microsoft Project to Smartsheet was very easy.

John Byrne [00:48:03]:

So if you've got if you if you've got experience using a tool like this, switching over actually should be reasonably easy. If you've never used any tool before, if you're a brand new project manager, there might be a bit more of a learning curve. You might have to use some of the, you know, the the there'll be videos people. Make sure you know where they are yourself everywhere on YouTube, wherever. You'll find something that's showing you how to at least set her up, and then you can learn from there as you go. Exactly. Okay. So, that's that was great.

John Byrne [00:48:35]:

It was good to know. I've I've got a a newfound respect for Smartsheet based on on what you've done. I I must look her up now myself to at that price, you can't go wrong even just to have it as a backup. Yeah. That that's that's great. So thank you, Dante. If there's unless there's anything else you'd like to to close with or, other than that, I think you've you've done a a great job, and you've given us a lot of good information about Smartsheet.

Dante Healy [00:49:01]:

No. Thank you for interviewing me, John. It's been nice to be a expert guest for a change.

John Byrne [00:49:08]:

It's a pleasure, and I look forward. Now we we we have 2 more tools where it'll be this kind of format. So we're we've Jira, and we've the the now infamous from from what you've been saying, Microsoft Projects. So, those episodes.

Dante Healy [00:49:23]:

Yeah. Yeah. And to caveat 2019, that's the one I've got. I'm not paying a £1,000 for an episode just to get the latest desktop version.

John Byrne [00:49:34]:

That's it. And and I can imagine what the I can imagine what the subscription I'd imagine the subscription is is is quite a bit more than Smartsheet.

Dante Healy [00:49:44]:

Well, actually, it depends. I mean, because they have different plans, and I know I was waxing lyrical. But you get what you pay for with Microsoft. So the more functionality you want, the more you're going to pay. So we'll we'll look forward to covering a little bit of that because I wanna make sure that I cover really what I know. And I have used the very very cheap end of that subscription based project management with Microsoft, which is the basic, planner?

John Byrne [00:50:20]:

Well, we'll we'll cover that in a future episode. And, you know, as we're all things Microsoft, even if the actual price seems nice and cheap, you have to take into account you probably need a Microsoft 365 licence to start with before you can

Dante Healy [00:50:34]:

Exactly.

John Byrne [00:50:36]:

At least that you have a SmartView. That that definitely I mean, it has good functionality. You know, you you might get higher functionality with the high end of Microsoft. But, you know, would you need that functionality for normal projects? Probably not. And that price though, and that'll take some beating. So so thank you, Dante, and I look forward to the next episode and going through Jira, I believe, or is

Dante Healy [00:51:04]:

Thank you, John. A pleasure as always.