RationalPlan vs. Socialtext (discontinued)

Appropriate as a great alternative to MS Project. RationalPlan provides most of the features needed to develop and maintain mid-level complex schedules. Less Appropriate for large complex schedules of long duration. These can be a challenge due to Duration at top-level. It is also a challenge to generate reports for management - reporting feature is limited.

We use Social Text as a platform to air our issues with different departments. We voice our concerns and suggestions so we can help find a solution to the problems we incur on a daily basis. We need to have social text as an app so we can communicate in real time not only during work hours.

• Portfolio view is great to get a feel for how your programme is running at a glance and which areas possibly might require attention. The fact that you can customise your view by adding your own columns is another plus.
• All project information in one tool is a big plus for me considering the amount of projects we run with. This really improves efficiency and saves me time. You have the ability to add documents to tasks, manage risks, email resources tasks due for projects they are assigned to(might need some refinement depending on your requirements), material db with costing etc.

• Version history - Always keeps the edited versions and one can revert back any time
• Creating and Editing an article is very easy and intutive
• Sharing the articles with peers

• Milestones should be a primary option instead of 0h to create one.

Incentivized

• Search needs a ton of improvements. It was very slow a year ago
• Search result quality was also not that good
• I know they have improved their UI recently but when i used it last year it did not really have any design elements which could be used to make the articles look more presentable. It was important for us as we used it for external communication as well.

We have a lot of info in Socialtext already. It would be hard to get all that info out and port it to a different system

I had to ask for support once and got a response immediately.

RationalPlan is cost-effective and allows most users to prepare and manage their schedule. The software lacks comprehensive reporting and duration changes at the top level of a project.

I frankly like Confluence better than socialtext because of the speed and the quality of search. They also have better design elements which can help make the articles pleasant to the eyes.

• Helps explain the target schedule and resource estimates for cost of the project

Incentivized

• We get solutions to concerns much faster
• We promote interactions with the other depts
• We listen and have discussions