Product Overview: LiquidPlanner
LiquidPlanner is a comprehensive project management solution designed to help organizations manage multiple complex projects efficiently. Here’s a detailed look at what the product does and its key features.
What LiquidPlanner Does
LiquidPlanner is a predictive project management tool that enables teams to plan, predict, and perform with confidence. It is built on the principle that teams work best when they organize tasks by priority, make best- and worst-case estimates, and collaborate in a central location. This approach helps in delivering accurate and constantly updated project schedules, even for the most complex projects.
Key Features and Functionality
Dashboards and Project Views
LiquidPlanner offers three types of dashboards: Workspace dashboards, Package dashboards, and Project dashboards. These dashboards provide a visual representation of project progress, allowing users to track data from all projects, packages, or individual projects. Additionally, LiquidPlanner provides multiple project views, including Portfolio, Project, Board, and Grid Views, which help in organizing and scheduling tasks, and tracking progress in various formats.
Time Tracking
The software includes robust time tracking features, allowing teams to estimate the minimum and maximum hours required for each task. It also tracks actual time spent on tasks, updating estimates in real-time. Custom rate sheets can be set up for billing purposes, and cost codes help in organizing timesheet entries.
Resource Management
LiquidPlanner’s resource management tools are highly advanced. They provide resource profiling, which gives a clear view of each team member’s current workload and remaining availability. The system also offers automatic resource leveling to distribute workloads evenly, preventing overloading of team members. Rate sheets and billing rules help in tracking resource costs and revenue.
Smart Schedules
LiquidPlanner’s predictive scheduling engine uses Monte Carlo simulations to forecast task completion times, considering priorities, team capacity, and estimated ranges for delays and risks. This engine automatically adjusts schedules based on task changes and project priorities, ensuring realistic and accurate forecasts. Smart schedule bars dynamically adapt to changes, focusing on tasks that need immediate attention.
Priority Alignment
The software ensures that individuals, teams, and the entire organization are aligned on task priorities. It operates on a four-tier hierarchy (Packages, Projects, Tasks, and Assignments), with items listed in order of priority. Changing the priority order updates scheduling estimates in real-time, and the ASAP scheduling function allows for easy adjustments in case of emergencies.
Predictive Scheduling and Risk Management
LiquidPlanner adapts to change and manages uncertainty through its intelligent predictive scheduling engine. It runs multiple simulations across all projects to create realistic forecasts, helping teams control execution and risk in real-time. The system also factors in the complexity of projects and people’s availability to optimize performance and balance workloads.
Ranged Estimation and Time Management
LiquidPlanner uses ranged estimation to capture uncertainty at the finest grain of planning: individual task assignments. This system, combined with deeply integrated time tracking, drives schedules, alerts, and insights in real-time, ensuring that schedules reflect the current reality and any changes.
Summary
LiquidPlanner is a powerful project management tool that stands out with its predictive scheduling, advanced resource management, and robust time tracking capabilities. It is particularly suited for organizations managing multiple complex projects, helping teams to plan, predict, and perform with confidence by aligning priorities, managing uncertainty, and optimizing resource allocation. Despite a steep learning curve, LiquidPlanner offers a high level of customization and is ideal for advanced power users who need sophisticated project management features.