Forecast.it is a project portfolio management solution built around features such as resource planning and time tracking, budget estimating, and analytics and reporting, with key third-party integrations.
$29
per seat (billed annually)
Trello
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Trello from Atlassian is a project management tool based on a Kanban framework. Trello is ideal for task-management in a to-do list format. It supports sharing boards and cards across users or teams. The product offers a free version, and paid versions add greater automation, collaboration, and administrative control.
Forecast is well suited for tracking schedules, especially if it is only being controlled by a single department. When it comes to using Forecast in a larger ecosystem with more "cooks in the kitchen" it would be helpful to have the software more easily integrated with other software.
It is well suited to my job requirements as I bring employees in, and I help offboard them as well. This tool helps me when I need to make sure all items are completed by a certain time frame, so I would say it holds us accountable. Someone who doesn't manage a group of people may not find this as useful when dealing with others but could use it for their own accountability when needing to track their accomplishments.
It helps make various workspaces. Each workspace can be used for a different set of task management and can be shared with the people involved.
Creating task lists. We can create various task lists, the list title could be the status of the task, for example, In progress, approval, completed, etc. You can slide your task cards from one list title to another.
Trello cards have a huge set of features like adding the heading and description of the task, you can also attach certain associated links and documents to the cards as well.
Not as intuitive as its companion software, Harvest. This software takes longer to learn when on-boarding new staff. It is also difficult to view time notes without needing to physically open them up. This could be improved by expanding the "on hover" functionality. Personally, having spent as little time in workflow software is really important, as it gives me more time to code.
Because we use this software to plan schedules, items often fall through the cracks. I would like to see some more sophisticated syncing with not only Harvest but also with Asana.
Lack of integration with Asana. It would be nice to pull data from forecast and display it in Asana. This would be helpful for understanding how much time I have to spend on a project rather than bounce back and forth between web apps.
Allow tables as content for comment or description in Cards
Assign priority to certain cards (easy for sorting)
Create an open invite link for others to join/view the Trello board, without edit rights (so people don't need to install/use Trello if they want a quick glance on what's going on)
I am very likely to renew Trello, because it doesn't cost anything to do so. I am also very likely to use Trello's upgraded features in the future because a lot of my team's data is stored on there and they have already gotten used to the platform. Trello is very easy for new team members to pick up, making the onboarding and usability very streamlined.
Overall, Trello is a great tool to use. It's very user-friendly, very powerful and we've set it up to work well for our team. I've recommended it to others who need something free or very cheap and it's worked well for them too. If you're wanting something with more muscle, then I'd suggest looking at either monday.com or Airtable.
I haven't had much need to contact their support because the product is easy to use and pretty bug-free. I did reach out to them about swimlanes and I was able to find the information I needed very quickly and it was thorough and accurate information about current functionality. I love that they use their own product. That's always a good sign.
For our small business, getting a few of us started well on Trello was the key, I think. As long as a couple of us were really comfortable with the interface, we could lead others and help them with any questions. From now on, anyone who works with us just naturally uses Trello for information sharing - it's just part of what we do.
I have not used any other scheduling software other than Forecast. The company selected Forecast because it is used in conjunction with Harvest. The pair of web apps can be used to pull detailed data. This is very important to our agency, and making data-driven decisions is exceptionally important to our agency mission.
Trello is easy for a non-technical person to use. Other management systems, like MS Project, frighten away less computer-savvy users. I've found this to be instrumental in getting volunteers to agree to step in and get fully involved with projects--particularly those that might span the entire year or involve many different pieces to completion.
Trello keeps me organized, focused, and on track. I could filter the Trello board to only see my issues and understand what I needed to work on and when.
Trello helped our team implement an agile structure. It's a very simple kanban method of viewing all of your team's tasks and statuses. You can completely customize the columns to your team's specific workflow and create tags relevant to your work.
Trello helps reduce unnecessary communications between teams. When I want to request translations, I simply create a card on the localization Trello board -- no need to directly message anyone on the team, and I can watch the status of the card change from "in progress" to "in review" to "translated," all without having to directly ask for updates.
