Modern Requirements4DevOps vs. Smartsheet

We tried the Modern Requirements4DevOps AddIn to see if it brings a added value to our development. I have to say that I would distinguish between types of projects in which it is beneficial and in which it is probably "over engineering". Certainly, bigger development projects with higher complexity are more suitable than small and not really complex projects. However, for the bigger projects Modern Requirements4DevOps definitely helps to deal with the complexity as it adds way more contextualisation to the various entities. It really helps to understand which requirements led to which action in a diagram or task during development. It helps to control the complexity and inform all team members along the project.

Incentivized

Smartsheet shines for collaboration. When you have multiple people involved with planning events Smartsheet makes it easy to share and collaborate. For instance, multiple people can be in Smartsheet working at the same time. Also setting permissions for exactly those who need to know is quite easy with Smartsheet. For data analytics and general spreadsheet purposes Excel is better but for project management and event planning Smartsheet is superior

Incentivized

• Smart Documents
• Building a connection between individual entities (requirements, documents, tasks, tests)
• Requirements Management and Reporting

Incentivized

• Its hard to overstate the value of familiarity. Being able to use a tool that has some familiarity takes away the time needed to train and orient employees on a new tool and allows an organization to hit the ground running.
• Smartsheet covers most of the basics of a project management tool, the usual tasks, milestones and project viewing options.
• For data viewing, you get multiple data viewing options including a calendar view (good for marketing teams and those who work around scheduling), Kanban, Gaant etc

Incentivized

• forms could be transferred into in line fields to allow in line maintenance of data
• make window management of diagram builder more flexibility to make more space to build diagrams
• I would wish that the performance is a bit better sometimes, loading times can be quite long in some cases

Incentivized

• Smartsheet set up is similar to Excel, yet when you upload an Excel file, things like conditional formatting are lost. Smartsheet has its own conditional formatting, and you have to reinstate the rules. It would be great if those would apply automatically once a file is uploaded
• Some Smartsheet management and access rules can take some tweaking to work properly. This may be a case of offering more info to admins so they can apply these better and with more efficiency

Incentivized

It definitely meets our needs as far as organizing and archiving our tasks and files. As we train more staff to view it, I see opportunities for more improvement, which I am sure this program can handle. I look forward to seeing continued improvement from Smartsheet on their capabilities and functionality.

Incentivized

Smartsheet is very easy to learn. However, while I have been able to pick it easily, Microsoft Excel and Project super users that I have trained on Smartsheet get bogged down in the differences and can find it frustrating. Explaining the differences ahead of time and why Smartsheet is being chosen instead of a different software seems to counteract those reactions

Incentivized

I give this rating because it fills a niche in the market. MS Project scares many away from proper task management but there are limited tools our there, especially cloud-based that are mobile-friendly. Smartsheet fills this market gap, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. IT is not fair to compare it to MS Project, but fairer to see what gaps it fills.

Incentivized

It's absolutely paramount to take a few minutes to actually play with the software. It's nearly impossible to do anything wrong or make a mistake which cannot be fixed easily. Under the help menu is Live Training option. After you familiarize yourself with the commands, watch the live training for some in depth understanding of how to make the software fit your needs perfectly.

Modern Requirements4DevOps is an AddIn for Azure DevOps Server (Microsoft Azure DevOps) and extends the native features of Azure DevOps in the area of Requirements Engineering, Requirements Management and Reporting. Azure DevOps already contains tons of valuable features. However, for bigger and more complex projects Modern Requirements4DevOps extends Azure DevOps by further features. Thus we used both products alongside.

Incentivized

Jira and Redmine are much more robust and technologically advanced project management solutions. I enjoy using either when managing a very large project. However, I prefer to use Smartsheet for my smaller to medium sized projects. As for Google Drive - I would say that Google sheets and Smartsheet are almost identical in my opinion when it comes to functionality. Personally I prefer to manage smaller projects via Google Drive, but it is a personal preference!

Incentivized

• Better communication --> thus less misunderstandings
• More Transparency about requirements --> adds context and helps to build a common understanding
• Traceability of Requirements --> we used the baseline also to look into the history of requirements to understand how certain requirements have changed

Incentivized

• This has really opened up collaboration across teams. A lot less working in silos.
• It hasn't fully replaced any one tool so it means having to go to another place. Hopefully, we can eliminate a tool or two in the next six months.

Incentivized