LiquidPlanner is a Solid Scheduler

Deep down, I am an "ops" person. What does that mean? Think of it as a complement to a project. Projects begin with a kickoff and end with a cocktail party. Ops never end. Operations consist of taking whatever was built during a project and making sure it keeps going.  

Ops fix things. Ops reduce costs. Ops automate repetitive tasks.

What I am getting at is an ops looking at a world-class project scheduling tool such as LiquidPlanner in a sense feels like an Animal Crossing player trying out Super Mario. We don't experience time the same way.

But don't get me wrong, LiquidPlanner's mindblowing approach to task scheduling is fire.

LiquidFire

Exploring the app

I built my usual "Premium Website" project from Liquid Planner's interface and invited "Mimi Katz" and "Xena Morph" to collaborate. Liquid Planner stands out thanks to its unique approach to scheduling. Every "Project" tab will maintain the app's "Monte Carlo simulations" to help users view beyond deadlines. Liquid Planner sells itself on that feature. It's easy to identify which tasks are wrongly scheduled, or who should get the work done. The Planner comes with the usual kanban (second picture) and time sheets. The project dashboard emphasizes the ability to deliver on time with "race-like" imagery.

The beauty of Liquid Planner's power comes from the possibility to scale over multiple concurrent projects. I created a second one, "Premium Features Proposition" and found out that as soon as I made tasks dependent on another project, the deadlines would change accordingly. Liquid Planner also identifies tasks that risk being under or over-scheduled, where project schedulers must take action.

Think I'm repeating "schedule" too much here? It is deliberate.

Liquid Planner enables personal productivity as well. I created a "Group" with my little trio. It allowed me to quickly identify who had availability. Imagine having dozens of small teams in a consulting business. It would change the game! I could also review my own tasks and see how my schedule was arranged around various projects.

As the image shows below, Liquid Planner thrives when tasks get "tagged". For instance, whenever I label one as "ASAP", the Planner's task menu gives me options to arrange around the critical work.

I feel a manager can easily get sucked into such rabbit holes, fine-tuning every assignment to optimize time.

Recommended Use Cases

My home city is currently building a large-scale tramway and analyzing a tunnel under a river. Liquid Planner works best for such immense projects that follow a relatively predictable set of steps. No matter the unpredictable nature of life, there are not many different ways to build them!

Limitations

Liquid Planner is all about time and schedules. As an ops who works on either fixing things or making sure things don't break, this makes no sense to me. Liquid Planner also makes no sense in an agile setting. I'm sure their business development teams have many counter-arguments to bring to that but, sorry, no. Scheduling like that is anathema to agile. You cannot schedule uncertainty, even with Monte Carlo simulations.

Pricing

With bundles between $15 and $35 per user per month, Liquid Planner can pay for itself easily. The app comes quite out-of-the-box so companies don't need much IT spending to maintain it either.

Verdict

Liquid Planner offers portfolio managers the best scheduling tool in the market with unique features around time management. Agile teams stay away.