Likelihood to Recommend This tool enables the visual management needed in many offshore teams to easily and quickly see the pending work, work in progress and completed work.For teams that work with a waterfall methodology and do not have AGILE internalized, I believe there are other solutions from Planview or other providers.
Read full review For teams and users who are very familiar with Excel and its mode of operation, Smartsheet will feel like a walkover. If you have a number of users who use Excel or Google Sheets for their personal project management then you will find this tool to be very useful and somewhat familiar.
Teams that may be used to other project management suites or styles would find Smartsheet a bit challenging to adapt to, as formulas and formatting can be challenging to adapt to.
Read full review Pros Ability to color code cards based on type, giving better visibility to the variety of tasks a team handles Ability to set deadline dates and have those dates easily visible Flexibility in design the kanban board. It is easy to add a lane or make a change on the fly. Work doesn't have to stop and a long process created to make simple layout changes. Movement of cards is easy as well as the ability to connect cards to show dependencies. Read full review The easy to use dashboard has enabled us get comprehensive view of projects across the entire business. It has streamlined internal communication with ease of sharing information across different teams. Smartsheet automates our workflows, enhances collaboration and ensures there are no data silos. I like that it saves time for us and ensures we spend less time switching between apps. Read full review Cons Planview LeanKit currently can't or should not be used as a central spot for data and collaboration. Particularly attachments are not well-handled. The portable side of Planview LeanKit is really lacking. We would appreciate some options to group or stack cards. Read full review 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 Read full review Likelihood to Renew Perfect tool to manage requirement backlog
Read full review 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.
Read full review Usability LeanKit isn't the best designed Kanban system I've seen, but overall it's pretty usable. The boards I've used are pretty complex, so it can be difficult to find things. I found that searching and filtering for specific cards was somewhat of a challenge. Dragging a card from one lane to another is kind of a fun way to get things done though.
Nate Dillon Front-End Web Developer, Office of Mediated Education
Read full review 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
Read full review Reliability and Availability Very minimal outages
Read full review Performance Never experienced major slowness
Read full review Support Rating It solves all our needs at this time.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating Very easy.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I think that LeanKit is very similar to
Asana 's Kanban feature and
Trello , but is much less sleek looking than
Asana .
Asana 's clean and sleek UI makes me enjoy project management much more than LeanKit. It might sound silly that the UI makes so much of a difference to me, but it really does.
Trello is also sleeker than LeanKit, but I still prefer
Asana because it has more customization options and a better interface. We are actually going to look into switching to
ClickUp because we wanted something with a better UI.
ClickUp seems to have a great UI with a lot of customization options.
Read full review 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!
Read full review Scalability Good use cases for small/large teams
Read full review Return on Investment Our team meetings are more direct and quick to get through thanks to the better visibility of the workload Easily being able to move cards between team lanes gives instant visibility to where the responsibility for the next step is needed. Read full review 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. Read full review ScreenShots Planview AgilePlace Screenshots