LiquidPlanner 2.0 Scheduling + “Twitter”

Charles Seybold (co-founder and CEO at LiquidPlanner) says that every day is pancake day. “Any excuse” It’s Shrove Tuesday and I haven’t had any pancakes. I did get a glimpse at LiquidPlanner’s new version yesterday.
Since May, the main differences are in the way the development team has incorporated the changing ways people interact with technology.
Charles says that a project team is like a small social network. Charles says that since launching LiquidPlanner beta a little over a year ago we have learned a lot about project management and how new collaboration technologies can help teams achieve their business objectives. LiquidPlanner social project management is for teams that want to empower people, not push them around. LiquidPlanner combines advanced project management functionality and smart collaboration capabilities to put people at the heart of the project management equation.
He explained that they looked at Wikipedia and Twitter for inspiration and were inspired by the potential of these tools. “Commenting is a great way to manage projects. Each task is created as a conversation thread. Workspace Chatter integrates seamlessly with all other planning tasks.
I was skeptical. According to the publicity blurb:
LiquidPlanner’s “Workspace Chatter”, a new feature, provides project members with a dashboard-based chat app where they can comment on specific tasks, ask general queries, or solicit feedback. This creates a coordinated communication framework that is integrated into their project plan.
Project managers should be more focused on how other people work and not giving them additional tools to update or log in to. We should adapt existing collaboration tools to work with your project team, not them. Charles explained to me that microblogging was similar to Twitter. I didn’t think there was another website I should look at.
It is not Twitter-like. Seeing it in real life made a lot of sense and marketing it as planning-with-Twitter is doing it a disservice. It could have been me calling it that.
The best part is that history, documents, and comments all move with the task. If you need to reschedule or move the plan around for any reason, nothing is lost. Charles says, “Project information can be valuable.”
Timesheets are another “flagship” feature that was added to this version. They are worth mentioning. People were asking for it. This functionality is not something I would like to adopt. My team and I find it difficult to read emails or complete timesheets every week. It makes me shiver just thinking about the nightmare of Niku timesheet reporting, even years later. It takes many things. You will need to record time if you work on a time-and-materials basis and bill your customer. Good luck! The redesigned look will make your timesheets look more professional.