Meisterplan

Meisterplan is a resource and project portfolio management software as a service which helps teams prepare and execute all sizes of projects and scale to help facilitate very large projects relatively easily. The ability to monitor the impact of your changes across your project in real time is a strong feature and allows for greater productivity and efficiency from management to employees and all stakeholders. The user interface is very intuitive to use and straightforward considering how much complexity there is under the hood so to speak. The software has modular components all of which are easy to use for such aspects as portfolio planning, optimization and analysis along with resource capacity planning and essentially replaces the old school way of having to use spreadsheets and various reports and in that regard it is a massive time saver. With time as money it is definitely worth investing in such a complete planning tool that will allow your project to develop seamlessly at a far less cost, utilizing more effective talent remotely, securely, and with all of the access based permissions and roles you need to streamline collaboration which is great. I like that you are able to pinpoint bottleneck situations in your resources and adapt this process accordingly for better return and performance. Meisterplan allows you to address your team as whole and determine if you have resources in place to support your project. It allows you to analyze whether there are any shortages, or areas for improvement. You can analyze your portfolio over time at a glance and it saves so much time by allowing you to eliminate the need for sharing spreadsheets and documents all together. The cloud access is awesome as well though aren't native mobile apps for iOS or Android available by using a modern device, operating system and internet browser you maintain solid consistency in the workflow between your laptop and tablet, for example. There are a ton of import and export features which is cool. There are a few useful integrations as well including Excel if you have external data to be integrated. You have milestones and dependency features, multiple calendars, capacity simulation, financial features, portfolio scoring, colored lookups and phases, cost rate management, KPI's and integration with Tableau for outstanding analytics as well so it's very comprehensive, visual PPM and resource management lifecycle based solution.

While the software is incredibly intuitive and simple to use I would suggest taking time prior to investing. Utilize their free trial and perhaps ask for an extension so you can setup all of your processes and systems, resources and portfolio to increase your individual and team workflow efficiency as well as your development to market. The pricing is certainly not inexpensive by any means and I would recommend shopping around as there are a few solid options in the market such as Wrike, Workfront, Celoxis, Clarizen and many others.

Meisterplan is highly visual and uses a lot of drag and drop technology which is my favorite for it's simplicity and productivity. I love the interconnected visual nature of your account dashboard and how everything updates in real time across your project in terms of impact on many variables and criteria which define your project. You can enable a magnificent workflow using Meisterplan and that's the first I've used that term to describe such a thing. But considering the immense complexity potential use for this software it is about as visual as it can be. I would suggest using a larger screen or a couple of monitors on your system just to increase the viewing space. It's quite well designed in that it's balanced and all connected visually though there is a lot going on and viewing your account on a smaller laptop or tablet is a bit constraining on the eyes but it's manageable.