App Review : Rocketlane

Rocketlane is a project management app that streamlines client-facing onboardings. Am I on board or bored?

I review apps based on the perspectives of a business analyst, an information technology specialist, and a pun aficionado. If you like this content, subscribe to my site and follow me on social media.

Every Information Technology Professional has that story. A terrible project crashed from start to finish. People crying, pulling their hair, and kicking computers. Deadlines are skipped, overtime piles up during the weekends, and budgets soar. Cynics would add: "Welcome to normalcy!"

Pictured: Every database migration project ever.

With Rocketlane, I don't think the app can promise you not to get to hair-pulling, rage-quitting madness level for your next project, but at least the chaos will happen within the comfortable confines of an app that won't be part of the problem.

Business Analyst Take

As a BA, I want to see how this application can enhance my team's productivity. If I am part of a large enterprise, or consulting small businesses, I need to justify the ROI for a high-priced product. Plus, everybody thinks of "Elton John" when they read "rocket".

Exploring the app

Before I start my product tour, I need to address the elephant in the room. When I registered for the free trial on my mobile, I got this page:

Consider this: I learned about Rocketlane through Google Ads! I had no reason to continue my journey! As a matter of fact, I almost went to Rocketlane on a dare. I landed on a blog post in which they were comparing themselves with a competitor's app that I had already reviewed. The opinions expressed against that competitor were, in my opinion, spurious! "Let's look at that app, I'll show them they act like dimwits!", I told to my dog, who looked at me dumbfoundedly.

I am so glad I somehow decided to try Rocketlane on my desktop because I would have missed out on something unique. Let's see what impressed me so much (hint: it was not even mentioned in that blog post).

Below is what I was able to achieve using the free trial for 1 hour. The app is designed to orchestrate an "onboarding journey" for people who purchase enterprise software. I decided to push the boundaries a bit. I created a new "Cloud Security Assessment" project template and added some generic tasks for a typical cloud maturity audit. I invited Va Magon (or is it Vam Agon?) as a customer success manager and assigned tasks. I launched the project and fiddled around with completion statuses. There is a convenient side menu to chat, which has the huge upside of being brazenly fast (rocket fast, if you will). I am not a front-end developer, but whoever built the app deserves credit for the overall loading speed. The page is designed in the "react" framework. Like a rocket reactor, right? (More rocket jokes to come)

"But this looks like any other project management app on the market, PP!" Not quite. Where Rocketlane gets you is by its absolute understanding of the consulting process and management. I would use this app as a teaching tool in a systems analysis class to demonstrate how software developers thoroughly explored a business process before building their app. My favourite feature is a "Status Update" tab which pre-fills every usual metric you send when forwarding management reports. One less email in 15% of the time! I love when these simple features come up: how come nobody has thought of this?

On top of chats and status updates, documents with pre-made templates such as "meeting notes" can be filled in from the app so the project manager does not have to leave the screen. The app's inability to ingest a Statement Of Work to convert it directly into a project disappointed me, though.

Then there is time tracking. Timesheets are the bane of software developers. Yet in consulting billing must be done hourly because reasons. With Rocketlane, simply click the little clock and voilà. The app then twists the time into some well-built reports (and dashboards that feel straight from a JavaScript 101 course, sadly).

Recommended Use Cases

Rocketlane does one thing, but does it exceptionally well: support a customer-facing enterprise software project. Every B2B software-as-a-service vendor should try it. IT Project Managers and professional services consultants will feel relieved using the intuitive features.

Limitations

Absence of mobile app is disheartening. Look at that sad puppy:

Give me some mobile, Rocketlane, pleeeeeeeeeaaaaaaase.

Integrations options remain slim: Slack, Salesforce and Zapier. I unsuccessfully tried to embed Notion and Airtable projects.

Given the application's laser focus on a sole use case, I'd be curious whether in the future some AI capabilities could be added. If I was on Rocketlane's customer advisory board I would try to steer their product management toward such features: can an AI estimate how many hours for a given project? Can it identify automatically projects at risk? Could machine learning models recommend a consultant for a given project? I fear Rocketlane's next step will be to apply the same patterns to similar business processes (internal software development, marketing campaigns, etc.) rather than dig deeper into being the best in the world on a narrow use case.

One area of concern is the app is too tied to actual work and not enough on money. What does that mean? I would not bring Rocketlane to the CTO of a big consulting agency such as Deloitte because I feel it does not provide a good overview for a VP or C-
level to gather how much profit a business is making on a given project. Deloitte's core business is consulting: they want an app that drives revenues and identifies losses across their entire business. Rocketlane will not provide that level of insight.

Pricing

While I am certain it is possible to demonstrate the ROI, the premium plan which I have been trying is $50/team member/month. The pro plan at $20 carries a more market-friendly price tag. The +$30 features seem to be custom tasks and statuses as well as the Salesforce integration. Enterprise offers the SSO Tax.

I admit I am biased towards mobile. Without a mobile app, I find the task of convincing an IT Manager or a CIO to invest $600/user/year daunting.

Such a high price tag per user hinders collaboration to a degree. "Hey, we'd need Bob's input while Sandy is on vacation!" "We're not paying $50/month just so Bobby can read a status update!" Maybe introducing user tiers could solve this conundrum.

Technology Review

As an IT expert, I want to open the hood and see how this machine is built. I want to know everything about hosting, security, integrations, data processing standards, off-shore information transfers, privacy practices and what silly name the HR department came up with to name the employees. Rocketeers?

Hosting

Job descriptions mention AWS. As stated previously, I am curious about performance optimization and whether the speed is solely a front-end phenomenon. Rocketlane is a company founded in India and therefore I assume most engineering and support happens overseas. Buyers should expect a transfer impact assessment from Rocketlane since there absolutely will be personal information transfers involved.

Security

Rocketlane's website carries the AICPA logo, which suggests SOC 2 compliance. There is no public security documentation. Rocketlane's young age suggests a potential for "startup level" security maturity. During a security assessment, I would look at how much Rocketlane defers its controls to AWS to see how security has been baked in. If their Disaster Recovey Plan consists of being replicated in multiple availability zones and yipee- that is a red flag.

Conclusion

Pros

• Masterclass on how to build an app around a business process
• Blazing speed
• All-in-one project management app

Cons

• Absence of mobile app is a cardinal sin
• Marketing blog makes weird comparisons with the competition
• Premium plan overpriced
• No security information on the public website

Verdict

• Rocketlane's fully integrated approach to customer-facing enterprise software project management makes it a must-have for that specific use case.
• Any project manager using Rocket will "rock it"!