Mavenlink

Vorteile

- So many options and ways to customise each feature
- Time tracking tool is very easy to use, our team prefers it over what we have had in the past
- Custom reporting, especially weekly project reports, have upped our client communication game. Our Clients appreciate the extra level of transparency and it has helped us prevent a lot of surprises when the invoice is sent out.
- Resource Allocation and Gantt chart really help when it comes to Project Planning.

Nachteile

- It's really difficult to see WHO is responsible for a task if multiple people are assigned to it. This is a problem when you are looking at a project and want to see who is responsible for what from 30,000 feet. Instead, you need to go to that specific task and read through the comments to see where it stands. There are a few workarounds for it, but then all involved extra work and monitoring to make sure everyone using the system is doing so correctly.
- There doesn't seem to be a way to edit a comment once you post it
- You can't customise the status options for the different tasks, so something is either in progress, not started, needs information, or completed. It doesn't really let you customise it to follow your workflows.

Vorteile

Our company has some unique business practices that makes most out-of-the-box platforms difficult to use. Mavenlink is customizable without being overly difficult to set up. It also has a powerful reporting engine that allows us to slice and dice our data with custom reporting.

Nachteile

Getting support on reporting needs will cost money, and the in-house support staff at Mavenlink has limited know-how (or allowance) to help with this. Client (non-paying) users are unable to see project budget and time burned.

Vorteile

The reporting functionality Mavenlink offers is extensive and has enabled us to get much better visibility to our project, program, portfolio and resourcing data.

Which in turn has allowed us to set/adjust our KPI/KRIs and better inform business decisions with the data we have available.

In using Mavenlink how it's meant to be used, not only have we improved our business practices but our PMO has gained valuable insight into important aspects of the business that were previously siloed.

The fact that Mavenlink actually continues to improve its platform based on user feedback is a massive plus, as new functionality becomes available to better utilize the platform.

Nachteile

There are some small (very small in most cases) problems we have with some functionality i.e. the naming/categorization of metrics in the reporting suite could be clearer, when approving/rejecting timesheets, adding a comment to a specific entry would be preferable, rather than the comment being published to all entries.

Vorteile

The UI is simple to use most of the time. It's easy to see your projects listed out, even though the organization tools are pretty weak.

Nachteile

The software is slow. Updates happen at a snails pace. Our team worked directly with the development team at Mavenlink and their process is just plain slow. The program is bogged down and sluggish. It lacks sub-tasks beyond 5 layers, the estimating feature is a joke and they only just recently implemented a basic WYSIWYG in the activity section. You also can't undo activity unless you go back to the feed. Talk to PMs who actually use this product!

Vorteile

- Time Entry
- Management of individual projects
- Integrations w/ Jira
- Forecasting/Planning
- Happy to have approvals, but they could be more flexible.
- Managing budgets against project timelines.

Nachteile

- Invoicing
- Reporting
- Happy to have approvals, but they could be more flexible.
- Granularity of permissions