Workfront is good for tracking project protfolios and resource usage.
Updated February 03, 2017

Workfront is good for tracking project protfolios and resource usage.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Workfront

Our technology services department uses Workfront in our project management office. As part of our project management process, we use Workfront to track all of the projects in our portfolio. We track project documentation, tasks, time, discussions, and all other project related items inside of Workfront across our entire department.
  • It is good at laying out project task lists, and showing interdependence of the various tasks, as well as the overall effect on the project should one task slip.
  • Workfront is good at showing personnel resource usage - you can easily track how loaded one person's schedule is, and what the effect on all of their projects would be should they be assigned additional tasks.
  • There are so many features within Workfront that sometimes it can be difficult to find what you're looking for.
  • The UI and layout of the pages can be confusing, and doesn't always show all available options.
  • Workfront has had a positive impact on our ability to manage our project portfolio. The ability to schedule resources across multiple simultaneous projects has really helped us to have a better big picture understanding of resource allocation.
  • Workfront has also really helped us to manage our project workflows. The integration of a traditional Gantt chart with the resource allocation features is invaluable in working out realistic project schedules.
I am not aware of us having evaluated any competing products.
Workfront is great for managing a multi-project portfolio, and for tracking the usage of resources and time scheduling. It also provides a fairly easy to use (though hard to find) interface for the project contributors to enter their time.

Adobe Workfront Feature Ratings

Task Management
8
Resource Management
8
Gantt Charts
8
Scheduling
8
Workflow Automation
Not Rated
Team Collaboration
3
Support for Agile Methodology
Not Rated
Support for Waterfall Methodology
Not Rated
Document Management
3
Email integration
7
Mobile Access
Not Rated
Timesheet Tracking
8
Change request and Case Management
8
Budget and Expense Management
8
Quotes/estimates
Not Rated
Invoicing
Not Rated
Project & financial reporting
Not Rated
Integration with accounting software
Not Rated

Using Workfront

55 - In our organization, our entire Technology Services department uses Workfront. This spans many job functions, from our Project Management department, to our Infrastructure engineering team, our Client Services technicians, our Relationship Managers, Information Security personnel, etc. And of course, our management team makes use of the product as well. We also use Workfront to publish a "project dashboard" for upper University management to be able to keep up to date on project status.
1 - We have one employee in our Project Management office who is our "Workfront guy." He is our interface with the Workfront company as well as our main trainer and maintainer of the Workfront system. We use a hosted solution so there are not a lot of other personnel requirements on our end.
  • Project portfolio management.
  • Individual time management.
  • Resource scheduling.
  • We publish a live "project portfolio dashboard" so that upper (VP and Cabinet Level) University management can keep an eye on project status.
  • We could likely use it for tracking inside initiatives as well as enterprise projects.
We have fount Workfront to be a useful product that really has helped us organize our Project Portfolio, track resource allocation and time usage, and overall better manage our efforts. The value for money is definitely there with this product, as is the overall ease of use and adoption, which is important.

Evaluating Workfront and Competitors

Yes - We had previously been using MS Project for managing our projects. For obvious reasons, MS Project is not the product to use if you really want to do enterprise project management correctly. It's great for building Gantt charts, but beyond that, it's real features are actually quite limiting once you're in to large scale project management.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
I wasn't a part of our evaluation process, as I'm an end user.

Workfront Implementation

The most important thing that you can do when implementing Workfront is to have your back end data prepared ahead of time. What resources are in what departments? What amount of allocatable hours does each employee have? What are the cost models for each employee and resource? Having all of this information available will allow you to fully utilize Workfront's features.
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
  • We really didn't have any issues. They integrated their system with our AD, helped us populate the needed information on the back end, and that was it.

Workfront Support

I haven't directly interacted with the Workfront support team, but my sense, from speaking to the person in our organization who's job this is, is that they are generally very responsive to support requests, and very supportive an pro active in making sure that those requests are taken care of in a timely manner.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
I am not the person in my organization who directly interacts with the Workfront support team. However, I have worked with their team during the initial setup process when we implemented their hosted solution. I found their support team to be incredibly prompt in response to questions and they really made the implementation of their product totally painless for us.

Using Workfront

The individual features within Workfront are generally simple and easy to use. The issue is sometimes that they are difficult to actually find. I don't know if that's a Workfront limitation that's inherent to the product or if it's the way that my organization has things set up, but for the average user it can be difficult to find a given feature. Once you do, though, it's generally easy to use.
ProsCons
Like to use
Easy to use
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Requires technical support
Inconsistent
Lots to learn
  • Time entry is very easy, once you can find the location to actually do it.
  • Building your Gantt chart for project tasks is easy and quick, provided that all of the back end information (personnel resources, costing, etc) has been populated.
  • The most difficult part of Workfront, for me as an end user, is finding a given function. Workfront is so packed with features, screens, and views, that sometimes it can be difficult to navigate to the place where you need to perform a given function. Once you're there, it's generally easy to use, but finding things can sometimes be annoying.